The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
Published by Del Rey
Publication date: April 29, 2025
Genres: Fiction, Horror, Suspense 
Bookshop
I’m not a huge horror fan, but I am easily influenced by a book’s cover and that was all it took to lead me into Chuck Wendig’s novel A Staircase in the Woods. Who could resist a cover like this? Or this premise: Five high school friends partying in the woods discover a staircase in a clearing. They dare Matthew, one of the five, to climb it and he does. And then he jumps off at the top and disappears. They’re all so drunk they pass out and when they wake up in the morning the staircase and their friend are gone.
Fast forward twenty years and the remaining four friends are all living separate lives and ensconced in adulthood with varying degrees of success. They’ve lost touch until a false plea from one finds them back in their hometown and in the woods, facing the staircase. The same friend who called them together convinces each that Matthew may still be alive and climbing the staircase is their only option to help him.
Guilt, regret, curiosity, and loneliness are just some of the emotions that prod the four into climbing the staircase. They do and the story and the reader go along with them go over a cliff of shock and fear. The landing is a house. A house where when you open a door and go into another room, the door behind you disappears. And each room is filled with a different scene of extreme misery. Some physically graphic, others emotionally draining, but all dark and alarming.
“I have one more thing to show you—and this, this, will be the thing that breaks your pretty minds like a baseball through a window.”
Wendig ups the fear factor by letting the characters become separated along the way, as each thinks they know best how to proceed. A seemingly infinite number of rooms are explored, searched for clues, and survived. In the same way the house keeps going so do the questions. Will they find Matthew? Will they find each other? Can they escape? How much time has passed?
I’ll stop there, leaving big gaps in the novel’s plot, but Wendig fills them all in. Every detail is carefully composed and executed in this story. This is not reading for anyone uncomfortable with gory violence, but it’s not horror for the sake of the horror. There is complexity within this twisted plot that went far beyond the novel’s physical terrors and into the deepest realms of the human condition regarding friendship, ambition, what we believe to be true, and the truths we don’t see. I’m not always looking to be frightened by my reading, but when I am I’ll be sure to check out Wendig’s older novels. If they’re anything like The Staircase in the Woods they’ll be intelligent, intricate, well-written stories that will keep me riveted and scared.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Del Ray in exchange for an honest review.*
Real life and just reading hearing the news is scary enough. I’ll pass on this one.
You were brave to read out of your comfort zone.
I know it’s completely bizarre, but for whatever reason my usual aversion to gory books has faded somewhat if the writing is good. Maybe the numbness from real life in America has spread to my reading brain?