{"id":5955,"date":"2018-10-24T10:13:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T14:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=5955"},"modified":"2018-10-24T10:13:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T14:13:22","slug":"book-review-disappearance-at-devils-rock-by-paul-tremblay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-disappearance-at-devils-rock-by-paul-tremblay\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Disappearance at Devil’s Rock\u00a0<\/em>by Paul Tremblay
\nWilliam Morrow Books, 2017
\nISBN-13: 978-0062363275
\nAvailable: Paperback, Kindle edition, library binding, audiobook, audio CD<\/p>\n

Last year’s Stoker winner for best novel was one of the least anticipated in many years. People who read it knew that A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em> was a shoo-in; it simply was one of the strongest horror novels in several years.\u00a0 Paul Tremblay’s characters seemed as real as the next-door neighbors, despite the suggestion of supernatural involvement in the events of the story, the multiple perspectives he used were smoothly integrated, yet somehow formed a disorienting and frightening narrative.<\/p>\n

Disappearance aat Devil’s Rock\u00a0<\/em>is a definite departure in terms of tone and style. It’s a subtle tale, yet one with plenty of tension and plot twists. From the first page, it’s as if Tremblay is whispering to the reader in a dark and secluded New England pub on a chilly autumn evening. What begins as a simple case of a missing teenager turns into something quite sinister that tears at the fabric of a family’s sanity.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Sanderson receives that dreaded call– Tommy, her teenage son has gone missing.\u00a0 He disappeared in Borderland Park at his friends’ favorite hangout, Devil’s Rock. One night, pages of Tommy’s journal begin to appear on the floor of the house, opening a box of puzzle pieces that don’t quite seem to fit together.\u00a0 Elizabeth, her daughter Kate, and her mother Janice, struggle to figure out what the late night pages mean. As Elizabeth delves into the mystery, she finds that everyone has a different version of what happened, and that Tommy’s friends are hiding something, or someone. There are even sightings of him around town: is there a chance that Tommy is still alive?<\/p>\n

Where Tremblay succeeds in his novels, and this has been noted in several other reviews, is in focusing on the spaces between words, actions, and characters’ relationships. The supernatural may be a component of\u00a0Disappearance at Devil’s Rock,<\/em>\u00a0or just an illusion. This is a thinking reader’s horror\/thriller\/mystery\/suspense novel, but it is as accessible and quick a read as any bestselling page-turner, and might be the one to break down the genre walls for Tremblay.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Dave Simms<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock\u00a0by Paul Tremblay William Morrow Books, 2017 ISBN-13: 978-0062363275 Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, library binding, audiobook, audio CD Last year’s Stoker winner for best novel was one of the least anticipated in many years. People who read it knew that A Head Full of Ghosts was a shoo-in; it simply was one<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2502,3546,83,3561,3559,2621,448,3560,202],"class_list":["post-5955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-head-full-of-ghosts","tag-disappearance-at-devils-rock","tag-horror-fiction","tag-mystery","tag-paul-trembay","tag-psychological-suspense","tag-social-media","tag-stoker-award","tag-supernatural-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6029,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions\/6029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}