Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase in the Woods is an eerie tale of friendship, loss, and the haunting pull of the past.
The story begins with five teenagers escaping the pressures of family and school for a night in the woods—a night of rebellion, solace, and shared companionship with the only people they feel truly understand them - a night that changes their lives forever. Drawn to a mysterious staircase in the forest, one of them vanishes, the staircase disappears, and the bond that once united them begins to unravel.

Years later, the group reunites and discovers the staircase has returned, pulling them back into a dark mystery they had tried their best to leave behind. As the story unfolds, their motivations and the true nature of their friendship are revealed. Wendig masterfully explores the fragility of human connections and the weight of regret, forcing the characters to confront uncomfortable truths. Although initially likeable, the characters reveal increasing layers of complexity as their pasts come to light. Their vulnerability lays bare their deep flaws, exposing them as raw, layered, and achingly human. This gradual shift unsettled me, making the tension all the more compelling. Will their bond survive the trials ahead, or will the darkness of their unvoiced history tear them apart for good?

Wendig weaves a tale that’s equal parts horror and psychological drama, guiding us through a maze of unsettling twists and entirely relatable self-recriminating reflections. The Staircase in the Woods is not just a story about losing what matters most—it’s about rediscovering so much more in the process.

In this story, you follow five high school friends who go camping one week-end. During their camping trip, they found a staircase in the middle of the woods. One of the friends, Matty, goes up the staircase and disappears. 20 years later, the four friends left meet again and find another staircase also in the middle of the woods. This time they all walk up to find what happened to Matty.

I have always been fascinated by staircases in the woods stories and have read many reddit threads about it. There's something very poetic, mysterious, eery and, often times creepy, about seeing those pictures of staircases in the middle of nowhere, giving the feeling they just appeared and could as easily disappear.

I loved the premise of the book&the back and forth between the present and the teenage years of our characters. You really get to dive deep into their pasts, the different dynamics between them and how the disappearance of Matty twenty years prior affected them, and still affect them to this day.

The way depression and anxiety was described in this book mainly through one of the character was very well made and relatable. The writing was great and the descriptions of the different rooms, the gruesome things taking place in them, were very vivid and fascinating.

The book lost me a bit because of all the repetitions. After a great beginning, I felt the pace slowed down significantly and I think some editing could have been made for the pace to pick up a bit more. Some of the dialogues between the characters also felt very repetitive and even though it was twenty years later and they were supposed to be adults, I felt their discussions and attitudes to be very juvenile.

Thanks to NetGalley, Chuck Wendig, Del Rey, and Random House Worlds for the advanced copy of this book!

Chuck Wendig has to be the writing equivalent of Robert Johnson, as I’m sure he did a deal with the devil to weave such magic with words. His soul in exchange for the ability to craft books such as The Staircase In The Woods.

This was an astonishing read. It’s been some time since I forewent doing ANYTHING other than squeezing in reading wherever I could. Don’t get me wrong, I read every single night, but found myself forgetting that series here, or going for a walk there, saving time on cooking dinner just so I could carve out time to read this book.

The Staircase in the Woods is, for me, as close to perfection in pages as possible.

We start with 5 mostly dysfunctional, outcast or plain weird teenagers that have bonded to such a degree they both are known as and are bound by “The Covenant”. They enter the woods one day, encounter a staircase in the woods, drink beer, take drugs, and only 4 of them return. Life blows up for them.

Many years of distance, resentment, fear and change later, the remaining friends return to the forest after a call from one of The Covenant – and all hell breaks loose. They may have changed but their destinies have been waiting, unchanged, for years.

Wendig has a way of building characters so beautifully and artfully that you not only are invested in them but feel as if you know them. His empathy for humans and their struggles is woven through this, and I’d wager that the man himself has been through some shizzle and has a few tales to tell. That lived experience puts flesh on bones.

The ease at which he dispenses dishes of horror, gives you glimpses of the gory and peels back layers of your worst nightmares at which to peep is genius and to my mind, puts him up there as the writer of the ages in this genre. He’s in a league of his own, but the effortlessness of the reading, the casual intelligence of it is a joy to behold.

