I love Chuck Wendig’s writing and he never fails to pull you right into the story. The cover artwork draws you right in and the title makes you want to read this book. Books with creepy vibes with a group of kids always tend to capture my attention!

I was excited to read this after seeing some early reviews. The premise was intriguing. In 1998, five high school friends go out to the woods. They stumble across a creepy staircase, and on the return trip, only four come back...Twenty years after the disappearance, one of them guilts the rest into a reunion and the present day action begins.

There's a familiar vibe with the five teenagers. They're not all the most popular kids, some of them party, one's a jock, some of are gamers, some college-bound. They're misfits, bound together. We've met this type of group before. The four survivors grow up with varying degrees of success, and over the years their bond has gone dormant. They haven't kept in touch, there may be some bitterness between them, it's awkward.

OK I'm not giving anything away, it's in the blurb, by saying that they're lured back into the woods, where there's another frigging staircase. They're not being honest with each other, there's baggage, and now there's a staircase. What will they do?

The Staircase in the Woods felt like a mashup. Creepy pasta, gaming, haunted house, and a lot of dark, brutal, sick scenarios. It was a lot. And it didn't quite work for me. I didn't love the writing, so many "likes" as a simile it was distracting, the repetitive use of specific examples (wake up by waterboarding; sandcastle dissolves in a wave) that stuck out, and paragraphs and paragraphs of characters explaining their feelings.

"I just don't get it. What's the point of all this? This place?" one character asks. Yup.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Worlds for the Advance Reader Copy. (pub date 4/29/2025)

"You are not afraid of the dark. You fear what is within it." (Forgive me if I am paraphrasing.)

The Staircase in the Woods is one of those unsettling books that leaves you feeling dizzy and a bit nauseous. It has the adolescent friendship feels of "It" and the mind-bending infinite claustrophobia of "House of Leaves" but is its own story. Starting this book while home for Easter to visit my family in Pennsylvania made this all the creepier. There is just something heavy about the woods in Pennsylvania that you just don't feel in Ohio. The weird things you stumble upon while out on a walk. The cacophony of nature that suddenly turns to silence. The feeling of being so alone and far from reality. What is reality?

What makes a monster? Is it something supernatural? Or is it just man? Are you the monster inside yourself? So many questions and rooms to explore if you dare.

Thank you to Random House Worlds | Del Rey and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Thank you Netgalley & Del Rey for an eARC ❤️❤️❤️

Five kids, bound by some blood oath they called *The Covenant*—because of course they did—swearing to always have each other’s backs. Fast-forward to senior year, and they’re already fraying at the edges. But hey, one last camping trip, right? 😏
Then they find it.
A goddamn staircase🫣 Just standing there in the woods like some cosmic IKEA piece assembled wrong. No walls, no reason, just steps leading up into… nothing.
Matty, being Matty, climbs it.
And poof—gone.
Lore’s tripping balls on acid, so obviously, she’s zero help. Nick’s trying to logic it out. Owen’s freaking out quietly. And Hamish? He’s just standing there like, Well, this sucks.
The cops find Matty’s backpack at the bottom of a cliff—not where they last saw him—and suddenly, the Covenant isn’t just a dumb kid pact, it’s a murder conspiracy. Matty’s family bans them from the funeral. The friend group? Shattered.
Cut to: Thirty Years Later.
They’ve barely spoken since high school. Hamish has a wife, kids, a mortgage. Owen’s working part-time at a sad little bookstore. Lore designs video games about monsters because of course she does. And Nick?
Nick’s dead.
Or so he says in the email titled *"Funeral. Be There. Also, Staircase."*
And just like that—despite decades of silence—they drop everything and go. Because buried under all the bitterness, the guilt, the what-ifs, one truth remains:
Matty’s still out there. Somewhere.
And now there’s *another* staircase.
What follows is a nightmare funhouse of endless rooms, each worse than the last. Doors that shouldn’t open do Hallways twist into themselves. And the deeper they go, the more the past claws at them—old betrayals, buried secrets, the reason Matty really climbed those stairs.
One thing’s for sure:
The Covenant isn’t done with them yet.
And neither is the staircase.😩

