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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I LOVE anything he published but this should not be a hard case crime novel.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This is the full length Stephen King story that read like a popcorn, bubblegum casual beach read. I didn't mind it, it was a snack for my brain lol. Joyland was a much better version of this type of story from King. I did like the Liz Dutton character and the concept of the person haunting the main character.
So yeah, I see dead people. As far as I can remember, I always have. But it's not like in that movie with Bruce Willis. It can be interesting, it can be scary sometimes (the Central Park dude), it can be a pain in the ass, but mostly it just is. Like being left-handed, or being able to play classical music when you're like three years old, or getting early-onset Alzheimer's, which is what happened to Uncle Harry when he was only forty-two.
[a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] has written mnay books and crossed many genres. Due to this I honestly thought I'd found a down to earth gritty who-done-it. Alas, it soon became obvious that this wasn't a typical mystery and it more akin to King's supernatural tales. A tad odd given it is a 'Hard Case Crime' book.
Jamie Conklin isn't your usual child; he has a secret gift that only those closest to him know about. Jamie can see and talk to the dead in the days following their deaths. However, his gift means people want to use him, want to exploit his talent, and will go to extreme lengths to get their way.
Jamie has another problem too, when the spirit of a suicide victim doesn't fade away in the usual fashion, he finds himself stalked at school and at home by the revenent. Losing his mind, he must go to extreme lengths to find a way to discover the truth and to stay safe from the living that have him in their plans.
I enjoyed this a lot but was left underwhelmed by the ending. The just sort of dwindles down, much like a pop song where the band just play the same bars over and over whilst lowering the volume. This knocks it down a few stars to 3 1/2.
[a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] has written mnay books and crossed many genres. Due to this I honestly thought I'd found a down to earth gritty who-done-it. Alas, it soon became obvious that this wasn't a typical mystery and it more akin to King's supernatural tales. A tad odd given it is a 'Hard Case Crime' book.
Jamie Conklin isn't your usual child; he has a secret gift that only those closest to him know about. Jamie can see and talk to the dead in the days following their deaths. However, his gift means people want to use him, want to exploit his talent, and will go to extreme lengths to get their way.
Jamie has another problem too, when the spirit of a suicide victim doesn't fade away in the usual fashion, he finds himself stalked at school and at home by the revenent. Losing his mind, he must go to extreme lengths to find a way to discover the truth and to stay safe from the living that have him in their plans.
I enjoyed this a lot but was left underwhelmed by the ending. The just sort of dwindles down, much like a pop song where the band just play the same bars over and over whilst lowering the volume. This knocks it down a few stars to 3 1/2.
dark
emotional
funny
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
fast-paced
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really had a good time with this one. I finished it over two months ago now, but unlike my experience with Eternals, I remember it vividly and fondly. I just have one tiny beef with it, and it's a beef I've recently had with King before, but more on that later.
Jamie Conklin is our narrator, a kid who can see dead people (King wisely acknowledges the Haley Joel Osment shaped elephant in the room). It's a talent he (and his mom) have mostly come to terms with. My favorite bits of the book were actually the stories not having to do with the main antagonists, but the ones where he interacted with ghosts as he was growing up, and the ripples into his mom's life as a result (I'm thinking in particular of one scene involving one of his mom's authors that had me riveted to the page--she's an editor).
I also thought the main antagonist was scary in a classic King way, and the resolution of it was both satisfying and creepy. (And definitely open to a sequel, even if he never writes it, it's more satisfying that way. This might only make sense once you realize the significance of the title.) The randomness of the evil really appealed to me. And the wrench of Jamie's mom's dirty cop ex-girlfriend getting herself involved I thought was a nice wrinkle in the plot. Not a dynamic I've seen before, and an interesting one.
And now for the beef. Stephen King is old now. He just is. And he loves writing about kids! And for the most part, he's great at it. But occasionally, especially recently, if he tries to write in the first person in a contemporary setting, it can ring false. He just can't kick his 1960s and 1970s slang! I kept thinking, kids today don't think like that! Or talk like that! I mean, I don't actually know what kids today think or talk like, but I know what they don't. I had this same problem with one of the stories in his last book, If It Bleeds. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," I was similarly enjoying the overall story but kept getting pulled out by the narrator's anachronistic vocabulary. But, ultimately, this is something I can overlook if the story is otherwise good, which I thought it very much was here.
If you're looking for a spooky afternoon of storytelling, you could do much, much worse than this book.
Jamie Conklin is our narrator, a kid who can see dead people (King wisely acknowledges the Haley Joel Osment shaped elephant in the room). It's a talent he (and his mom) have mostly come to terms with. My favorite bits of the book were actually the stories not having to do with the main antagonists, but the ones where he interacted with ghosts as he was growing up, and the ripples into his mom's life as a result (I'm thinking in particular of one scene involving one of his mom's authors that had me riveted to the page--she's an editor).
I also thought the main antagonist was scary in a classic King way, and the resolution of it was both satisfying and creepy. (And definitely open to a sequel, even if he never writes it, it's more satisfying that way. This might only make sense once you realize the significance of the title.) The randomness of the evil really appealed to me. And the wrench of Jamie's mom's dirty cop ex-girlfriend getting herself involved I thought was a nice wrinkle in the plot. Not a dynamic I've seen before, and an interesting one.
And now for the beef. Stephen King is old now. He just is. And he loves writing about kids! And for the most part, he's great at it. But occasionally, especially recently, if he tries to write in the first person in a contemporary setting, it can ring false. He just can't kick his 1960s and 1970s slang! I kept thinking, kids today don't think like that! Or talk like that! I mean, I don't actually know what kids today think or talk like, but I know what they don't. I had this same problem with one of the stories in his last book, If It Bleeds. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," I was similarly enjoying the overall story but kept getting pulled out by the narrator's anachronistic vocabulary. But, ultimately, this is something I can overlook if the story is otherwise good, which I thought it very much was here.
If you're looking for a spooky afternoon of storytelling, you could do much, much worse than this book.