Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Continuing his streak of top-flight fiction, Wendig gifts us this Gothic-tinged horror story. A group of friends is reuniting to get together one last time with Nick, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But, as it turns out, that’s not the only reason Nick has summoned his old friends: they are finally, he tells them, going to find out what happened two decades earlier, during a camping trip, when one of them climbed up a staircase that was located, incongruously, in the middle of the forest and never came back. Wendig begins in the present, introducing us to the friends and their relationships with one another, before finally taking us into the past, where something inexplicable changed their lives forever. It is exactly the right choice: a past-set prologue would have ruined the suspense, would have given us too much information too soon. Another first-rate novel from an author whose imagination and talent seem to know no bounds.

Library Journal
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In 1998, five teenagers—Mattie, Owen, Lor, Hamish, and Nick—spend a drunken night in the woods, where they discover a mysterious staircase that seemingly leads to nowhere. Mattie climbs the stairs and never comes back down. Though the group searches for him, he appears to be gone without a trace. In the ensuing years, life pulls the remaining friends in different directions, and they forget their vow to protect one another no matter what. When the friends at last reconnect, each of them marked by their own traumas and history, the staircase reappears; now the friends face a decision. Wendig (Black River Orchard) returns with a twisty, supernatural tale of friendship, courage, and the power of found family. Narrators Myers, Amber Benson, and Xe Sands skillfully depict the bond among the friends, exploring the impact of trauma and conveying the heady nostalgia of times gone past. Their narration helps distinguish the many characters, as the story is told from multiple points of view and jumps through time. VERDICT Superb narration sets the tone in this must-have audio, rich with suspense, nostalgia, and danger.—Elyssa Everling

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Four kids who swore an oath of friendship reunite as adults to face their fears. The foundation of this novel is a consciously employed trope about messed-up kids, from the Losers Club in Stephen King’sIt (1986) to more recent groupings of youth gone wrong in everything from Edgar Cantero’sMeddling Kids (2017) to Gerard Way’sThe Umbrella Academy comic-book series. Here, it’s five kids from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, circa 1998: charismatic Matty, cynical Nick, carefree Hamish, cool-ahead-of-her-time Lore-née-Lauren, and nervous nail-biter Owen. Each burdened with terrible families, they create a pact, the Covenant: “It’s how they’re there for each other. How they’ll do anything for each other. Get revenge. Take a beating. Do what needs doing.” But when they discover the titular staircase during a camping trip and their impulsive leader Matty disappears while climbing it, the band breaks up. Decades later, Lore is a successful game designer, having abandoned Owen to his anxieties, while Hamish has become a family man and Nick is dying of pancreatic cancer. When he invokes their pact, the surviving members reassemble at a similar anomaly in the woods to make sense of it all. Climbing another staircase into a liminal space marked with signs saying “This place hates you,” among other things, our not-so-merry band suddenly finds themselves trapped in a haunted house. There’s plenty of catnip for horror fans as these former kids work their way through shifting set pieces—rooms where children were tortured, murdered, and worse, including some tailored specifically to them—but the adversary ultimately leaves something to be desired. The book isn’t as overtly gothic asBlack River Orchard (2023) or as propulsive as his techno-thrillers, but Wendig has interesting things to say about friendship and childhood trauma and its reverberations. Lore gets it, near the end: “We’re all really fucked up and just trying to get through life, and it’s better when we do it together instead of alone.” A flawed but visceral take on shared trauma and the fragility of friendship when we aren’t just kids anymore. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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This by-the-numbers horror outing from Wendig (Black River Orchard) introduces a group of five misfit friends who, as bullied and traumatized kids, formed The Covenant, a promise to protect one another. This vow was broken when, on a camping trip, their friend Matty vanished at the top of a mysterious staircase they found in the forest. Decades later, the staircase reappears, offering the group the chance to find Matty and make things right—but there’s a gruesome puzzle waiting at the top of the stairs to be solved first. Unfortunately for readers, the solution to this puzzle lies at the end of an overlong pastiche of horror fiction clichés and abundant asides about geek culture that grow tiresome (at one point, one of the terrified protagonists takes a break from the action to recount the plot of the Legend of Zelda). Wendig tries to eke a captivating mystery out of these elements, but the narrative is weighed down by clumsy attempts to shock and the characters aren’t fleshed out enough to carry the plot. Particularly underdeveloped is the one nonbinary character, Lore, who feels tokenized by the narrative. This disappoints. (Mar.)

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In 1998, five teenagers ventured into the woods of Pennsylvania and stumbled upon a mysterious staircase that led to nowhere. One climbed it, and by the end of the night, only four returned. Now, 20 years later, the survivors are shattered, each haunted by that day and with their lives in tatters. Then the staircase reappears, and the estranged friends are drawn back together. This time, driven by guilt and desperation, they resolve to climb it themselves, hoping to uncover the truth, and to perhaps reclaim the friend they lost. Wendig's disturbing novel follows the classic trope of adults confronting the horrors of unresolved childhood trauma. The ghastly atmosphere, combined with an ever-present sense of danger, creates an unrelenting tension that grips readers. The horrors within the staircase unfold like a twisted escape room, blending video game logic with cruel mind games. This is also a tale about friendship, found family, and overcoming the pain of the past, featuring a cast of broken, flawed, and at times unlikable characters who nonetheless inspire empathy. VERDICT Wendig's (Black River Orchard) latest is perfect for fans of Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi and The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill.—Andrea Dyba