THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS 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 Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
Published by Del Rey on April 29 2025
Genres: Adult, Horror, Mystery
Pages: 400
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A most unusual haunted house story, The Staircase in the Woods is an unhinged, psychological mystery that explores personal terrors and complicated friendships.

“We’re all just empty houses waiting for this monster to move in and take us over.”

Chuck Wendig’s latest is a creepy, unsettling haunted house/possession story with multifaceted characters and lots of tension and mystery. It’s also a fairly short book compared to Wendig’s usual page count, and I actually liked this leaner, more focused story. The Staircase in the Woods, about four friends who find themselves trapped in an impossible house, is a claustrophobic mystery that will mess with your mind. 

The story follows five high school best friends—Owen, Lore, Matty, Hamish and Nick—who decide to go camping in the woods the summer before their senior year in high school. Near their campsite, they inexplicably see a circular staircase in the middle of the woods that isn’t attached to anything. Fueled by alcohol and drugs, Matty decides to venture up the stairs while the others watch below. But when he gets to the top, he steps off the last step and literally disappears. The others frantically try to find him, but Matty is gone.

Now, decades later, Owen, Lore and Hamish get an email from Nick, imploring them to fly to New Hampshire for a reunion of sorts. Nick claims he’s dying of pancreatic cancer and wants to see his friends one last time. But Nick actually has a secret agenda. He wants to invoke the Covenant, an old promise among the friends to help each other no matter what, because Nick thinks Matty is still alive and wants to go looking for him.

Out of a sense of guilt for not looking harder for Matty when he first disappeared, the others agree. But what Nick has in store is something none of them could have imagined, and the experience will bring back the past in some horrifying ways.

This is a story that can be easily spoiled if I tell you too much about the plot, so I’ll try to keep things vague and focus instead on various story elements. I mentioned it’s a haunted house story, and yes, the four friends end up inside a house, but that’s where I’ll stop. Aside from the terrifying things they see in this house, Wendig’s strength lies in his ability to convey real emotion through his characters. Lore, Hamish, Nick and Owen are fully developed, three dimensional characters with traumatic backstories, successes, failures and plenty of emotional baggage. Owen has severe OCD and has always been afraid to try anything new. Lore is a successful game designer who is struggling in a field that isn’t very welcoming to female designers. Hamish was bullied in high school for his appearance, and so he changed all that as an adult, becoming obsessed with losing weight. Nick, who appears to be happy and well adjusted, is hiding a terrible secret from his childhood. Matty’s disappearance shattered their friendships, and reuniting as adults is uncomfortable to say the least.

Wendig also brilliantly explores the idea of “houses” and “homes,” what they stand for, how they change, and how they are affected by the people who live, love and even hate inside them. Part of the story hinges on the psychological terrors of moving through various rooms in a house and seeing parts of your past coming back to haunt you. I loved the way each character must face their past and come to grips with how it has affected them in the present.

But if you’re here for the horror, you won’t be disappointed. The scenes inside the house are at times upsetting. The author touches on some possibly triggering events like suicide, murder and child abuse, but to be honest, it’s more psychological terror than anything else. As the characters make their way through the house, the mystery as to what it is and why they’re there deepens, and it was fun to watch each character come up with different theories about what was happening to them.

I did have a couple of issues, though, which is why I didn’t rate this book higher. First, the middle section of the story becomes a bit repetitive, with the seemingly endless wandering through the house and the smorgasbord of different horrors laid out, one after the other. It actually became a little tedious, and I was eager for something different to happen.

My other issue is one I’ve mentioned in other reviews, and every time I see it it annoys me a little bit more. And it has to do with using fiction to go off on a rant about politics. I get it: the world is a mess right now. Politics have gone to hell, the economy is tanking, human rights are being taken away right and left. But honestly, it’s enough to deal with all that in real life. I don’t want to read about it my fiction. Wendig goes on several rants, as his characters on opposite sides of the issues have it out with each other. Not only was it unpleasant to read, but the actual dialog felt forced. For example, Lore is a very angry woman who is extremely defensive about her chosen lifestyle (pansexual) and her career choice (game design), and she’s going to tell everyone how she feels. Instead of sounding like natural dialog, I could hear the author’s voice inserting himself into the conversation and it simply felt fake.

That being said, I have to assure you that these “rants” are a very small part of the overall story and shouldn’t stop you from picking up this book. Chuck Wendig is a talented and imaginative author, and his passion for storytelling comes through loud and clear. After reading The Staircase in the Woods, you may be temped to seek out one of these mysterious staircases yourself. But if you do find one (and I googled it, it’s a real thing!), please don’t climb it. That would be a very, very bad idea.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.