Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Billy Summers

Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

Billy Summers by Stephen King

18 reviews

tumblinweehd's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional inspiring slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

oceantombs's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I have to say this was a good book, but…

I did not care for the ending, the way Billy died, but it didn’t effect the story in my opinion. Maybe I am just happy with happily ever afters, this is more of a thanks for joining the journey.

All in all, this story kept me on the edge of my seat and read a good 60-70% just from an afternoon to the evening…definitely can say this was a book I couldn’t put down!

If you love books with espionage, mafia based in the 21st century with a ton of modern references this is your book!

Content Warnings

leahthebooklover's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was the book I chose as our road trip book when my husband and I drove to Texas and back. It was just the right length, but the pacing was pretty uneven. This was particularly noticeable for first half of the book. Billy Summers is an assassin for hire, but he only kills "bad guys" - people who "deserve to die". Dubious morality aside, Billy is presented as a sympathetic character, although deeply flawed. Stephen King is extremely good at creating this type of complicated character. In the first half of the book Billy is entrenching himself, posing as a likeable neighbor, an aspiring writer, and getting friendly with his neighbors and the people in the office building where he goes to work. This whole months long set up for him to be in place for what is supposedly his "last hit" (he plans to retire once the job is done) never really made sense to me, but it did provide a lot of time to get to know Billy. In his cover role as a writer, he actually decides to write about himself, so there is the "book within a book" trope that gives us glimpses into Billy's traumatic past - from the death of his younger sister at the hands of his mothers abusive boyfriend, to his training as a marine sniper and an ambush in Fallujah during the Iraq war. During these months Billy also begins to have doubts about the job he has agreed to do, suspecting that the people who hired him might try to double cross him. So rather than backing out of the job, he creates a second elaborate counter escape plan. Midway through the book, after his suspicions about a double cross are proven correct, the plot twists and a completely new story takes over. Gone are the friendly neighborhood barbecues, the monopoly games with the kids next door, beers with the boys, awkward dating attempts, etc. Suddenly, it becomes and rescue and revenge story, with a new cast of characters and a much more intense pace. The amount of violence escalates along with the pace. Thinking back over the book, I have to say it was a hot mess of a story, and yet somehow it worked? I guess I've always felt Stephen King is part genius and part lunatic, and this story more or less fits that description.

Content Warnings

larinawarnock's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Not a horror novel and not a novel to read for a satisfying ending.

Content Warnings

bolivianrash's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous challenging mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The first half was 4/5 with a riveting plot. But at about halfway is when the entire story changed and was less enjoyable. For some reason there were several misogynistic paragraphs that crept their way in the latter half of the book. It’s obvious that Alice is a character that was written by a man. The older-man-young-woman trope doesn’t sit right with me. The last 100 pages were a bore.

Content Warnings

gethin_burke's review against another edition

3.0

dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

plantvolcano's review against another edition

2.25

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Honestly I expected more from Stephen King. There is so much hype about him. This book is messed up, and there is a lot of dehumanizing/gross parts that are unnecessary. The story was interesting, but it was due to the multiple personalities. I think out of all the book, I only enjoyed three or four chapters. I kept hoping it would get better, but it never really did. The writing itself wasn’t that great….I don’t see myself reading any more books from this author. He is a sick man. Don’t really recommend. #disappointedanddisgusted

Content Warnings

marine2907's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

readerette's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

There were a lot of distractions from the story for me, though I wouldn't necessarily disrecommend the story. Basically I could have done without the whole first half with all the minutiae of Billy's daily life leading up to the hit and his "dumb self" writing. There were so many Trump references (as if King were using this book to process his despair over Trump becoming President). The only gay person identified in the story got an extremely stereotypical portrayal. I couldn't get over the unbelievable amount of bungling Billy did given his supposed reputation as an excellent assassin. And then there was Alice: the use of a horrific crime to bring her into Billy's life (couldn't possibly have given him a sidekick any other way, of course), she didn't seem to have all that much trouble with what happened to her (outside of nightly panic attacks), and the characterization of the relationship between Alice and Billy disturbed me given the circumstances under which King had them meet. Billy as a character also felt overworked to me, like in an attempt to make him seem as complex as a real human, King have him one or two too many quirks. The Easter eggs were distracting to me, but bigger fans might appreciate them.

All that frustration for me as a reader, and it seems Alice will not even publish Billy's opus because she's worried about repercussions, but for whom? Billy's dead, and she can change any names or events she wants, and leave out anything that seems overly incriminating. So... I'm confused.

The last 50 pages were pretty great, though. The ending was somewhat predictable, but not its details. In that part of the book I finally felt enough for Billy and Alice that I hoped everything would turn out for them (all the distractions mentioned above stopped and it just came down to the core of the story and the people in it). If you like thrillers and "bad people" getting what's coming to them, you could do worse than this one. But it's not The Body, which I consider a far superior Stephen King story (also far more concise).

Content Warnings

kshertz's review against another edition

3.25

dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I read this because somebody told me that it is not scary at all and I was interested in what Stephen King was writing nowadays. I feel like it is an interesting adventure but could have been a lot shorter. I also realized I have a big trigger warning about old white dudes writing about young girls and how they think they’re so hot and what they wanna do to them. That felt really gross and was hard for me to get through the book because of that. But you do get invested in Billy Summers and his whole adventure. I definitely wanted to keep reading until the very end

Content Warnings

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