This adventure – or misadventure – is beautiful, nostalgic, claustrophobic, sprawling, joyful, cunning, clever, horrible and a study of human nature and relationships all at once. It will stay with me for years to come in ways that The Talisman, Weaveworld, The agic Cottage, Christine and the like did – engrained within me and carried in my meat and guts. The bookscape will be missed and the story hangover is strong and makes it tough to start a new book.

I cannot recommend this The Staircase in the Woods enough. It’s an adventure you need to join, peeking through your fingers as you do, dreading each step and where it may lead you. Top marks, Mr Wendig – you’re a joy to read.

Thank you for letting me read this ARC.

Fantastic concept and I like Wendig's writing. I also love the child/ adult divide in storytelling and enjoy how different authors tackle it - horror being the perfect backdrop. Still there was a discinnect for me here and I think it was that I just didn't gel with the characters. Overall a great read but not my favourite of the author's works.

Since Chuck Wendig appeared on the horror scene, well over a decade ago, he has been incredibly prolific writing some terrific novels, novellas, contributed to big franchises such as Star Wars, edited anthologies, dabbled in children’s books and had a collection published. His recent fiction has been of a particularly high standard, Wanderers (2019) and The Book of Accidents (2021) are my favourites, with others such as Wayward (2022) and Black River Orchard (2023) also picking up a lot of praise.

Many of his novels from the last few years have been blessed with great hooks to such readers in, with Wanderers being a fine example, and his latest The Staircase in the Woods pulls the same trick. The concept is an intriguing one: a group of friends find a strange staircase in an isolated forest leading to who knows where and one of the group climbs it. The plot relies heavily, perhaps too heavily, on the well-used trope of adults returning to the location of a traumatic teenage incident to right a wrong. We have seen this storyline a thousand times and although The Staircase in the Woods is a solid enough read it brings nothing new to the party and is held back by a group of generally unlikable characters, none of which had me rooting for them.

The story moves between the narratives told twenty years apart and examines how the traumatic experience of Matty walking up the stairs never to be seen again has impacted their lives over the next couple of decades until Nick brings them all together again under false pretences of a reunion, when really he continues to feed him obsession to find Matty. To say anything much of what goes on in the adult section of the novel heads into spoiler territory, I knew little of it when I read the book, and Wendig throws plenty of surprises and curveballs with a story which is littered with clever concepts.

Even if I did not care too much for the characters he definitely had me on the hook for what the big reveals might me. This was one of those books where it would be easy for the ending to be disappointing, mainly because it was a tricky novel to finish, but I did find the manner in which things were brought together to be satisfying blending in elements of psychological thriller with horror and most certainly putting the characters through the ringer and different versions of personal hell. However, these adult sequences did become repetitive, the bickering annoying and their resentments annoying. On more than one occasion I did dream of a couple of them being bumped off (which was entirely possible) in a highly creative kill sequence. I might even have cheered.

In contrast, the sequences grounded in their teen reality were both strong and on occasion touching. Imagine having to return home and not be able to tell the truth about what happened to one of your best friends. To be ostracised by the whole town, as they were certain the four returnees had something to do with the disappearance. There was a particularly powerful scene a year after the incident where Matty’s family bury an empty coffin and all eyes are on the four friends who are bonded together by a friendship covenant, until the cracks begin to appear.

As adults, they’re scarred and impacted in different ways. Owen, trapped by trauma and OCD, works dead end jobs and is disconnected from everybody. Lor, is a successful game designer who sees to be angry with everybody, still carries guilt for betraying Owen years ago over an idea they jointly came up with but she used in her breakout game. Hamish, who has drastically transformed, now lives a normal, suburban life with kids but endlessly cheats on his wife. Meanwhile, Nick remains unchanged and will do anything to find Matty but needs help from his oldest friends.

Even if The Staircase in the Woods treads very familiar ground Chuck Wendig does a good job of putting a fresh coat of paint onto an intriguing psychological horror novel. 400 pages was probably too long a time to spend with characters who did nothing but bitch to each other, but it is still worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of his other fiction.