I was so excited to read The Staircase in the Woods. I have long been familiar with the creepypasta that created its premise - and truly, what is spookier than a staircase emerging out of nowhere, leading to who knows where? Unfortunately, the novel itself read like one long creepypasta. I know Chuck Wendig is an established author, so I was surprised at the fanfic-esque air to his writing. I could have excused it as camp, but the prose took itself way too seriously to be intentionally campy. And I couldn't help but feel both that his characters were much younger than they were meant to be (I guess you could argue that their maturation froze at 17, but I couldn't help but physically cringe every time they mentioned "The Covenant), and also that the novel was meant for a much younger audience. I could see teens buying into the melodrama and getting invested in the theme park-ish haunted house walkthrough. But as an adult and horror fan, it was hard to feel any fear from such contrived ~sPoOky~ scenarios.

While I enjoyed the setup of the novel - estranged friends reunited and faced once more with a mysterious staircase in the woods - once they passed beyond the staircase, I really had to slog through the rest of the story. Again, I do think a teen, or an admirer of fanfic and creepypasta, could really get into this book. Unfortunately, it was not for me.

Thank you to Del Rey and NetGalley for the eARC! The Staircase in the Woods is set for publication on April 29th, 2025.

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig  is a horror novel about a group of friends who discover a rather unique phenomenon.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Random House, (and especially Kay Popple for sending me a widget), and the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.




My Synopsis:    (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
In 1998, five friends found a staircase in the woods.  One that seemed to go nowhere.  Matty Shiffman decided to climb it.  When he got to the top, he stepped off, and was never seen again.  The staircase disappeared.

Now, the remaining friends: Owen Zuikas (Bookstore clerk, OCD, nailbiter), Lauren Banks (queer, game coder), and Hamish Moore (mortgage broker, runner, father of three), are called by Nick Lobell who says he is dying.  Although some of them correspond, they haven't seen each other in a long time.  The disappearance of Matty Shiffman ruptured their friendship.

But at one time, they had "The Covenant", a vow that if one of them really needed them, the others would be there.  So, the friends met Nick, in the woods, where he showed them a staircase.  This time, they would all climb.  They want to find Matty.

  

My Opinions:
This is a story of teenage friendship,  love, and fellowship.  It is also a story about anger, about jealousy, and about childhood and teenage trauma.  It is a story of what happens when the friendship is shattered by the loss of one of them, and how the rest try to revive it 20 years later.

It's also a horror story about a staircase in the woods that appears to lead to nothing.

The story is told in two time-lines, which helped create the back-story for each character.

Be warned, Chuck Wendig writes really vivid and graphic horror.  He imagines a staircase to nowhere, and suddenly a house of horrors appears.  Some of the rooms in that house belong to the characters, but not all.  The author also writes characters that have depth, that show compassion and love, that have the reader cheering them on.  But even these characters have a rough side.  They are all a little broken, and have all had less than perfect childhoods. It is a reminder that not even close friends share everything, and that even the nice ones have a darker side.

I guess my only complaint was that the story moved rather slowly, and sometimes seemed a little ragged, or dis-jointed.

Overall though, it was a creepy, atmospheric, and entertaining tale.

Brilliant horror, starting st a slow, unsettling creepy, building to a crescendo of some gruesome scenes. This book was, to me, like "House of Leaves" but make it stairs and add another reality built of haunted houses. And I loved it.

"The staircase. Black and made of night’s own bones."

I don’t really know how to review this book (and given that I post book reviews, that’s not great).

On one hand, I liked the creepy vibes. The staircase itself is very ominous, and I liked the concept of the house. Each individual room was also super spooky. As a whole, the concept was great.

But for some reason the execution was not only lacking, it rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t care for the political rants and references to things like Minecraft and X-Chan threads because it felt almost like the author was trying too hard to be relevant (and I hate Trump so I normally love a speech bashing that evil man). I also didn’t think the characters were well-developed. You get stereotypes of them at the beginning and they never really expand or grow from there. They felt very one-dimensional to me.

Overall, I wanted to like this more than I did, but for some reason, it just didn’t really work for me.

