A review by ashborrow
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

4.0

My first Stephen King book! I enjoyed reading this one, especially towards the end I couldn’t put it down. The writing often filled me with dread and made me wonder why the hell I was reading this book while settling down for sleep. I did have a few gripes with some aspects of the book. Hodges being set on not involving the police felt silly to me, especially at the end of the book when he tried to call Pete and inform him of what’s happening but decides the police are too tied up with celebrating a crime bust to give a fuck about a very real bomb threat at a sold out kids show ………. It caused me not to like Hodges which I was very fine with, I didn’t find him to be a super likable character. The other issue that kept popping up for me was King’s treatment of minorities in this book. Jerome switching dialects throughout the book and being belittled for the one he uses around his family caused me to feel like there were deeper issues being shone to light other than just the characters in the book having problems with race. I didn’t pick up on minorities in the book, such as Jerome and Freddi, having character development past being a minority and exemplifying very small minded stereotypes of that minority. Nonetheless, the book still kept me reading and I’ll definitely check out other works by Stephen King as well.