101 Horror Books: The Book of Accidents – Review and Plot Summary

Earlier this week I posted that I’d be reviewing 101 books from Sadie Hartmann’s 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered.Let’s Read 101 Horror Books To Read Before You’re MURDERED! – I’m working on snagging all of them and plan to go through each section one at a time. This first book, The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig, is under Paranormal – Haunted Houses.

First Impressions and Review

The Book of Accidents is about Nate, Maddie, and their teenage son, Oliver. It begins with the family moving into Nate’s childhood home, right after his abusive father’s passing. Almost immediately the family experiences strange phenomenons. Nate sees his dead father, Maggie, blacks out while carving an owl out of wood only to wake and find it gone and Oliver, deeply empathetic by nature, meets a new friend who clearly isn’t what he seems. We read from each character’s perspective, bounce back and forth through time and space, and try to piece together the mystery of what is happening to the family.

Hartmann uses icons to designate what a reader can expect in each book. (She also lists tone, style, setting, and themes in addition to a fantastic overview. I can’t recommend 101 Horror Books enough.) The Book of Accidents gets 3 icons. Small Town Horror. Check. Mind Bender. Several Checks. And Haunted House. Ehhh… I don’t think the house is haunted. Overall, I really liked The Book of Accidents. It was twisty as hell. I never knew what was happening and was desperate to put it together. It read more like a paranormal, sci-fi, crime novel to me than a horror book, but it was a fun ride none the less. And I’ve never read anything like it. A solid 4 stars. And yes, I did care about the family. I really, really, REALLY, wanted everything to work out for them.

Next up in the Paranormal – Haunted House section is Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey. Now SPOILERS AHEAD. So dip out if you don’t want to read any.

I’ll wait…

Are they gone? Great. 0

Plot Summary – All the Spoilers

The book opens with the execution of Edmund Walker Reese, a serial killer convicted of killing 4 young girls and caught as the 5th escaped. He’s also obsessed with numerology. Three names and weird interests. Standard serial killer fare. It’s 1990, and he is about to be the last person executed in the state of Pennsylvania by electric chair. Just as the guard hits the switch, a bolt of lightning hits old Eddie and he disappears in a cloud of ash. Confused? Me too.

Back in modern day, we meet Oliver. A sensitive teenager who can sense everyone’s pain. Must be overwhelming. My own stress is frankly enough. They have a lockdown drill at school and he’s pretty traumatized, imagining his classmates murdered. He has an accident and is humiliated. When he finds out that his father, Nate, is offered the opportunity to buy his childhood home. Oliver is all for it. He wants to get out of the city and away from his current school. Nate is very hesitant. Nate’s childhood was full of abuse at the hands of his father. I can’t imagine his childhood home holds anything but trauma.

Nate walks into his new home and greets…the corpse of his father. Yep. The one condition he had for moving in was that he saw his father’s dead body first. I’m telling you, all the trauma. We also find out the house is adjacent to these especially evil rocks, Ramble Rocks. (See, this is what is really haunted, not the house. Or maybe not haunted but just evil.) Even the animals don’t go in the tunnel with the rocks because if they do, they die. Now ignore that for a bit.

The family moves in and attempts to settle into the house. Nate sees his father in the corner of the room. Great, it comes with houseguests. Oliver sets up his bedroom in the attic. And Maggie, who is an artist, starts planning her workspace. Overall, the group is feeling a little off. Nate is especially out of sorts because he never should have moved back to the trauma house. That’s just good, sane advice.

Nate has taken a job with the Fish and Game commission and I imagine it will be good to get out of the house. He partners up with my personal favorite character, Fig. Fig hassles him a bit but shows him the ropes and they make a good team. Plus, Fig is a good guy. Oliver meets a group of kids at school who play D&D, excellent choice, and is starting to make some friends when a bunch of stereotypical bully type butt in and make problems. Probably just jealous they weren’t asked to join. Or something about being baseball jocks who are gods at the school. Now I’m from PA and can tell you that it is not baseball. I guess this is more middle PA than me, but hell no, it isn’t baseball if you slink closer to Pittsburgh. (I love baseball but, like, sigh.) Anyway, everyone fights and Oliver ends up in the office on day one. But he made some friends.

Maggie’s at home trying out her new chainsaw for making wood based art. She’s a free spirit type when it comes to her art. Letting the art dictate what it will be. It chooses to be an owl. And it chooses not to be seen. Maggie blacks out, active chainsaw IN HAND, finishes the owl presumably, and wakes up hours later. Chainsaw thankfully still in her hand and unbloodied and the owl gone. She remarks that this has happened before. This sounds like a medical condition she should get looked at. Especially if she is going to be wielding CHAINSAWS. Instead, she tells no one.