Thank you to Del Ray Books and Netgalley for this ARC. The Staircase in the Woods is our 4/28

2.5/5

Huge thanks to NetGalley, Chuck Wendig, and Random House for the eARC! This was a dark, chilling, and completely mind-bending read. At times, I genuinely felt like I was slipping out of reality right along with the story. It’s haunting, unsettling, and there’s so much to unpack — I’m still thinking about it!

✨Staircase In The Woods by Chuck Wendig Review ✨

I’m a huge fan of Wendig. Black River Orchard by him was in my top ten last year! So when I heard about this book, I knew I needed to read it.

The book started out a bit slow—which is something I don’t mind as long as it has a good payoff. And this one did. Even with the slow build, I found it hard for me to fall in love with the characters. But experiencing the house with them made me grow to like and empthazie with them.

Speaking of the house, what a cool idea for a haunted house. I don’t want to say much about it, but know it involves facing a lot of past trauma. This book is dark and horrifying. At times it felt quite bleak.

This book gave me strong IT vibes. A group of friends. Fear and promises playing a strong factor.

This book is definitely a journey. With short, fast-paced chapters, the four hundred pages will fly by.

Read if you like:
✨ Liminal Spaces,
✨Overcoming trauma
✨Friendship
✨A unique take on haunted houses
✨Urban legends

Be sure to pick this one up when it releases on April 29th, 2025.

Hot Diggity Dang that was deep!!

A horror with emotional teeth that sunk right into me.

Let me stir the cauldron for a moment, because this one isn’t your average horror thriller. I went in expecting a spooky tale in the woods (and I do love a creepy forest), but what I got was something far deeper, more bewitching, and downright brilliant. This story didn’t just creep under my skin—it cast a spell, slow and strange, pulling me into a tangle of shadows.

The Stairs Are Back

It all starts with a camping trip. Five high school friends, deep in the woods, stumble across something impossible—a staircase leading nowhere. One of them climbs it… and vanishes. The staircase disappears with him.

Fast forward twenty years. The staircase is back. And so are the friends—now older, haunted, and returning to the forest to face what they lost… and maybe what they buried.

Sounds wild, right? Oh, it is. But it’s also eerie, emotional, and way deeper than I expected.

What Lurks Beyond the Stairs….

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t say too much about what I loved most—but trust me, after the stairs, this book takes a sharp turn into something strange and surreal, dark and deeply emotional. Wendig uses this eerie, otherworldly event as a portal to explore the messiness of being human—trauma, friendship, being lost, loneliness, pain, and the quiet dangers that can live inside our own homes.

Climbing Fast, Stalling, Ending Strong

Now, the pacing wasn’t perfect. It starts off strong, slows down in the middle (with some repetition that could’ve been trimmed), and then ramps up hard in the final stretch. I’ll admit, I got confused a couple of times. But Wendig helps pull it all together. And it hits hard!

The Characters: Struggling with Shadows

The characters are scarred and profoundly lost, each one grappling with their own personal demons. They’re not just haunted by the supernatural—they’re haunted by themselves and each other. Wendig brings their pain, and growth, to life in a way that transcends typical horror, grounding the supernatural in real, raw human emotion.

This isn’t just about what haunts you from the outside. It’s about what haunts you from within. It's about growing up, growing apart, and confronting our shadow selves.

Climb the Stairs, Take the Leap—And Let Your Shadows Catch You

A Witches Words discussion with Carolyn, Mary Beth and Debra and again I geeked out over this one!

Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase in the Woods invites readers on a tormenting and emotional journey into the unknown. This novel pushes the boundaries of both psychological and supernatural horror, while exploring themes of trauma, friendship, and redemption. However, despite the enthralling premise and vivid world-building, certain elements held this book back from being an entirely enjoyable read for me. For me, who attended many camp outs with fires in my life, it breaks the first and ultimate rule for spookiness, do not go into the woods alone.

The story revolves around five high school friends bound by an oath, "The Covenant," to always protect one another. One fateful night in 1998, during a camping trip, the group stumbles upon a staircase standing inexplicably in the middle of the woods. Strangely intact despite no traces of construction, the staircase to nowhere stirs equal parts intrigue and dread. Unable to resist its pull, Matty, the most beloved and charismatic friend, climbs the staircase and vanishes without a trace. Moments later, the staircase itself disappears, leaving the remaining four friends with guilt and unanswered questions that haunt them for the next twenty years.

