Middle of the Night- Book Review

In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

I always make a point of reading all of Riley Sager’s books and so I got my hands on his latest novel Middle of the Night. I did have high expectations for this book as I have enjoyed nearly all his books. But this latest thriller, in my opinion was a bit of a disappointment to me.

Middle of the Night follows the story of Ethan Marsh. He is still haunted by the event that happened when he was ten years old–in 1994, he and his friend were sleeping outside Ethan’s home, camping. But the next morning, when Ethan woke up, Billy was missing and there was a slash at the side of where Billy was sleeping. Someone might have kidnapped Billy and since then Ethan was suffering from the nightmare. Now Ethan had returned back to his childhood home and soon, the police discover Billy’s remains at the secluded Hawthorne Institute–an institute known for secret and eccentric activities. Ethan believed that Hawthorne Institute has something to do with Billy’s murder.

The story started out great. But then as it went on, in my opinion, the pacing began to slow down and it started to get a bit boring. The ending was lame, in my opinion, something which I didn’t expect at all. To me, this book ended up being more emotional story rather than a thriller, something that Riley Sager is known for. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The only thing I actually liked was, in most of Riley Sager’s books, the protagonists were female but this book, the protagonist or the main character ended up being a male.

While I liked his other works, I didn’t enjoy reading Middle of the Night and in my opinion, this wasn’t his best book. Overall, I gave this book 3.5 stars.