Elizabeth is going through a parent's worst nightmare. Her telephone rings in the middle of the night to alert her to the fact that her 13 year old son, Tommy, is missing. He had gone to spend the night with two of his friends, Joshua and Luis. They had apparently decided to go to their favorite hangout spot, a place they call Devil's Rock. At one point, Tommy had left the two of them and gone off chasing something in the woods. He never came out again.

Having been a single mother to Tommy and his 11 year old sister, Kate, for years, Elizabeth has only her own mother Janice as a support system, which is a good thing because Elizabeth is practically nonfunctional at first. She wants and needs answers but, at this point; there are no clues as to why Tommy fled into the woods or what happened to him once he vanished.

What she does find out is that she probably did not know her son as well as she thought she did. Joshua and Luis offer very little information although they do tell the police as well as Elizabeth about a new friend they had made. He was older than the boys, probably in his 20's, and he had seemed to have made the strongest connection with Tommy.

As the search for Tommy continues, Elizabeth is experiencing some strange phenomena at her house in the form of pages ripped from Tommy's diary. They seem to just appear in the middle of the living room floor during the night. Not only that, but she is positive that she sees a ghostly image of Tommy huddled in her room one night.

While Elizabeth slowly loses her mind with worry and terror, the police continue to search for Tommy along with questioning his two friends who were there the night he disappeared. The situation grows more serious with each passing day. What happened to Tommy? Can he be found, and if so, will he be safe?

DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK is packed full of mysteries that will draw you into the book itself to try helping with the resolution. It was all I could do not to skip ahead to the end because not knowing what was going on was making me a little crazy. In addition, author Paul Tremblay perfectly captures the emotions and voices of each character involved. His gift as a wordsmith creates suspense that you can literally feel in your body as it tenses up with each new event.

The questions are many. What has happened to Tommy? Is it one of those horrific kidnappings that are heard of every day? Is it something supernatural? Maybe it is both of these things meshed together. Nothing will prepare you for the truth but, in this case, that is actually a good thing because DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK is a book unlike any other that you may read in the future. It is a treat for all of your senses. Do not deprive yourself of this experience.

Book Summary

A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror 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. Now, Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale sure to unsettle readers.

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 local park.

The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no 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 a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock.

Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journal 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; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them.

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