Book Review: Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

When Ethan Marsh was ten years old, his best friend Billy Barringer disappeared. The boys had been having a tumultuous summer, in the manner of close friends growing up and realizing that they may be growing apart. However, nothing prepared Ethan for waking up that hot July morning and finding that his best friend wasn’t sleeping beside him in their backyard tent. Instead, there was an empty sleeping bag where Billy was supposed to be and a huge and terrifying slit in the canvas wall directly next to it.

Ethan immediately went looking for Billy but could find no sign of him. Neither could their parents, nor the police. The press, of course, had a field day:

The Lost Boy.

That’s what the press started calling him in the weeks following his abduction, when you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about it. And it’s what he continues to be called in those shadowy, conspiracy-laden corners of the internet that still talk about him. To them, Billy has entered the realm of urban legend, even though what happened isn’t as mysterious as those girls who vanished from that summer camp or as terrifying as that group of teenagers killed in a cabin in the Poconos.

 

Billy’s case resonates because it happened in a quiet suburban backyard, which is generally recognized as one of the safest places in America. And if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.

Fast forward thirty years and there’s still no sign of Billy to be found. Ethan is reeling from the end of his marriage as he moves back to the childhood home he’s been trying to stay away from ever since Billy disappeared. His parents are moving to Florida and, knowing that he could use a place to land, ask him to look after their house while they pretend to think about selling it. 

A returning Ethan is surprised to find how little the neighborhood has changed. Almost all the same families still live in Hemlock Circle, and he isn’t the only one of his peers who’s recently come back after time away. Russ Chen, who grew up on the other side of him from the Barringers, is living in the neighborhood again, as is Ashley Wallace, the babysitter Ethan had crushed on hard back when she was an unattainable fifteen year old. Ragesh Patel might no longer live on the circle but still visits his parents there regularly.

It’s another visitor who has Ethan completely spooked though. Plagued by insomnia, it doesn’t take him long to realize that someone – or something – is triggering the nighttime security lights around Hemlock Circle:

When the Van de Veers’ light turns off, I begin to count.

 

Five seconds.

 

Then ten.

 

Then a full minute.

 

Long enough for me to think that whatever is out there has moved on, likely into the woods, which means it was an animal. Something simply too small and quick for me to spot, but not small and quick enough to evade the hair-trigger garage lights of the houses on Hemlock Circle. The tightness in my chest eases, and I allow myself a sigh of relief.

 

Then the light above the Barringers’ garage turns on.

 

[…]Whoever’s out there isn’t gone.

In fact, they’re getting closer.

Riley Sager’s mastery of tension is exquisite throughout this slow-burn novel that revolves around a confounding childhood disappearance and the decades of confusion and sorrow that follow. Who took Billy? Who is haunting the neighborhood, leaving Ethan messages only Billy would understand? Will Ethan finally be able to lay the ghosts of his past to rest, as he strives to figure out what happened to Billy for once and for all?

I was deeply moved by the emotional depths Mr. Sager reaches with this wise, compassionate, and often spine-tingling book. The pain of Billy’s disappearance resonated through the once close-knit neighborhood of Hemlock Circle, as the author shows through flashbacks from the points of view of most of its residents. The ending revelations are both tragic and resolutely life-affirming, with the biggest twist one I absolutely did not see coming. This is by far my favorite of Mr. Sager’s novels to date, and I can’t wait to explore more of his oeuvre.