Reviewed by Emily A. Patton
I’ve read many of the online reviews of this book, and I tend to disagree with most of their glowing accolades. While I enjoyed the book—I read it in about a week—I did not find it scary or horrific, as did some readers. For me, it falls more into the crime fiction genre than horror fiction. It involves the disappearance of a 13-year-old boy and the trauma suffered by his single mom and sister, which I know can be particularly disturbing to some readers.
Tommy and two friends go one night to Borderland Park, which is close to their homes. Only the friends come out. What happened to Tommy is the big question of the tale. His mother, Elizabeth, is desperate to find her son, and she sees an apparition of him in her house. Later, she finds pages torn from his diary and dropped on the living room floor. Tommy’s sister, Kate, sees a figure in her bedroom window during the night. Although these are spooky events, they did not particularly frighten me. I may be jaded, but truly, little horror fiction frightens me anymore. Maybe I’m just old and have heard it all before. Ha!
Anyway, Tommy and his friends were fascinated with zombies and Minecraft. Tremblay’s portrayal of the boys is realistic, and their dialogue and behaviors are spot-on. Tremblay clearly understands boys. It was nice to read an author who knows how to write children’s characters.
The police and their parents question Tommy’s friends, but they only reveal a little at a time. They are hiding secrets, things they are afraid to tell for fear of getting into trouble. The ending becomes predictable when they finally reveal that an adult male has been hanging out with them. Still, there are some surprises along the way, including one particularly violent scene. The violence seems to come out of nowhere, as though the plot needed a death scene to create a feeling of dread in the reader. The revelation of what happened comes through police transcripts of interviews. There’s no dramatic climax. Instead, it’s only a sad ending.
Still, it’s a good, easy read. Tremblay is an excellent writer. He writes fully developed, interesting characters. He’s skilled at revealing what happened a little bit at a time, which keeps the reader involved in the story. I think I’ve become a hard-to-scare reader. Let me know if you have suggestions on what I should read that’s frightening. The last book I read that scared me was Furnace by Muriel Gray, published in 1997, but I didn’t read it until 2018.
I give Disappearance a two on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not at all scary, and 5 is sleeping with the lights on frightening.