Tag Archives: Horror

Book Review

Review: Pet Sematary

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Pet SemetaryPet Sematary
By Stephen King
(Pocket Books, Mass Market Paperback, 9780743412278, 2001, 576pp.)

The Short of It:

Probably one of King’s best.

The Rest of It:

In my late teens, early twenties, I somehow managed to read Pet Sematary twice. I think I read it a second time, right before the movie came out. I remember it being appropriately scary but not overly so. To compare, IT, to this day, is still his scariest book ever but anytime death is involved and you try to change things, you are really grabbing the bull by the horns and things just can’t go well when you try to do that with death. Trust me.

After Louis Creed accepts a position as a university doctor, he and his wife Rachel buy a house in the country and look forward to raising their two small children, Ellie and Gage, in the beauty of God’s kingdom. Except, there is a pesky road that is the main through-way for trucks getting from point A to point B. Across the way, are their elderly neighbors, the Crandalls and oh, let’s not forget the Pet Sematary, which is really the smaller part of an Indian burial ground and which just so happens to be on their property.

Indian burial ground. Yep.

As you can probably guess, that busy road becomes a very important part of the story, as does the Pet Sematary, which is spelled that way because that is how a child chose to spell it years and years ago. The story reads quickly, because once you get to a certain point, you really can’t stop reading as you must know how it all turns out.

As you may recall above, I didn’t think the book was overly scary when I read it in my twenties but that was before kids. Reading it recently, I couldn’t  help but flashback to those times when my kids hurt themselves or how afraid I was of hurting them accidentally. Really, just recognizing how fragile they were. Well, the experience of parenthood adds some additional terror to the mix. For sure.

I read this for the #gangstercats read-along so I definitely had the support of others, which always makes reading a book like this a lot more fun. Plus, we got party favors too! There’s nothing like a good King discussion to bring people together. There was some interest in maybe watching the movie while live tweeting, so if that happens, you’ll hear about it soon.

Pet Sematary Read Along

King’s new book Finders Keepers comes out in June but what shall we read next?

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Book Review

Review: The Regulators

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The Regulators
The Regulators
By Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)
New York: Dutton, 1996, New York (1996)

The Short of It:

Brimming with wit but tame as far as horror stories go.

The Rest of It:

One sunny afternoon, an entire neighborhood finds itself the center of destruction when a group of demented villains show up in vans and basically shoot anything that moves. As the residents watch in horror, they suddenly realize that this is no random act and that their quiet little neighborhood is under siege.

The Regulators was published under the name Richard Bachman, but most King fans know that Bachman is the pen name King used for several years. As far as his books go, this is one of the tame ones. There are lots of characters to keep track of in this small neighborhood but their personalities are different enough (in most cases) to keep everyone straight. There is a supernatural element but he doesn’t spend too much time on that aspect of it, just the aftermath and how it affects this particularly unlucky neighborhood. The story is a little farfetched but by the end, I was buying it. It’s definitely not one of his stronger books, but I did enjoy reading it and it was a quick read.

The Summer of King

When I posted about The Summer of King, and how I wanted to spend my summer reading King books, some of you told me that The Regulators and Desperation happen to be related. When I chose those two to read, I had no idea that they featured parallel worlds. Talk about dense. I mean, if you look real hard you can even see how the cover art connects to one another. Anyway, so although this book was a little tame for me, I appreciate King’s classic sense of humor in relation to being blown to bits, cheating wives and annoying kids. I chuckled many times and now can’t wait to re-read Desperation as I read that one when it first came out and cannot remember a thing about it!

Have you read a King book lately?

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.