The Unknown by Riley Sager * * * *
The story takes place on an isolated island in Vermont, called New Avalon, where a film crew has arrived to make a movie about a mystery that occurred there exactly one hundred years earlier. Back then, five women were staying on the island. One morning, when supplies were brought over, all five women had vanished. Their clothes were found hanging from a tree, but the women themselves were nowhere to be found. What supposedly happened during their time on the island is known largely through a diary written by one of the women, Daisy, and that diary has now become the basis for the movie.
Our main character, Marin Keane, is a young actress still trying to establish herself in Hollywood, so getting a role in a movie directed by a famous filmmaker, Ronan Peters, feels like a major opportunity. Once the cast arrives on the island, they are encouraged to immerse themselves in the story. They wear the clothes their characters would have worn and begin living in a way that is supposed to help them understand the women they are portraying. It starts out as an acting exercise, but the atmosphere becomes increasingly unsettling. Then people begin disappearing, just as they did a century earlier.
That is about as far as I can go into the plot without spoiling the mystery, because The Unknown is one of those thrillers where knowing too much would take away a significant part of the fun. The central question is whether something supernatural is happening on the island or whether there is a perfectly human explanation for everything. Because this is fiction, both possibilities remain open. In real life, I would obviously be looking for the rational explanation. In a thriller, an ancient evil awakening on an isolated island is entirely possible, and Sager takes full advantage of that uncertainty.
At the same time, Marin is reading Daisy's diary and trying to use the events of the past to understand what is happening around her in the present. That creates two mysteries running alongside each other. What actually happened to the five women one hundred years ago, and is whatever happened to them beginning again? The diary gradually gives Marin more information, but it also raises more questions. Rather than simply providing answers, the past becomes another layer of the mystery.
Marin herself works particularly well as the protagonist because she is just as uncertain about the supernatural explanation as the reader is. She does not firmly belong to either camp. At different points, she can see reasons to believe that something impossible might be happening, but she can also see reasons to doubt it. The people around her reinforce that uncertainty. Some of them are more willing to believe in a supernatural explanation, while others insist that there must be something more rational going on. That means there is never one character standing there conveniently telling us what we are supposed to believe. Everyone is trying to make sense of increasingly strange circumstances with incomplete information.
The setting and atmosphere are also some of the book's strongest elements. An isolated island is already an excellent location for a mystery because once everyone is there, the lake becomes a natural barrier between them and the outside world. Add the history of five missing women, their clothes hanging eerily from a tree, an old diary, and a group of actors deliberately recreating the circumstances surrounding those disappearances, and there is an almost ritualistic quality to what they are doing. The movie is supposed to recreate the past. Slowly, it begins to feel as though the past might actually be repeating itself.
Sager's writing maintains that eerie atmosphere without allowing it to overwhelm the thriller itself. The mystery continues moving forward, and I was constantly reconsidering what explanation made the most sense. The supernatural possibility is never just decorative. It actually affects how Marin interprets what she sees, and because she is questioning her own conclusions, I was questioning mine as well.
What really elevated the book for me, though, was the ending. There are multiple major reveals, and I particularly enjoyed that they made me reconsider things I had already read rather than simply adding completely new information at the last minute. That is the kind of twist I want from a thriller. A good reveal should not just surprise me. It should make me mentally go back through the story and look at earlier scenes differently because I now understand what was actually happening. The Unknown managed to do that more than once.
I highly recommend this one for readers who enjoy atmospheric thrillers, isolated settings, historical mysteries bleeding into the present, and stories that keep the possibility of the supernatural hanging over everything. It did not quite become a five star book for me, but it was close, and the ending pushed it firmly into the category of thrillers I would happily recommend. More importantly, it made me want to read Riley Sager again.
The best twists do not simply change the ending. They change the story you thought you had already read, and The Unknown gave me exactly that.
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