Reviews - Gerald's Game | The StoryGraph

1.87k reviews for:

Gerald's Game

Stephen King

3.46 AVERAGE

uncl1pt_t0enailz's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The first full novel I ever read, and first time reading Stephen king, love it, I love the climax, the gore, and the idea of overcoming heavy trauma and using it to help others, and overall fun to read

notloreee's review against another edition

3.5

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

gatonolivro's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

bream1993's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional sad 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

squeeeth's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Degloving

hey_its_ley's review against another edition

4.0

Good story, rough to read.

mikavon's review against another edition

3.0

That was just about the worst ending to a book I've ever read. Seriously, King should have ended this one shortly after her escape and left the whole "was there REALLY a man there, or was it all in her head" thing up in the air. Because the actual answer he provided to that question was just awful. She's chained to a bed in the middle of nowhere and some graverobber/necrophiliac just happens to find her and just happens to stand menacingly in the corner without saying anything? Oh, and he just happens to have some physical deformity that makes him look inhuman. I liked it better when it was all in her head. Or even if it was some supernatural angle ("death" coming to get her). But finding out that the scary shadow creature haunting her was actually just some mentally ill guy feels like a cop out.

But seriously, the fact that King can write a book about a woman handcuffed to a bed and NOT make it boring is pretty amazing. It was so tense--she constantly failed at every attempt to get out of her situation, or she's succeed but things out of her control would fuck it up. Honestly, I was on the edge of my seat. Until the end.

One qualm... Maybe I'm a monster, but was her history with her dad really that traumatic...? You have this random woman revealing cigarette burn marks on her breasts from when her brother tortured her, and then you have the main character developing a host of mental disorders simply because her dad felt her up one time. I was expecting something much worse, the way she'd constantly allude to this traumatic "thing" that happened.
Also. She was only handcuffed to the bed for like a day. Why was she getting so worked up about dying of thirst? I mean, she went through all this effort to get that glass of water but at that point it had only been a few hours. Lol.
ALSO --> poor doggo...

Overall, I enjoyed this one more than I had any right to. King dropped the ball on the ending but the rest was pretty exciting.