Of course, the people in the small town assume the worst of them, believing that they are guilty of murder.

Fast forward two decades. The friends, now estranged adults leading fractured lives, are brought back together by Nick, who has rediscovered the staircase. Determined to uncover what really happened to Matty and whether he can still be saved, they return to the woods. What follows is a descent into a nightmarish labyrinth that both traps and dissects its visitors, challenging their sanity, friendships, and sense of reality. What do they find in this house? Do they find Maddie?

For horror fans, this is peak tension and dread. For me, the graphic descriptions felt too graphic at times, pushing the boundaries of discomfort without necessarily advancing the story or the characters' arcs.

Though ostensibly an ensemble cast, the story primarily centers on two perspectives, Nick and Lore. Lore is constantly volatile, condescending, and quick to bite, she often undermines the group’s tenuous unity with her self-imposed need to control everyone. While Wendig clearly intended for Lore’s prickliness to reflect her own unresolved guilt and internal pain and maybe the strong female, I found her off-putting.

Owen who struggles with OCD and severe anxiety. He has basically been hiding for the last 20 years. To me, Owen is the one who saves the day, not the overbearing mouthy Lore. Owen is the most empathic of the group in many ways, he seems to feel the others challenges as much as his own.

Beneath the obvious horror elements, The Staircase in the Woods is a story steeped in humanity. It focuses on fractured friendships, childhood trauma, and the burden of adulthood. It elevates what could have been a typical “haunted house” narrative into a compelling psychological thriller.
Wendig captures the melancholy of growing up and growing apart, the weight of broken bonds, and the hope that even the most damaged relationships can be mended. These themes are where the novel truly shines, and they provide welcome moments of reflection in between the horror and chaos.

While The Staircase in the Woods succeeds in creating an atmosphere of dread and exploring the characters’ emotional scars, I struggled with the graphic descriptions of violence and gore. At times, they felt excessive, detracting from the moments of subtle psychological horror that were far more effective. The pacing slowed in the middle sections with certain sequences in the house feeling repetitive and overly drawn out

The Staircase in the Woods is an ambitious and creative horror novel that blends psychological depth with unsettling imagery. Fans of dark, surreal horror will likely savor Wendig’s world-building and rich descriptions, but those with a low tolerance for violence may find it off-putting. The emotional core of the story is compelling, but it struggles to break free of well-trodden genre conventions. While the book boasts intriguing concepts, vivid scenes, and some standout moments, uneven pacing, difficult characters, and excessive gore prevented me from fully enjoying the ride.

If you’re ready to explore the abyss of trauma, memories, and mysterious staircases, proceed with caution. Just don’t expect to come out unscathed.

Thank you to Random House Worlds | Del Rey and Netgalley for the Advanced Readers Copy. All opinions are my own because I have the right to free speech.

Thanks so much to @delreybooks for gifting a copy for review!

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣{𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒}⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
In THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS, Circumstances bring a group of once-best friends together after many years of being apart. 20 years ago, they discovered a random staircase in the woods and that staircase would bring about an event that would leave an indelible mark and shape them into the people they’ve become. Flash forward to today, the staircase is back. Memories come flooding back from that night 20 years ago — will they make the same choices today? Will they ever find their missing friend?

With its captivating premise, this book hooked me from the opening chapter when the friends are all communicating after 20 years and making plans to get together. The mystery of the missing friend and the staircase slowly unfolds as each character’s story is told. Bouncing between present day and 20 years ago, readers learn the backstories of each character and the events and associated traumas that they’ve all endured. Each character was interesting in their own right but I found I didn’t much like any of them and I’m not sure why. Maybe that was the point, I don’t know.

The themes of guilt, grief, and trauma run throughout the book as the friends confront both the past and the present as they navigate the dark place that feeds off of their fears. They’re all forced to confront their own hangups in order to move forward, if they even can, and that was probably my favorite aspect of the whole book. The pacing is slow and the tension is high as Wendig takes readers through the eerie woods in search of the staircase and what lies beyond.

