#103 in Horror
The Book of Accidents
- 540
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
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Our view
Behind the horror of “The Book of Accidents” stands a serious look at abuse and how it repeats in families. A family returns to a home town and to a past the parents have kept to themselves. Some readers find it closer to a fantasy thriller than to the haunted-house horror they expected, and others think it far too long and heavy on dialogue. The balance of build-up and action wins praise from some.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A family returns to their hometown—and to the dark past that haunts them still—in this masterpiece of literary horror by the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers “The dread, the scope, the pacing, the turns—I haven’t felt all this so intensely since The Shining.”—Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic. This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 146 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 50% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 146 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Book of Accidents?
It has 540 pages — longer than 79% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Horror — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
