LOVE the idea, didn’t love the execution. This starts out so strong and creepy - the rooms feel wild at first and the initial revelations about where they are had me gripped. But once you kind of know what’s going on, I felt the story fall apart a little bit. The messaging felt a little heavy handed and the plot fell to the wayside. Bummer because I really love Chick Wendig’s books normally.

I will say there’s some killer imagery throughout and will give kudos for that!!

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

If I ever stumbled upon a staircase in the woods, you can bet I wouldn’t be climbing it, especially after reading Chuck Wendig’s latest dark thriller. Absolutely not. But I highly recommend reading about this group of friends who not only found such a staircase but actually decided to climb it—even after one of them went missing doing the exact same thing. Big red flag, right? Yet, I had no hesitation following them on their eerie, twisted journey up those steps and into the unknown.

This story was gripping from start to finish, with a dark, sinister atmosphere that kept me on edge the entire time. The characters weren’t just flawed, they were broken, haunted by their pasts in a way that made me deeply invested in their struggles and their fate. It’s hard to pin this book down to one specific genre or trope, but what I can say is that it pulled me in completely. My emotions ran high, my pulse raced, and there were moments I wanted to slam the book shut and look away, yet I simply couldn’t.

Real Rating: 4.25* of five

As paranormal horror stories go, this is a very competent and well-strung-together example. As a character study of how the bonds of found family are tested, and how they can fail, it's a top-flight effort.

I'm pretty sure most of us have experienced the intense young-adult friend group phenomenon. For lots of people it's their big moment of bonding, forming a found family that either supplants entirely or enhances greatly their family of origin. In this telling of that family story you're treated to the bonus intensity of a tragedy befalling the scooby-group in such an incredible way that no one not there could possibly be able to credit the details. All the remainders are saddled forever after with quiet, or not so quiet, blame for the disappearance.

At the midpoint of their lives, after this judgment has weighed on them in ways they have just turned into ordinary background—as survivors of trauma often do in order to live "normal" lives—the trauma demands revisiting, as traumas so very, very often do. They are drawn together by a death foretold, a cancer diagnosis for one of them, though this will give way to their adolescent trauma's reappearance: here's a...the?...staircase, now what? Will you climb it? Will you all climb it, all together, in small groups, singly?

And here's where I go sibylline. The staircase is where we kick off our paranormal experience of reading, and that's a place I don't have the skills to navigate without spoilering SOMEone, who will then whine at me and elicit my accustomed "oh grow up" response, and then mods will get involved and yet another woman will have her knife ever-ready to stab at me.

But I digress.

The experience of paranormality isn't ever convincingly real to me. It's always just that one frame too slow or too fast, or each in turn, for my mental movie not to pop a sprocket. Meanings can be expressed, however, that are not easily evoked by other more "realistic" (silly word to use about fiction, if we're at all honest) settings/vocabularies/characterizations. That is so powerfully the case in this story that I am happy to leave the spoiler veil in place. The scooby-group does its deeply, unbreakably bonded thing, ie splinter. The story does a cracking job of making these self-centered kids grown into flawed and bone-deep ordinary adults relatable, if never really (for me anyway) likable people. I will say that if you can read this story without saying at least once, "that's exactly what X would do," then you're most likely X.

Don't kid yourself, though, it's a horror novel. Not a splatterpunk-y one, and nowhere is violence slathered with prurient, pornographic adjectival drool. But violence and intense conflict there is in here. In that way it feels to me as cathartic as less horror-themed and non-paranormal stories can't be...when done as well as this, the great selling point for horror is its ability to slide right around those improbability filters we all carry. Not since The X Files, whose story-sprockets matched mine superbly, has one done it so successfully as the staircases of the title for me.

A rare over-4-star rating for a horror story was thus awarded. I have not read Black River Orchard, with which the present volume seems to be linked (I can only assume thematically, since the settings are different), but will now add it to my grotesquely enormous list of things to be read.

Apparently I believe I'll live past 100, based on TBR size.

