Click book cover to purchaseFrom the publisher:
The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts adds an inventive twist to the home invasion horror story in a heart-palpitating novel of psychological suspense that recalls Stephen King’s Misery, Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood, and Jack Ketchum’s cult hit The Girl Next Door.
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”
Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.
It seems to me that this story falls somewhere between thriller and horror. It’s suspenseful but not quite at the level of breathlessness I find with a Stephen King novel, but certainly more than most thrillers. The basic story of a home invasion where a young child is involved is pretty much every parent’s nightmare, and this one was well played.
It is a fast read at only 288 pages, and the suspense definitely helps keep the pages turning. I would have liked a bit more character development but for the most part, this is a good read. The terror feels real and so did the ending, and I can’t ask for more than that.
7/18 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Paul Tremblay. William Morrow (June 26, 2018). ISBN 978-0062679109. 288p.
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