Month: August 2024

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

Ethan was a bit of a bland main protagonist. There was nothing inherently wrong with him and his character, he just didn’t really have much of a personality. Honestly most of the men in this book were bland and interchangeable. All of them sounded pretty much the same to me and even though it didn’t really affect the story that much it didn’t have me that invested in what could/might happen to Ethan or the rest of them.

I’ve seen a lot of rhetoric surrounding Riley Sager’s writing and this book as well and I guess I go in with pretty low expectations and a suspended disbelief already established so I can kind of just go along for the ride. Because throughout the course of this book I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen next. I don’t go into a Sager book looking to disect each character and their motivations, I literally just enjoy the story for what it is and this was pretty entertaining. Like I said I wasn’t on the edge of my seat the entire time but the dual timelines had me intrigued and the overall mystery was enough to keep my reading on!

⭐️3/5 stars I’ve read worse, this was just fine!