This was my first book by Wendig. It took me awhile to get through it due to the constant back and forth and heavy trauma. I understand the horror/thriller of the book but this seemed to repetitive. What also made it a bit tough was the political part of it. Other than that the book does pick up and was an interesting read.

There is no question that Chuck Wendig’s new book, The Staircase in the Woods, will get compared to King’s iconic IT. After all both books feature a group of friends, originally united by bullying, who suffer trauma in their youth only to once again reunite as adults to face their fears. I doubt King was the first to come up with that formula, but IT was certainly the most successful to use it, though over the years many authors have gone to that well with varying degrees of success. Hey, it’s a great formula, why not use it? That being said, Wendig’s story is a completely different animal from IT, original in it own right. (As original as a story using a well worn story trope can be, anyway.) When they were teens, a group of five friends entered the woods, the next day when they exited there were only four of them. What happened? Well, they found a bizarre staircase in the middle of the woods. A staircase to nowhere. Matty went up those stairs and was never seen again. And like Matty the staircase had disappeared. Now twenty years later the friends reunite. Another staircase has been found and this time they are going up together to find the answer to what happened to their missing friend. Not going to like, it’s a wild premise, which I loved. And once they climb the stairs and…get to their new location (being vague to avoid spoiling anything) the story gets dark and creepy. Wendig did a fantastic job on the characters. These characters are complex, flawed, and feel quite real. There are some seriously heavy themes running throughout this story. I only mention this because this isn’t the type of thing I normally notice when reading. I read for pure escapism, to get lost a story. I don’t usually even think of things like theme until I’ve finished a book and have time to reflect, so for me to notice it while I’m reading is just unusual. Not saying it’s bad or that Wendig was heavy hand in anyway, it’s just so there in your face you can’t not notice it, lol. I’d say in a good way, though the themes are kind of on the dark and depressing side so I’m not sure ‘good’ is the correct way to describe it, so…how about powerful? You can’t help but see and feel the themes. I want to say more, but I need to be careful to avoid spoilers. I’ll just say if you’re a normal person, who has experienced ups and downs in your life, you’ll feel this story, you’ll sympathize with the characters, connect with the emotions the story evokes at times. And you’ll likely still think about/feel the story even after you’ve hit the end and set the book aside. I’d like to thank Random House Worlds | Del Rey, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of The Staircase in the Woods.

https://www.amazon.com/review/RRXUJ8KC8GM4W/ref=pe_123899240_1043597390_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

This book was a creepy, thrilling ride! If you’re a fan of suspense, thriller & mystery, you’ll enjoy this!

What would you do if you lost a friend? Would you just go about living your life or would you spend the rest of your living moments thinking about them?

This novel was extremely layered in character development. It was multiple pov and a non-linear timeline. I really liked getting those deep looks into the characters mindsets as it showed vulnerability and made you relate more to them.

The world building and feelings (of dread, of curiosity, etc.) were also very clear. There was an even tone throughout the book revealing intricate details in the surroundings to the facial expressions.

This is only my second foray into Wendig’s work, but I’m so curious for more.

Thank you so much to the author, Chuck Wendig, Random House - Del Rey and NetGalley for this eARC of The Staircase in the Woods!

Let's see... how about whipping up a little The 7th Guest with a bit of 13 Ghosts, followed with a pinch of The Sixth Sense, and a topper of Dark Matter? Sounds like a yes, please!

I always fancy a well told horror story, and this one certainly quenched that thirst! I am such a fan of Chuck Wendig's writing. He has such a mastery for creating horrifying imagery that hangs around to haunt your thoughts.

Final thoughts? If you're looking for a long, tall glass of a creepy good time, this book is nightmarishly refreshing! Knock it back and enjoy. Yum!

In 1998, a group of friends go camping in the back woods of Bucks County, PA and one of them doesn’t come back out. Out of nowhere is a strange staircase all by itself, and Matty decides to climb the stairs that seemingly lead to nowhere. In doing so, he vanishes into thin air, and the staircase disappears.

