Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay - TLC Book Tour

• Hardcover: 336 pages

• Publisher: William Morrow (June 21, 2016)

A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts.

“A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare,” raved Stephen King about Paul Tremblay’s previous novel, which received widespread critical acclaim. Now Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale just as powerful and unsettling.

Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a nearby state park.

The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her eleven-year-old daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration. Neither the state nor local police have uncovered any leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out at a landmark they have renamed Devil’s Rock.

Living in an all-too-real nightmare, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a wraithlike apparition of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadowy figure peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journals begin to mysteriously appear—entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; the coming zombie “pocketclips”; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connected them all.

As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more ominous and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night at Devil’s Rock.

Tremblay deftly blends literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror into an absorbing tale that illuminates a parent’s darkest fears . . . and an adolescent’s darkest secrets. Eerie, thought-provoking, and soul-shattering, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock will haunt you long after Tommy’s final journal entry is read.

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About Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is a multiple Bram Stoker Award finalist and the author of the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. He has served as the president of the board of directors of the Shirley Jackson Awards, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and numerous year’s-best anthologies.

Find out more about Paul at his website, and connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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My Thoughts:

 Oh my goodness, I loved this book.  Again, I've never been a fan of this genre, choosing to stick to Historical or romance novels, but this one was so good I couldn't put it down.

This book may have just converted me to a suspense, paranormal, thriller fan.

The book touches on a parent's worst nightmare, the disappearance of one of your children.  The way that Paul Tremblay was able to convey those feelings through the words on the pages, is phenomenal.  You're left with such a sense of loss, as if this was your own child.

The story starts with Tommy going to a sleep over at one of his friend's house.  They decide to grab some beers and go out exploring the Borderland woods.  13 year old boys just being boys, curious, having fun right?  Until two of them return, but not Tommy.

From that moment on we are faced with a story filled with raw emotion, questions and moments of pure fear, anger and frustration.  What exactly happened to Tommy?  Why does it seem that his two friends who were with him at his time of disappearance, may not be telling the full story?  Were they involved, are they too scared to say what really went on?

We follow his mother and sister as they try to make sense of it all.  Throw in some supernatural happenings around them and this book had me turning the pages as fast as I could.

If you love suspense, psychological novels, you HAVE to read this one.  And I mean you HAVE to.  I'm actually passing it on to my sister in law who loves this genre as I'm sure she will enjoy it just as much as I did.