THE BOOK OF ACCIDENTS by Chuck Wendig – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
Published by Del Rey on July 20 2021
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 544
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A dark, twisty tale full of surprising connections, unexpected horrors and nuanced characters, The Book of Accidents is a must read.

Just as the trees loomed over the house, the house seemed to loom over Nate. He had a vertiginous moment where it felt like the red front door would whip open and the house would lean forward and the doorway would become a mouth. Gobbling him up and swallowing him down. This was a house of foul breath and bad dreams.

Don’t let the creepy house on the cover fool you. The Book of Accidents is not a haunted house story, although there are ghosts and hauntings, but perhaps not the ones you might expect. This is a fairly complex, twisty tale with a lot going on, and I’ll admit I was completely lost for the first half of the book—but lost in a good way, if you know what I mean. I could barely tear my eyes away from the page, I was so desperate to figure out what was going on, and the pages flew by despite the book’s length. It reminded me a bit of Stephen King, especially the intricate construction and the well drawn characters, so King fans take note.

The story revolves around the Graves family: Nate, who has just moved his family to the countryside after his late father left him his childhood house; Maddie, an artist and sculptor; and Oliver, a sensitive fifteen year old who has an unusual ability—he can “see” a person’s pain and feels extreme empathy. At first the new house is a nice change of pace. Nate has left his high stress job as a police officer and now works for the Fish & Game Department, Oliver has a chance to start over at a new school, and Maddie feels she finally has the space to be creative.

But soon after they move into the house, strange things start to happen. Nate swears he sees his dead father standing in the corner of a room, even though the man doesn’t look exactly like Carl Graves. Oliver finds a dead squirrel in his new attic bedroom surrounded by a circle of ants. And Maddie has the sudden urge to buy a chainsaw in order to carve something out of wood, but she passes out while carving an owl, and when she wakes up, the owl is gone.

Even more unsettling is nearby Rambling Rocks, an area steeped in urban legend with an abandoned tunnel at the center of it. The story goes that reality is “thin” in the tunnel and that people have entered it and never returned. The site is also said to be where notorious serial killer Edmund Walker Reese killed his four young victims before he was caught and sent to the electric chair.

When a mysterious boy named Jake saves Oliver from some school bullies, things get really strange. Oliver is drawn to Jake, although he doesn’t understand why. And when Jake shows him an old book called the Book of Accidents, Oliver and his parents are thrust into an otherworldly nightmare where reality is fragile and the horrors of the past seem to have come back to haunt them.

As I mentioned before, The Book of Accidents is full of mysteries in the first half of the story, but when all of Wendig’s carefully constructed pieces start to come together in the second half, prepare for your mind to be blown! I’m not sure how he did it, but there are so many cool connections between the characters and events that I wasn’t expecting, which made for a thrilling read. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so I’m not going to talk much more about the plot, but trust me, the story is bonkers. Chuck could have called it The Book of Connections and that would have worked too!

Wendig is so good at creating believable, down to earth characters that worm their way into your heart. First, there’s the Graves family who are good people trying to do good things, but they’re all struggling in various ways. Nate was horribly abused by his father as a child, and when he finds out Carl Graves is dying of cancer, he’s happy and relieved. Of course, he knows that abused children often grow up into abusers themselves, but Nate has vowed never to be like his father—and he’s succeeded. Oliver deals with bullies at school and one boy in particular, the star of the school baseball team, Graham Lyons. There is a wonderful story arc involving Oliver and Graham that I can’t tell you about, but it seriously gave me chills! Oliver also struggles to make friends, and I loved that he was able to find his tribe at his new school, a group of D&D players who welcomed him into the group. Maddie is a great mom and wife, but she has some weird things in her past that she’s trying to come to terms with, and this drives a wedge between her and Nate at one point. I loved her passion for art, although she has some seriously creepy experiences with some of her sculptures.

There are some fantastic side characters as well: Axel “Fig” Figueroa is Nate’s Fish & Game coworker, and although their relationship starts out a bit rocky, Fig turned out to be one of my favorite characters. There’s Jed Homackie, a true crime writer who lives near the Graves family and who just happened to write a book about Edmund Walker Reese (there’s one of those odd connections). Jed has a terrible past as well and he and Nate bond over that. Then there’s Jake, the weird boy who seems to know an awful lot about Oliver and is determined to use him for his nefarious plans. Even Reese, the serial killer who died in the electric chair, is a character in the story, although I won’t elaborate on just how big a part he plays.

The Book of Accidents is pretty dark—there are lots of horrific elements that come into play, and abuse is a big one. Nate was abused as a child, as was his mother; Graham is also being abused and bullied by his father, and there are other mentions of abuse as well. Most of it is off page, but still, it doesn’t make it any less awful. What I did like about the way Wendig handled it was that the characters are trying to heal and forgive. Nate has successfully broken the chain of abuse, and even though he hates his dead father, something happens later in the story that allows him to see their relationship in a different way. Add in some very dark supernatural elements and plenty of disturbing imagery and you have a nightmarish tale that will make horror fans very happy.

As for the pacing, it’s absolutely perfect. Wendig’s short, snappy chapters alternate among the various characters, and the way he slowly builds tension makes it almost impossible to put the book down. The final clash between good and evil was a nail-biter, and Wendig’s themes of hope and redemption brought everything full circle. I absolutely loved the ending—it gave me chills, which is the highest compliment I can give to an ending. Wendig fans won’t want to miss one of summer 2021’s best horror books.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

**You can preorder a signed copy of The Book of Accidents from these three independent bookstores:

Doylestown Bookshop

Let’s Play Books

Midtown Scholar