Nate has a weird dream about killing Oliver. Therapy. He wanders outside, as one does, and sees some bee person. Chases them, and instead meets his neighbor Jed. Jed is chill and very open with his liquor. They have a nice conversation where Jed reveals he is a writer and a bit of an expert on the paranormal happenings in the area. Ah, we have met our lore dump character. Gotta have one and I like Jed. (Ugh.)

Oliver is biking home from school when the bullies fully try to run him over with a truck. He’s still alive,so they get out and beat him up, then try to drown him. God, what is up with bullies? Murder? He’s saved when a kid named Jake shoots them a bunch of times with a pellet gun. I’m instantly suspicious, but Oliver is ready to be besties. Maybe I’m jaded.

Jake has dinner with the fam and is instantly an asshole. He grew up with an abusive father like Nate did, so right at this first meeting, he accuses Nate of being abusive. It’s odd. Right out the gate. I’d think you’d try to get to know at least Oliver a little first, but not Jake. Strange kid. Made stranger when we see him walking home, conjuring books out of thin air and talking to them. I knew it! He talks a bit about how this 99th Oliver is different. What? 99th? I’m feeling multiverse vibes. And dead Olivers.

Maggie makes a little art creation that turns itself into the face of the serial killer from the beginning, Edmund! It all connects! Now that’s strange, but when it tries to kill her, that’s stranger. She, for reasons I don’t fully understand, decides that going to one of those float places will help her understand why her art tried to kill her. I don’t know that dissociating will be helpfu,l but I’m not a medical professional. And turns out it helps her remember why she knew that dude’s face. But it also leads to her screaming her ass off in the chamber and probably really terrifying the spa workers. Maggie decides she needs to take a quick day trip to really solidify these memories. We do not get any additional information at this time.

We get a little interlude into The Book of Accidents. It’s a logbook of every accident that occurred at the Ramble Rocks coal mine. Ramble Rocks is not a coal mine. Hmmmmmm. More multiverse vibes.

Nate and Maggie throw the most insane Halloween party. All their friends come and it’s going fine until the storm of the century appears. Nate sees his father again, holding a gun in his non-dominant hand, and this time the spector actually walks up to him and smacks him across the face with the weapon. He’s really injured. Jed sees this and worldviews are being expanded tonight. Meanwhile, Oliver is in the garage with his school friends and Jake, who can’t help but be a dick. He magically pulls out the gun he used to save Oliver earlier, and when he won’t stop waving it around, the school friends leave. This kid. I see your game. He takes Oliver into the woods to show him some magic. It’s comprised of showing him flashes of Olivers from some void he conjured out of thin air. Mostly bad things. Oliver isn’t into it. Thankfully, his mother noticed he was missing and Jake runs away as soon as he hears her calling.

Fig and Nate are called into the office where someone has broken in. They find a girl with numbers carved into her cheeks. This is what Edmund did to his victims…but isn’t he dead… They try to get her help but in a flash of lightning Edmund appears, slashes Nate with a knife and whisks the girl away. He doesn’t get to finish Nate off because an owl (a carved owl???) busts in and saves the day. I have no idea what they plan to say happened here because it is going to look bad.

Maggie and Nate are now going to talk about Maggie’s day trip. Yay. I was annoyed we didn’t know what happened. Turns out Maggie has been making living art for a long time. When her dad was on the police force hunting our favorite serial killer, she was worried about victim 5 after the kidnapping. Edmund always kept them for a few days. He needed the right number of stars or something. Although, Eddie, the number of stars doesn’t change like that. So baby Maggie made a little box guy to save the girl. The little box guy comes alive and stabs Edmund, allowing victim number 5 to escape. She doesn’t know how she found the place, but a freaky bearded man helped her. So. Many. Questions.

Oh, now they have sexy times. Ewe. After that talk? Stephen King really popularized these awkward sex chapters.

Oliver goes to Jake’s house to get some clarity on the magic stuff. Cause he’s all the way jacked up after the thunderstorm in the woods magic show and tell. Jake confirms the multiverse theory that we all probably had by now. He shows him his magic book, which just so happens to be The Book of Accidents! He tells Oliver the world is garbage and is ending, but they can fix it. No real details, which I would probably need before diving into some spooky magic stuff. And once again assumes Nate is abusing Oliver, which really pisses Oliver off. Ultimately, Oliver walks out. And damn, the book is mad about that. Cause it’s a demon. And it needs Jake to win over Oliver 99 for probably nefarious purposes.

Nate and Jed meet up to go check out the Ramble Rocks and see if that helps them understand all the paranormal happenings. When they bust through all the weeds, Nate sees a large table like rock, and recognizes it from the dream he had where he killed Oliver. Bad omens abound. This is where we walk out. Jed’s acting shady and sad. Nate doesn’t seem to be suspicious, but I am. Jed pushes Nate to walk into the death tunnel but doesn’t follow himself because of course this is a betrayal moment. He’s in on everything with Jake and they are getting rid of Nate so that they can break Oliver down. This universe’s Nate has his shit together and they cannot have him interfering with their plans. They don’t kill him, though. They just boot him to another universe. Seems like killing him would be easier. They could throw the body into another universe. Forget about Nate for now. Small Note: Jed agreed to help Jake because he convinced him he could bring his long-dead wife and daughter back. A wife and daughter Jed killed while drunk driving. No one in this book is okay. And I feel like Jake is lying.