The overall sinister tone of the book and the twists and turns gripped me from start to finish, and I ended up devouring this one in a matter of 2 days (which is a rarity for me these days). All told, another captivating read from Chuck Wending and definitely one I recommend. 5 stars.

This book…5 friends go out for a fun night of camping, finding a mysterious staircase in the woods. Only 4 friends come back. 30 years later the same 4 friends find another staircase in the woods and they all go up. This book had me feeling claustrophobic. It had me holding my breath. I don’t know if I was scared exactly but it was definitely suspenseful and sad at times, when you read it you’ll see why. Make sure you read the authors note because after the dark book he leaves you with a laugh, not to mention a ton of great recs for other horror authors (some I hadn’t heard about) anywho..go read it!

What a wild ride!! I wasn’t real sure what to think because if I’m being honest the political views spewed in the beginning put a bad taste in my mouth but it did reveal it’s purpose for throwing it in the story later. (And even though I’m a trump supporter, I’ll forgive it 😝) But the book was well written. Gory af descriptions , freaky, mind blowing stuff. All in all a great book that I’m glad I finished.

An interesting take on the 'haunted house' genre. There is some excellent imagery, terrifying scenarios, and a truly stellar premise here, one that is very exciting and creative. Staircases in the woods transport those who climb them into a house (?) of custom horrors, with an uneasy feeling of malice and dire intellect seemingly behind every wall... The closest I could come to explaining what this book is like to my friends was if you took Stephen King's It and smashed it together with a wide selection of classic haunted house tales.

I enjoyed my time with this book from start to finish, but this is a bit bumpier of a ride then I am used to with Wendig's other writing. Maybe some of the interpersonal drama between characters was lacking, or the ending felt a bit lackluster, but I didn't get that signature "wow" at the end of the story that I was expecting.

3.5⭐️ I’m a big fan of It (both the book and the movies), and this book was giving me some similar vibes, while also doing its own thing. In the end, some of it worked for me and some of it didn’t.

First of all, I really enjoyed all of the 90s nostalgia throughout the book, and paired with the then/now timeline of friendship ebbs and flows, there was almost a tinge of sadness to it. The plot of friends coming together after years apart/estranged to face things from their youth was both fun and frustrating, and at times, deeper than I was expecting. I also really liked the fantastical elements of the house and the trials these characters had to face - it was just the right balance of spooky and weird.

The only real issue I had with this book was the pacing. The beginning starts off strong, but then there was a good chunk of the middle that felt slow and sometimes repetitive (the book *is* 400 pages). I found myself skimming through parts, but did get roped back into the action at the end.

I really enjoyed how the ending comes together (even if it took a bit to get there). The friendship bond between these characters really shines through there, and I liked seeing that side to them, as they all had their harder moments throughout the book. The ending felt like a big cliffhanger and was open-ended, but I’ll just use my imagination to craft the ending I want🤞🏼

*I’m still torn on my rating for this book. The beginning and ending were closer to 4 stars, but a lot of the middle felt closer to 3/3.5. I’d say overall this is maybe higher than 3.5, but not fully 4.

This is a truly terrifying tale of friendship, obsession, and trauma. I really believe the less you know about the actual plot, the better your reading experience will be. In true Chuck Wendig fashion, the characters are interesting, the writing is completely captivating, and the story is some of the craziest and scariest I’ve ever read. While it does start off a little slowly, the story really picks up and becomes a pretty fast-paced and thrilling ride. I really enjoyed how Wendig crafted such interesting and flawed characters. The story is told from the points of view of two characters, Owen and Lore but everyone feels very fleshed out and integral to the story. It’s a wildly weird and haunting story and if you’ve ever read another Wendig book, you’re going to be very pleased. If you’ve never read him before, this is sure to send you down his incredible back list.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

This book was a wild time. I found the teenage accounts to feel like teenagers. It was funny and dumb at the same time. The very beginning is a bit weird with a ton of buzz words throw in. The ending is disappointing as we never get our main question answered.

This novel, a chilling and atmospheric tale that blends horror with an unsettling sense of the unknown, keeps you on edge from start to finish. Wendig’s writing is dark, atmospheric, and full of haunting imagery, creating a world where danger lurks just beneath the surface. It’s a gripping, eerie read that leaves a lingering sense of unease.