Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Le notti di Salem

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Le notti di Salem by Tullio Dobner, Jerry N. Uelsmann, Stephen King

61 reviews

miagw962's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take.

My third Stephen King book and one of his popular ones - had no idea what to expect getting into this one only to find out it was VAMPIRES which is great because I read Dracula and loved it (I need to get more into vampire stories I think). This was really great; a little long and strenuous but the characters King creates feel so real and their fears become my own. The sense of atmosphere built up around the town itself was so interesting and not something you come across a lot in fiction about monsters. It was really set up to be a haunted house story but ended up being about vampires which was cool. I love how the three Stephen King books I've read utilise the monsters as metaphors, usually for a loss of innocence or childhood trauma. It's super thought-provoking but I will not get into it now because I need to be in the right headspace. But yeah, this was fun!

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milorogers's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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dankilgrave's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Vampire LOVE can be disgusting too.

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cypresslynx's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

It was... fine. King has such a great way of creating a character out of a setting, and I actually enjoyed all of his descriptions of the Lot. But once again, I'm left incredibly disappointed by his female characters. They're so flat, so lifeless, so same. I didn't really connect with any of the characters and found myself not caring too much what happened to them. It was certainly spooky, I'll give it that!

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jaedia's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Took much too long to get going though King's writing has a way of making nothing seem readable. There were pages that simply detailed what different families were having for dinner. While I can respect this was to effectively show the slow death of the town, some of it was just boring. Also would be remiss not to mention the sheer amount of homophobic slurs in the book. And this was clearly written when King had a very bleak outlook of the world.

That all said, I did enjoy reading it. The writing was enjoyable, the story compelling, and the dread creeping. A nice dark vampire horror story of a town's slow, sleepy, bloodcurdling death.

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maddycumerlato's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I started this book knowing that for many, it was considered one of King’s scariest novels to date. It definitely delivered in that respect. Never have I felt so unsettled and afraid for fictional people before.

Ben Mears and Mark Petrie (and Matt Burke, Susan Norton, Eva Miller, Weasel Craig, Matt Ryerson, among others who fell victim to ‘Salem’s Lot) will forever have my heart and hopes for safety in their fictitious universe… as crazy as that sounds.

Whenever I open a Stephen King novel, I know I can expect amazing worldbuilding, amazing characters, and amazing plot movement. Salem’s Lot gave me all three of these with no giant flaws in the way of me enjoying the HELL out of this book

(even as a person who just can’t get behind stories about vampires… I’ve tried. Not usually my thing)

.

My 5 star read for this Halloween. Truly chilling, just as you’d expect it to be.

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finn_vibing's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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zakcebulski's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

FINALLY. I finally loved a Stephen King book.
I feel that I was always missing out on something regarding Kings work. I have read a handful of his books- the ones described to be "the classics" or highly acclaimed; 11/22/63The Shining, The Stand, IT, Misery, Pet Semetary and I thought some- The Shining, 11/22/63 and Misery were good! But, I did not at all care for The Stand, IT or Pet Semetary.
There is just something about the characters in those books that just makes me not want to continue reading them. I haven't the foggiest as to why. I hear a ton of praise for King's writing of believable dialogue- but, this is usually something that off-puts me from King's work.
But, not Salem's Lot. I absolutely loved this damn book.
Starting off, the plot is so simple- it is a man who returns to a town wherein he once lived, and had a traumatic experience with a house there and comes back to write about it. That is when things start to go bump in the night.
I have to immediately praise King's willpower to have the vampire threat show up in a slow trickle rather than BOOM vampires. Had I not known what the book was about, I would have thought that with the Glick boy's disappearances, that we were dealing with a child killer with Straker (as heinous as that would be!). But, it is the gradual introduction of the vampires that we see the true threat that is looming.
King does an exceptional job of showing the ripple effect that occurs as vampires start spreading and it helps immensely to build the tension in the reader.

I appreciated so much that King took the time to flesh out so many of the characters around town so that when they met their end they were less nameless red shirts.
I also appreciate King's willingness to kill off more or less every damn character he gave a name to. Like, toward the end of the book it is fucking everyone dying like good god, man. Though, I do think that killing characters for the sake of killing them is silly, and I don't like reading a book where there are fake stakes (haha). I think that this book called for the deaths of so many characters so that it was illustrated well how truly fucking dismal the situation had become.
I think that this is where the book truly scared me. I have said many times that I have never been scared by a book in a way that a horror movie scares. I have been grossed out, but that genuine tension I feel is lost when I read books- probably through my fault. But, King nailed it here.
He did this by making truly creepy imagery in regards to the early vampires coming and accosting their prey at windows. There is something in the imagery of an undead teenage tapping on the window with their grotesque nails on the window that truly unnerved me.
The other way which King amazingly crafts terror is by means of shows how out of control the vampire plague is. The rapidity of the deaths of the townspeople is so well done that it is truly scary when we realize that the main group is tasked with combating these insurmountable odds.
Speaking of the main groups- I liked all of the characters quite well. Ben, Jimmy, Susan, Matt, Mark and Father Callahan are all great characters.
I especially liked Mark, Father Callahan and Susan. I appreciated the resourcefulness of Mark, and how he is so knowledgeable at a young age. I loved the complexity of Father Callahan, wherein he is dealing with a doubt of faith and how that aids to lead to his undoing. And, Susan, I thought was a character that could have fallen in to the trap of being a typical poorly written female character- which King is notorious for doing. But, Susan, I thought, added a good amount of complexity with the mid-20s girl who is struggling to find herself with the looming oppressive force of her mother. And, she does! She rises to the occasion which very unfortunately leads to her death.
Susan's death is one that I truly did not see coming. I was anticipating King to have written this where everyone dies but Ben and Susan make it out together. Not only does that not happen, but, Susan is killed off so quickly and out of nowhere, that it truly shocked me.
I like that King wrote all of these characters to be people, and we grew to know them, just as quickly he starts chopping them all down.

I think that the big bad of Kurt Barlowe is a wonderful villain. I like that though he does have the extreme feats of strength at his disposal, he prefers to outwit his enemies by challenging them to fight their inner demons and cause them to doubt themselves.

I loved this book. Did this book turn me in to a Stephen King fan? No, it did not. Did I come out of this book interested in reading more King in the future, or re-reading books I did not like originally, yes, it did.
I thought that this was the perfect book for the Fall weather, a few weeks before Halloween!

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mojavetent's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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readwithbells's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I think this is my first book about vampires, and I noticed while I was reading that I’ve never been all that scared of the concept of vampires until this book. Salem’s Lot feels successful because the characters are so well-rounded and interesting (even if we’ve got the Smurfette principle going on). A good jump into spooky season for me!

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