Jake was once an OLIVER! Yep. He is just a different universe Oliver with a crappy Nate dad. So he can be slightly forgiven for his behavior toward Nate the first night. He cannot be forgiven for whatever demony crap he is involved in. Or for killing like 97 Olivers so far. How do you kill yourself over and over? Like befriend and then kill yourself? This is some intense self hatred and once again I say therapy. Let’s just all go to therapy. But now he has an in with our Oliver. Oliver comes to Jake, asking if the magic might help bring his father back. Of course he says yes. NOOOOO OLIVER!

Maggie and Fig are investigating Nate’s disappearance. They think Jed is sus. And he is. But they need something to confirm it before anyone else will agree. They trace through the forest, looking for clues. Maggie’s owl creation is on the case and leads her to some footprints showing that Jed and Nate were together, headed toward the Ramble Rocks. This contradicts what Jed told officers. Time to bring him in. They go to Jed’s house but yea, he’s gone. Maggie, ever the detectiv,e finds a number he last called and gets to work tracking him down. When she finds him, he is trying to hang himself, but she cannot let him do that. At least until he gives him some information. She finds out that Jake is the real evil mastermind and intends to sacrifice Oliver on the table. Because it’s really an alter.

Oliver and Jake head out to the Ramble Rocks and specifically to the table rock. Oliver touches it and sees his dad sacrificed on the rock. This is too much, and he leaves with a clearly angry Jake left behind. He stalks after Oliver. But as Oliver heads home, the bully from earlier stops him, itching for a fight. Oliver can feel his pain. Today Oliver decides to do something about it. He reaches inside him and pulls out his pain. The bully feels lighter. Less stressed. All the terrible things in his life (yep another abused kid) are easier to manage. So Oliver has magic powers. Apparently all Olivers have magic powers but each one is different. The following morning, we find out that the bully killed his father and then himself. Oliver is distraught. Worried that he caused this.

When we see Nate again, he is at the Ramble Rocks. But not his ramble rocks. This time it’s an amusement park. Huh? He also finds an alternate of his own father. As a note, I really loved the closure Nate got with this alternate father. Something he couldn’t have gotten with his own. This world is the kind of all the other worlds. All 98 have collapsed together into this one. With only number 99 remaining. Feels like in an infinite universe of multiverses, 99 aren’t a lot. But then again, 99 of me is too many. Nate works on a plan to use lightning to travel back to his world. This ties up a bunch of things from earlier in the book when he saw his dad. He was really seeing his dad from this universe travelling on the lightning. They aren’t too good at hitting what they are aiming for.

Oliver and Maggie are hiding out from Jake in a cabin. Worried that he will find a way to them and to bring about the end of the universes. They’ve been hiding for weeks and as we all learned during covid, everyone gets a little bit of cabin fever. Maggie is out at the store when Jake finally breaks through. He shows Oliver that he has kidnapped his friends and will torture them if Oliver doesn’t come back and sacrifice himself. I guess. But then they’d die, right? Like no more world? Ugh, I don’t know. It’s all very confusing. Obviously, Oliver heads over to save them. He leaves his mom a note, which is nice. She’ll be totally trapped here by the time she reads it by an epic snow storm. Is Jake’s power weather because it is very convenient for him several times.

Oliver gets Jed, yes that Jed, to drive him back to the Ramble Rocks. To make things easier for everyone he takes away Jed’s pain. This doesn’t get rid of it completely, but makes it more manageable. There’s an unhelpful police presence when they arrive because Maggie alerted Fig to Oliver’s extracurricular activities, but Jake had already gotten the Police chief on board with the whole world ending thing. So they just stab Fig and bring him along for the sacrifice. There’s a sort of chaotic fight scene between the Jake todies and Oliver and company that culminates in Oliver removing the demon from Jake the same way he removed pain from others. This works. With the demon outside of Jake it looks bad, but owls and Maggie burst in to save the day. I forgot to mention earlier, but Maggie can craft doors. Damn, that’s useful.

Jake ends up in jail…somehow? I guess they said he tried to kill people but without mentioning all the magic stuff. Maggie and Oliver have to live on without Nate, who hasn’t managed to find a way back. And all the universes uncollapsed. Nate ends up in one living the best he can and still looking to make it back home. In my cannon, he does.

Phew. Did you make it? This book was a breezy 549 pages. I left so many interesting details out. Because it was over 500 pages. Have you read it? Did you like it? Don’t forget to check out Just Like Home next week.