The bond that this family has, the love and the trust that they share, make the story even scarier for me. The heart of this story is the family unit of Nate, Maddie, and Oliver. The story is full of slow-building tension, from moments of disgust and unease leading all the way up to wildly gruesome episodes of violence. This book is about family and those we choose to bring into our family, about the evils of the world, second chances to right wrongs, and the lengths we will go to be with and protect the ones we love. This book is so much more than a haunted house book. In the earlier chapters of the book when Nate saw the apparition of his dead father, I thought this would be a book about a haunted house. This book is not what I expected it to be when I initially began to read it. The longer the family lives in Nate’s childhood home, the stranger the world around them becomes. Oliver makes new friends, one of whom is obsessed with exposing him to dark magic that is contained in a logbook of accidents from an abandoned mine. Maddie loses consciousness and all sense of time while working on her art. Animals in the area exhibit odd behavior and show physical malformations. Immediately after moving into the house, Nate begins to see visions of his dead father and a long-dead serial killer that used to kill his victims near the Graves’ home. Not wanting to live in a house full of bad memories, Nate wants to sell the house and move on with his life however, Nate’s wife Maddie convinces him to uproot their lives in Philadelphia and move to his childhood home hoping that it will bring the family closer together and give their son Oliver a fresh start. Nate Graves’ estranged abusive father wants to leave Nate’s childhood home to him when he dies. This happens without any additional cost to you.

If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. TW: graphic animal death, graphic animal abuse, parent/child abuse, mentions of sexual abuse, mentions of spousal abuse, homophobic terms, murder, gore, descriptions of child death/murderĭisclaimer: This article contains affiliate links.

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig