Book Review: The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Del Rey (April 29, 2025)

Length: 400 pages

Author Information: Website

I rarely miss picking up a new Chuck Wendig book, which is why I really wanted to love The Staircase in the Woods. I guess in some ways, I did—but it also took me way longer to finish than I expected. Despite a strong beginning and end, I found myself bogged down by the middle section which felt repetitive and a bit bloated, slowing down momentum.

Still, there’s no denying this book has one hell of a killer premise! It features a group of teenagers—Owen, Lore, Matty, Hamish, and Nick—who experience a supernatural tragedy one summer, reuniting decades later to confront the truth of what really happened. It all began in high school, when during one of their usual hangouts in the woods, the five friends stumble upon a strange spiral staircase rising out of the ground and leading to nowhere. One fateful night, buzzed on booze and bravado, Matty decides he wants to climb it—and he’ll even do it by himself, if the others are too chicken. Only, upon ascending, he vanishes without a trace. The rest of the group is left traumatized and grief-stricken, blamed by the community for their friend’s disappearance. Shattered by guilt and unanswered questions, they eventually graduate and go their separate ways.

Twenty years later, however, Nick reaches out to the others with dire news and a request: first, he has terminal cancer, and second, he wants to find out what happened to Matty. Reluctant but unable to refuse their dying friend, Lore, Owen, and Hamish agree to meet. They learn that Nick has found the damned staircase again, and this time when he leads them to it, they all make the climb. But the mystery of what befell Matty isn’t going to be solved so easily. In fact, things get weird fast. The friends find themselves inside a house that shouldn’t exist, a surreal place where each room forces them to face their deepest fears and relive their worst memories. They soon realize the house is playing with them, feeding off their pain. And while they have come to find Matty, it’s uncertain now whether any of them will make it out alive.

I’ll start with the positives. The supernatural elements in The Staircase in the Woods are certainly effective when it comes to the chill factor, even more so when I learned from the author’s note that he drew inspiration from real reports of mysterious staircases found in the middle of wooded areas, including one he personally encountered. While many of these sightings turn out to have perfectly rational and mundane explanations—like remnants of old photography and hunting platforms, or abandoned houses where the rest of the structure has fallen around the staircase and long since been reclaimed by nature—the idea still struck me as creepy. After all, the imagery itself is rather unsettling, making it easy to imagine other uncanny possibilities.

Clearly, much of the novel was also driven by tensions between the characters, a result of all their psychological and emotional baggage. As the saying goes, you can run but you can’t hide, and no matter how hard they’ve tried, none of the remaining four friends can move on from what happened to Matty. Even after achieving moderate success as a game designer, Lore remains deeply unhappy and feels victimized by everyone around her (and some of her political rants can be a bit much). Owen is a nervous wreck, and his anxiety has only worsened since his high school days. Hamish, the only one married with children, is nonetheless unsatisfied and self-destructive. And although Nick may act like a clown, the humor is merely a mask that hides the true desperation within him. To be honest, none of them are particularly likeable, but they are complex and feel genuine. I loved reading about their relationships in the past and in the present, and the most rewarding part was seeing how these connections are broken and healed again.

But now for the not-so-great. Like I said, not everything worked for me, particularly the story’s pacing. While it was smooth sailing for most of the first half, soon after, the plot started spinning its wheels. The characters end up splitting up, spending a long time moving through this house of horrors, with each room throwing more and more terrible things at them until these scenes begin to lose all meaning. At some point, it all feels done for the sake of shock value. The scares also blur together and become more of the same old, same old. I definitely struggled to get through this middle section, putting the book down multiple times then finding it hard to motivate myself to pick it back up again.

That said, picking it back up again I did, and I’m glad. Once the holding pattern finally breaks, the plot gets right back down to business, pushing forward rather than lingering in its own sluggish atmosphere. The payoff at the end of the book was well worth the wait, and the story’s resolution tied its themes of friendship, grief, and recovery back to the way things were for the characters before Matty’s disappearance tore them apart. Needless to say, I was happy with the conclusion, which was both satisfying and touching.

Despite my misgivings into its pacing issues, I would still recommend The Staircase in the Woods, especially if you enjoy stories about unexplained mysteries, haunted forests, and reunions between even more haunted friends. Admittedly, this one took a bit of a climb for me, but in the end there was still plenty to like.