Fast forward to present day. Now the friends are adults, and the staircase reappears. The group decides it’s time to face their fears and try and find their long lost friend. Each one climbs the stairs and find themselves transported into a place only found in nightmares.

While lost in a layered fever dream, each character is windmilled into a checkered part of their past, having to fight off the demons that having been living with them so long. How will they escape?
——

There were parts of this story that I found cool and original, but for the most part I felt like it was a mashup of various other tales already told, very heavy on the IT vibes. The characters fell flat for me, they just felt so stereotypical and uninteresting, and like I said, too similar to those characters we have come to know and love called the Losers. Even the ending felt cut short and had me bored.

There were some pretty gruesome and creepy parts splattered about that I did enjoy, but a bunch of the flashback type sections were so messy and confusing, I thought it possibly compared to being high on mushrooms 😵‍💫. I did find myself so intrigued as to what the staircase was all about, that I found myself rapidly flipping through the first half of this book to see what was going to happen. So it wasn’t all bad.

A haunting blend of mystery and supernatural suspense, The Staircase in the Woods follows five friends bound by an old oath and a shared trauma. When a bizarre staircase appears in the forest and one of them vanishes…it changes their lives forever. Twenty years later, the staircase returns, and so does the past. Atmospheric and emotionally tense, this novel explores friendship, loss, and the eerie unknown. An original and creepy taste that you will think of long after you finished reading!!!

“On Friday, June 5th, 1998, five teenagers went into the woods surrounding Highchair Rocks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Only four of them came out.” – Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

So begins Wendig’s latest novel. That summer night, Owen, Hamish, Nick, Matty, and Lauren went camping. The Covenant, as they called themselves, was bound by solemn promises to protect each other from bullies, to collaborate on homework so none of them fell behind, and so on. That night in the woods, high atop the cliffs, they find something impossible. A staircase, spiraling upward with no remnants of other structure around, no indications of how it had gotten there, or why. When no obvious answers could be found, most of the group decided to leave it be and go back to their campsite. Something about the staircase continues to eat at Matty, though, and so he invokes the Covenant (despite being told that’s not how it works) to get everyone else to go back with him and see what awaits them at the top.

Reluctantly, the other four teens trail along only to watch in shock and horror as, at the final stair, Matty vanishes. There’s no sign of him again.

The days and weeks after are chaos as the four survivors struggle to process what happened and to come up with a cohesive lie to tell to the police about what happened to their missing friend. They face relentless questioning about where they last saw him, who they talked to, and where he could have gone. The only problem is, none of them really know where Matty went, and the staircase is gone too, eliminating the possibility of anyone following after him.

Now, decades have passed, and the four surviving members of The Covenant have done their best to move on with their lives until an email arrives from Nick. He’s dying. Cancer. He wants to get the old gang together one last time before he’s gone, so he offers to fly all of them out to see him. He even invokes The Covenant to ensure that, despite all of the myriad issues they’ve developed as they’ve aged, they’ll come. And so they do.

Upon arrival, they quickly realize that Nick wasn’t being entirely honest with them. Instead of a nice get-together, he leads them off into the woods where, against all sense, they find the staircase again. It’s not the same place, but they know, somehow, that it’s the same staircase. He urges them to climb with him. A chance, he says, to do the right thing. To go find Matty.

To bring him back.

And, in the name of The Covenant, they follow.

The Staircase in the Woods is a brilliant, dark piece of horror from Wendig in the vein of Stephen King’s It (friends coming back together again as adults to face the evil they couldn’t defeat in their youth). The members of The Covenant have fallen away from each other, and they’re going to confront more than just the mysteries that lie at the top of the staircase if they’re going to have any chance of making it out of the woods again. I love Wendig’s horror (see my recent review of Black River Orchard) and I’m certain that most of you will too.

