Review: Disappearance at Devil's Rock

Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

REVIEW: DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK by Paul Tremblay


I have heard so much positive praise of the author's A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS [2015] so I was eager to read his newest. Every expectation was fulfilled. DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK is an exceptional novel, unforgettable--and a strong Best of 2016.

Beginning with a knock-out reader's hook--the dreaded after-midnight phone call that is every parent's nightmare, the action and emotional impact is literally non-stop. Instead of immediate closure ("your child/spouse/parent is dead") in which the worst has already happened and the grief must begin, in this novel the grief, fear, anxiety, is open-ended: Elizabeth's son's best friend since first grade calls in the early AM, on the landline, to ask if Tommy' s come home. Three friends had been at a sleepover at one's home; but they had lost Tommy in the forest of the State Park wrapping around their Massachusetts community.

As the story unfolds, relationships are tested: Elizabeth's with daughter Kate, and Elizabeth's mother Janice with both Elizabeth and Kate. The friendship of the two remaining boys, Josh and Luis, is maximally stressed, and as reminiscences unfold, leading to a powerfully impacting denouement, readers--and characters--learn of the manipulated events of the summer that drive wedges among the boys and the horrifying consequence which inevitably resulted in a disappearance at Devil's Rock.

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