So, I’ve been a huge fan of Chuck Wendig’s for many years, and I may now be at a point where just his voice on the page means I’m just primed to enjoy what he writes. And so it was here, where I really enjoyed and stuck with this story, even though nothing and no one here is likeable.

Four friends reunite despite profound estrangement to relive and regret the supernatural disappearance of a fifth friend in their youth. As young adults, the five were a classic found family, extreme outsiders who found refuge from home and community in their little clique. But Matty, who would end up disappearing, was never a real fit with the others. Intelligent, popular, handsome and accomplished in every way, he was hiding from expectations, while the others lived lives where those were few and far between. His presence ends up being a crack in what would otherwise be a common bond of dysfunction, and it is into this crack that the horror elements flow, exposing the myth of found family as some unshakeable fix for the struggles we have with the wider social world. When his disappearance up a set of stairs in the woods finally destroys this fragile family, it proves to be only the beginning of how these people will go on to hurt each other in the name of found family.

The supernatural elements of the book are very chaotic, and the villainous entity they’re up against is really a kind of haphazard collection of threats and consequences. What’s far more interesting is the counter-IT (as in the Stephen King classic) theme going on here, where the bonds of youth are not the essential strengths we hold them up to be, and the traumas we think can be cured by the company of like-minded, similarly abused souls are only amplified by misery’s preferred company. Here, damaged people damage people and that remains the message from opening to ending. It subverts the trope, brings a greater and more personal edge to the horror and elevates what is otherwise another haunted house story to one where the living haunt the living and not the dead.

It’s hard to like, but compelling to read and I would definitely recommend it.

“It’s where home stops being where the heart is. Home is where the hurt is. Where the horror lives.”

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC! I think this might just be my book of the year. I have been FASCINATED by the staircase in the woods phenomenon ever since I got lost one dark night in a Reddit thread from a park ranger in America telling his stories of what he’s found in the heart of the woods. So when I saw this book, and from an author I already knew and loved, I knew that I HAD to read it!

This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. The plot was fast paced with a good mix of back story and enough going on to keep the story going. I didn’t want to put it down. Chuck Wendig has a talent for reaching into the darkest corners of humanity and airing their secrets for all to see and that’s definitely the case again here. The horror in this book stems from the evil in the actual world, which is scarier than any ghost or zombie story.

I also really appreciated the nod to The Book of Accidents with the mention of the boulder fields of Ramble Rocks Quarry. I just want more! What happened next? Are there more stairs to be found? The evidence of a good book is that I would happily read on. Definitely 5*, read this!

I have given this book a one star because this book was not for me
I thought I would as I don't have a favourite genre yet so I thought I would give this book ago
Maybe someone else would like it though

Omg this was brilliant, I had a feeling I would enjoy this but wow!

This book has creepy, intense and traumatic vibes, it tackles heavy topics very well and the friendship is something to be admired during this ordeal.

Literally couldn’t fault it except the ending because how could you leave me hanging like that? Book 2 immediately please!

This was the first book I have read by Chuck Wendig and the writing style is so detailed and atmospheric. The idea of the staircase in the woods was something I haven’t heard of before so I was excited to read the book. However I really struggled with the pacing of the book. There was a lot of dialogue that I felt was unnecessary and some of the flashbacks threw me off the story. There was also the use of slurs/insensitive language throughout which is something I find quite hard to read. My rating is based upon the concept of the staircase/haunted house and the detail within the imagery.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a deeply cool concept that felt fresh and inventive. For the first time in a long time book-wise, I found myself trying to figure out the mystery alongside our unlikeable but complex characters.

Ultimately, I thought it was a bit too easily resolved. The build-up was repetitious and slower paced but the ending felt breakneck and rushed.

The writing is up to Wendig’s usual good standard (although with an abundance of insensitive language choices. Surely there are other ways of illustrating a character is a shitty person without stooping to slurs).

This story was much grislier horror than I remember Wendig’s previous books being. It has some truly terrifying imagery. There were also a lot of stomach-churning gruesome and gory descriptions, YMMV depending on how you feel about that!