Reviews - The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red

138 reviews for:

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red

Joyce Reardon

3.48 AVERAGE

darkpika12's review

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

groovyfrood's review

3.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

housedesignerking's review

4.0

dark emotional informative mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Having seen the made-for-tv movie, I was very interested to get my hands on this baby. Not surprisingly, there are differences between this book at the movie; this is a diary and the movie takes place years after its final entry.

I was really interested see the spelling of the name of the maid she collects on her honeymoon. Apparently, it’s not Zuchina. It’s Sukeena. It was also interesting reading just what those differences were. In many ways, this ‘diary’ paints an even more interesting and creepy life for Ellen than the movie ever did.

Written in a diary format, this book has no chapters at all, unless you consider each entry to be a separate chapter. I’m sure that real life diaries aren’t this descriptive, but I’m sure Steven King had no choice but to ignore that. There needs to be description of some kind in a fictional diary, lest the reader be left to not understand any of the inside jokes or personal titles/references.

The end of this ‘diary’ is pretty predictable only if you’ve seen the movie, but the differences between it and the movie are far too interesting to care about that. However, I will say that I am disappointed in the movie team completely ignoring Ellen’s sexuality.

4 stars.

Content Warnings

jacquilynn's review

1.0

It’s a fake prequel of Stephen King’s Rose Red. I was in the mood for something with a Shirley Jackson feel in the books I had at home. I should have gone to the library and picked up a Shirley Jackson book. This was not scary, it was barely interesting. The first few chapters were interesting enough in setting up the character actions. At some point during the world traveling section it lost me. It drudged on and was more of an unrequited love novel that people occasionally went missing or ended up dead if they upset the wife. It was so tiring to spend 300 pages of “I love my husband so” to “I hate my husband and will make him suffer every way I can imagine” and then back to lovey dovey 1 page later. This house basically eats and kills people, I don't know how that plot can be so boring and tedious, but the author managed it. The kicker was the drawings. They didn’t need to be included in the book and weren’t good, some of them verged on humorous and that was really out of place for this novel. I found it weird and not in a creepy horror way.