The Staircase in the Woods is out today from Del Rey books. My utmost thanks to them and to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2025/04/29/the-staircase-in-the-woods-a-review/

I haven't read any of Wendig's books before, though I've of course heard of his work. I thought this was a really engrossing, really dark story that takes some familiar territory and reworks it in an interesting and creepy way. Reminiscent of It for sure, with these characters coming back to investigate and maybe make amends for something horrible that happened when they were younger. But I thought Wendig did a great job of looking at these relationships in a bit of a different way and things get quite strange as they uncover the mystery and grapple with the consequences (don't want to spoil anything here). Wendig has a good rhythm going through most of the narrative, and it makes for a compelling read, wanting to get to the next thing. It's probably a pitfall of this style of storytelling that there are some moments where things lag a bit in the rehashing. But overall, it's a good read and I liked it quite a lot.

I appreciated the haunted house energy of this one! It's told as a time split following a group of friends as teenager and adults. I thought relationships were messy and real, and the book had a good narrative about grieving and letting go.

Wendig is an annoying writer, always has been, and it doesn't look like he'll ever improve. "Nailbiter," Nick calls Owen—and Wendig explains that this is because Owen bites his nails. Aha! Lore speaks like no leftist ever has or ever will, as I know from experience, being of that tribe myself, as are approximately 98% of the people I know and the students I teach. She speaks, in fact, like a MAGA caricature of such folks. I know it's well-meaning, but, like, get out more. The story is entertaining. I just wish someone else had written it.

Staircase in the Woods taps into the unsettling folklore idea of finding strange, isolated staircases in the wilderness, objects that seem to hint at something unnatural leaking into the real world. The author uses this eerie premise not just for visual horror, but to build a story about broken friendships, old anger, and the emotional scars people carry long after life pulls them apart.

The novel blends personal horror and possession horror well, but the real dread comes not just from the stairs or the haunted house, but from how damaged people confront the past. There's an effective darkness running through the book, and the fast pace keeps the tension alive without lingering too long in any one scene.

However, the story does start to feel repetitive in places, circling the same emotional and horror beats a little too often without escalation. Some of the character work also feels overwritten, the personalities are "edgy" to the point where it occasionally feels like the author is trying too hard to make the characters wounded, gritty, or cool. A lighter touch would have made their flaws more natural and relatable.

Stylistically, the book reads like a screenplay at times. It's highly visual, cinematic, and clearly structured for strong on-screen moments. This makes it accessible and visceral, but occasionally flattens the emotional depth that would have made the horror even more resonant.

Fans of atmospheric, folklore-tinged horror will likely find a lot to enjoy here.

I received a free copy from Netgalley of this book for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story. I thought that the dual timelines were both well-done, and the way that the friend dynamics changed was really well done. The contrast was just so stark. This was a complex story, too. Figuring out what happened to their childhood friend, the complexities of friendship and their own childhoods fears, etc. made this story very layered but in a believable and compelling way. This was creepy and weird and made me go WTF out loud at least twice. I think that this is definitely a new favorite Wendig of mine and everyone should read it!

Review: The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
Out today!

Cover depicts a spiral staircase sitting in the midst of a forest.

New favorite Wendig?! I think it might be! I’ve been a huge fan of since The Book of Accidents and truly think he’s only getting better as he gors. The Staircase in the Woods continues this pattern. I went in completely blind and straight up, this is my vibe. Our protagonists encounter their own traumas and also horrific imagery which reminded me of As Above, So Below (the movie, sans catacombs) at times. Aptly, there is a chapter named As Above, So Below. I’ve heard some murmurings about the politics of the book. Wendig and I seem to mesh politically, but the way he makes politics even more horrifying was extremely well done. I’ve heard comparisons to SK’s Holly, but those references were just kind of thrown in there (love ya SK but really do not need to know what brand of vaccine everyone gets) whereas Wendig uses it to increase the intensity.

