A review by breezie_reads
Sleeping Beauties by Owen King, Stephen King

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.0

Stephen King didn't even want to write this book, and it shows. His son, who is the one who came up with the idea, didn't even want to write the book. And that shows, too. It's almost as if, if neither of them wanted to be the one to write it, then maybe neither of them should have written it.

We would have been better off if they had just left it alone and never written the book in the first place.

I've heard several negative things about this book, and because it is how the nature of my reading is, those negative comments weren't "concrete" enough to convince me not to read it. I wish now that they had been concrete enough to convince me. If I could go back in time and stop myself from ever being drawn in by the gorgeous cover, I would.

 But, alas, I cannot do that. What I can do, though, is express my deepest regrets in this seething review.

Stephen King has never been very good at writing his characters. They all have the same recycled personality traits, the same recycled "traumatic" backstories, the same opinions and mindsets and thought processes. He wrote one character and decided that was going to be every single character in every single book he ever writes. It's boring and redundant and I would like something new, please.

Another thing King likes to recycle is the "traumatic backstory" every single one of his characters seem to have. Whatever this man's obsession is with sexual assault and with sexualizing minors, he needs to stop. There's more ways to "ruin someone's life," and more ways to "make someone turn bad," than sexually assaulting them. I don't think King got the memo, though. I'm so tired of reading about minors being sexualized BY THE NARRATOR, and I'm so tired of reading about how every single character was sexually assaulted and that's why they do drugs, or that's why they're an alcoholic.

What really bothered me about this book, though, was the "message" King was trying to get across. I understand what he was trying to do, but being known for the kind of books he writes, he isn't the one to be writing books that deal with heavy issues like that.

Especially since he doesn't know how to do it.

What I got from this book, basically, is that every woman is the product of the way a man has treated her. That women are "the way that they are" because of men. That women only know what they know and do what they do and think what they think because of men. And when you're trying to write a book that brings things like that to attention, you need to not write as if women aren't their own people outside of their relationships with the men in their life.

Writing a book about the "female plights and struggle and empowerment" DOES NOT MEAN you have to vilify all men in the process? I think the most annoying part of this book was the belief that ONLY men were pedophiles. ONLY men were rapists. ONLY men were murderers (despite a murder happening in the Other Place not too long after the women got there but they conveniently forgot about that, didn't they). ONLY men drank and were violent and beat their wives and children. The world sucked because men lived in it? Please. 

When I wasn't disgustingly angry at how this book was written, I was bored. This is the most boring King book I have ever read. If he had focused more on the action and the horror/thriller aspect of the story instead of the social stance aspect, it would have been so much better.