Middle of the Night

January 1, 2024

LibraryReads Hall of Famer Sager (The Only One Left) offers a creepy thriller about Ethan Marsh's quest to find out what happened 30 years ago, when his best friend disappeared during a sleepover. Returning home, Ethan encounters strange and mysterious events, haunted woods, and an institute conducting clandestine research. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 11, 2024
Bestseller Sager (The Only One Left) expertly doles out chills and pathos in his mesmerizing latest. In 1994, when Ethan Marsh was 10 years old, his best friend, Billy Barringer, was kidnapped from the tent where both boys were sleeping in Ethan’s New Jersey backyard and never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan’s marriage has ended, his parents have decamped to Florida, and he’s returned to live on the well-to-do cul-de-sac where he grew up. Still plagued by nightmares about Billy’s disappearance, Ethan comes to believe that someone may be lurking in the shadows of Hemlock Circle: neighbors’ motion-sensor lights flick on for no apparent reason; he senses a presence “linger in the way certain smells do” when he’s out for night walks. His paranoia increases when someone tosses a baseball into his yard, the private signal Billy used to give him when he wanted to play. Could Billy have returned? Or is his kidnapper back for seconds? Sager takes his time ratcheting up the tension, peppering in crucial flashbacks that flesh out Ethan and Billy’s friendship and painting a three-dimensional portrait of Ethan’s fractured mind in the present. This standout work of psychological suspense confirms that Sager has few equals when it comes to merging creepiness and compassion. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary.

May 1, 2024

In 1994, 10-year-old Billy was kidnapped, leaving best friend Ethan with nothing but a recurring dream and a knife hole in the side of their shared tent. Billy was snatched while the boys were camping out in Ethan's back yard, which left the close-knit cul-de-sac residents of Hemlock Circle reeling. Now, 30 years later, as Ethan moves back home, he can't help but feel that Billy is still here, toying with him, begging him to remember the events of that night. Did Ethan really not wake up, or could he be blocking out what happened? Worse, could he have recognized the killer? Flashbacks from various characters will keep readers guessing, even if Ethan's childhood scenes feel a bit too mindful for the average 10-year-old. Themes of survivor's guilt and grief are touched on and add a heartfelt, empathetic aspect. While the paranormal element would have benefited from more exploration, it adds a pleasant chill as the tension gradually builds, ending in head-spinning reveals. VERDICT Red herrings abound, and there are twists aplenty in Sager's latest (following The House Across the Lake). His signature style will leave readers dizzyingly satisfied.--Elisha Sheffer

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2024
Thirty years ago, Ethan's best friend, Billy, disappeared one night while they were camping in Ethan's backyard. Billy was taken from the tent, and Ethan was totally unaware. Now, after spending most of his life trying to forget what happened--and to stop imagining what might have happened--Ethan has returned to his childhood home. It is not an easy homecoming: someone seems to be playing games with him, trying to make him think that whatever took Billy all those years ago has come back. Perhaps it isn't a game. Perhaps an evil has returned. Sager, author of Final Girls (2017) and Survive the Night (2021)--to name but two of many fine thrillers--has devised a genuinely frightening story and populated it with characters who feel as real as anyone you might encounter in the "real world." He is a master craftsman, and Middle of the Night is a superlative novel.

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What happened to Billy Barringer? Thirty years after the disappearance of his best friend, Ethan Marsh is back in his childhood home on Hemlock Circle. His mom and dad have just moved to Florida, and they asked Ethan to look after the place until they can sell it, but all three of them know that he needs a place to stay while he tries to get his life back on track. Given that the trauma associated with Billy's vanishing has turned into a lasting obsession for Ethan--one that disrupts his sleep and casts a pall on his marriage--it seems unlikely that the community he went to boarding school to escape will be much of a refuge, but...sure? As it happens, the babysitter he crushed on as a kid has also come home to take care of her father. Another childhood friend is raising his own family in the house where he grew up. And a one-time bully is now a detective. All of these people were involved in the events leading up to Billy's disappearance, and they're all together again when new information about the case surfaces. Sager is a gimmicky author; this isn't a slam. Horror is a gimmicky genre and, although Sager doesn't write horror, exactly, his use of horror tropes is a distinctive element of his novels. And fans may well be ready to accept this band of sleuths or ghost hunters or potential suspects working together to solve a 30-year-old mystery. They may, however, be less forgiving of the red herrings and a complicated resolution that raises more questions than it answers. The real sin here, though, is that this book is intensely boring. Ethan Marsh might be a sympathetic character, but he's not an interesting character, and the narrative pace is punishingly slow. Another disappointment from this bestselling author.

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