In The Staircase in the Woods we follow five high school friends. During a late night excursion into the woods they encounter a freestanding staircase. One character climbs it and disappears entirely. Decades later the friends come together and this time all four of them investigate. Their new existence is an incredibly twisted version of reality. This one hits some seriously heavy themes (CSA, CA, murder of just about every variety) so please check tw if sensitive to heavier content. The imagery is so vivid and Wendig assaults you on all fronts. His ability to describe a sound is so terrifyingly accurate that I fear his research process. But I looooved this one. The vibes are there, late 90s nostalgia heavy and as usual, Wendig’s character and world building are god tier.

If shifting reality with heavily flawed, relatable characters is your vibe please check this one out. I loved every page and it only grew my appreciation for Wendig. Highly recommend.

This story hooked me from the very first page. Mysterious staircase in the woods + a dysfunctional friend group that decides to climb it? Um, where do I swipe my card because I’m buying!

I love a story about friendship, especially in horror. I’m fascinated by how shared trauma affects people. Does it bring them closer together? Does it tear them apart? Wendig does a fantastic job exploring friendships within this story, and examining which elements make them function and which elements make them crumble like the ruins of a neglected childhood home.

The characters in this story are messy complex people. I wouldn’t say I particularly liked any of them, but they were fascinating in the same way that tornadoes and reality TV dramas are fascinating. I couldn’t look away from the disaster unspooling before me. As the story progressed and dug deeper into each character, I found myself not only fascinated but actually rooting for them…and maybe even relating to them a little? I don’t know how Wendig did it, but this story is definitely a masterclass in character development.

A good portion of this book reads like you’re walking through a haunted house attraction, filled with jumps and gore and creepy things lurking in the shadows. While I absolutely love that kind of stuff, this did start to feel a little repetitive. The repetitiveness was definitely intentional and kind of the point, but I still started to get a bit impatient with it. It’s a minor complaint, but I feel it’s worth mentioning because it made me lose a bit of my original enthusiasm for where the plot was going. Despite this small lull, I really loved this book! Definitely check it out!

🏚️🏚️🏚️🏚️.5 /5
✔️ Recommend

Five teenagers go camping together in the woods in Pennsylvania one night. A staircase appears out of nowhere, taking one of them with them just as fast as it appeared. Only four kids come home, how do you explain that?

As always with Wendig’s work, this was so good! Dual timelines, a warm, tight-knit friendship turned distant and luke-warm, an unexpected search to find out what happened to their childhood friend all those years ago, and facing their haunted past and current fears all made this story so complex but gave it so much depth. It felt a little bit like IT, but also all its very own. I loved it and that plot twist at the end… what the actual fuck?! I loved their journey through the creepy, demented and down right terrifying house and was anxious to find out IF and how they get out. The Staircase in the Woods is another 5⭐️s for Wendig in my personal opinion. Thanks to Del Rey for my ARC! 🖤

The Staircase is a harrowing descent into memory, trauma, and the fragile architecture of friendship. Wendig crafts a tale that is as terrifying as it is intimate—each page steeped in dread, every moment pulsing with the weight of grief and guilt. If you crave horror that unsettles not just your nerves but your sense of self, this book is for you.

The story unfolds like a dark memory half-forgotten, where childhood nostalgia twists into nightmare. The tension is relentless—I was on edge from the first chapter to the last, haunted by both the horrors lurking in the shadows and those buried deep within the characters themselves.

Wendig’s characters are masterfully drawn, their bonds laced with pain, loyalty, and unspoken regret. The defensive edges they wear feel heartbreakingly real, forged by shared trauma and fraying over time. Their interactions echo with authenticity, each line of dialogue revealing more of the ghosts they carry.

What truly elevates The Staircase is its atmosphere: eerie, immersive, and claustrophobic. Wendig’s prose conjures chilling imagery and unsettling settings that seem to breathe with their own quiet malice. The conflict isn’t just external—it digs into identity, into the question of who we become when we're haunted by our past.

This isn’t a book to read at night—unless you're prepared to bring its shadows to bed with you. It’s intense, emotional, and deeply disturbing in all the best ways.