Like a lot of readers, I’m sure, I have a list of go-to authors. These are writers whose new books always zoom to the top of my TBR pile, and whose backlists I’m continually exploring. For me, that means I know for a fact that I will, at a bare minimum, be entertained by what they write, and more likely I will treasure that book and my friends won’t be able to shut me up about it. These are writers who consistently hit triples, and usually hit home runs. Most importantly, writers who have somehow managed to burrow into my brainmeat and figure out exactly what it takes to make my reading pleasure center light up like a Christmas tree.

Chuck Wendig is one of those authors. The guy can write science fiction, dark supernatural thrillers, and post-apocalyptic fiction, all of it breathtakingly good.

With The Book of Accidents, Wendig takes his first stab at straight-up horror, and not surprisingly, he knocks it clean out of the park and into the parking lot.

The Book of Accidents is set in Pennsylvania coal country. Nate and Maddie Graves and their teenage son, Oliver, have moved into the old house where Nate grew up with his abusive father. They’re looking for a fresh start, but instead they find themselves sucked into an ancient battle between good and evil, one with consequences for not only their family, but maybe for the entire world. There’s a monstrous serial killer involved, one who planned to kill 99 little girls, and even more monstrous entities. There are other versions of earth in play, the walls between those realities grown porous. There are other versions of Nate and Maddie and Oliver, as well.

Wendig is keeping a lot of balls in the air here, with a dozen major characters—in fact, multiple versions of some of those characters. And one of the things that makes this novel so special, that makes Wendig such a special writer, is that each of those characters feel real, with lived-in, authentic lives. The Graves family, in particular, is beautifully written. Each of them has something special about them, something supernatural, but those things make them more human, not less. They’ve all experienced devastating trauma, even before the events of the novel, and that trauma also rings with authenticity. Despite everything they’ve been through, and everything they’re going through, this is a family united by love, against all considerable odds.

That realness extends to all the other characters. Most are flawed to greater or lesser extent, and some manage to be heroic despite those flaws. The villains, and make no mistake there is some true, harrowing evil in this book, are never cardboard cutouts. They have backstories, and past trauma of their own. I think that’s one of the themes of The Book of Accidents—that evil creates more evil, and trauma creates more trauma, and it takes effort and heart and love to break that cycle. Love, particularly the familial kind, can be every bit as powerful as evil.

The opening chapters of The Book of Accidents introduce several different story threads, and in lesser hands those threads could have easily tangled. Luckily, Wendig is a master weaver. By the closing moments of the novel, all those threads have been woven together into a tight, cohesive whole. This novel is terrifying and heartbreaking in equal measure, but there is also reason for hope.

One last thing I’d like to talk about here is pacing. Now go with me here—did you ever notice how as the movie Goodfellas hurtles towards the ending, Scorsese changes the pacing. The scenes are shorter, faster, relentless, never allowing the viewer to catch their breath. Wendig does something similar here. Toward the end of the novel, the chapters are shorter. The pacing, always clipping along nicely, speeds up like a runaway mine car, moving at breakneck speed, inexorable. Wendig torques the tension up to an unimaginable degree.

Okay, one last, last thing. Wendig sprinkles Easter eggs, little callouts to various movies, books, and authors, throughout the novel. Paul Tremblay, another go-to author of mine, gets a couple.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones was my favorite horror novel of 2020. My guess is that, when I’m doing this year’s best-of list, The Book of Accidents will occupy that perch for 2021.

The Book of Accidents is available for preorder now, and releases July 20, 2021. Do not miss this one.