Review: IT by Stephen King

It by Stephen King

Published: September 1986

Publisher: Scribner

Format: purchased

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis

Seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It.

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them to reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

My Thoughts

With October being the month of scary and frightening things I thought I would challenge myself like never before, I wanted to read my first Stephen King book but not just any old book I wanted to read IT. Was the pay off worth it? YES! I really did love this book while some of the language I didn’t agree with overall the storytelling was superb.

We met a group of teens who are known as The Losers and they are brought together when they take on the mission of finding and destroying …IT that is killing kids. Children keep going missing in the town of Derry and while everyone knows something is odd no one is willing to talk about it out loud, and when the teens start to see the clown they know this is what is killing the kids in town.

I liked how this novel has two timelines, we get the story of what happened when they were younger and then we get the story of when they come back together as adults. We see what has made them come back and what has become of them decades later, and if what happened in the past had any effect on their present lives.

This book was SCARY! Stephen King went into massive details and yes the gore and guts of it all are disturbing but it’s the psychological aspects of the book that really got to me. There were numerous times that I wanted and needed to step back and just let this book sit there. Heck, now I know what people mean when they say they needed to put the book in the freezer…I really wanted to! All in all, I’m so glad I made this my first Stephen King experience it was all I had hyped it up to be and boy oh boy what a wild ride this was if you get the chance read it it’s well worth the time.

Review: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

Published: June 26, 2018

Publisher: William Morrow

Format: audiobook via Overdrive

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined.

My Thoughts

Talk about a wild ride! The Cabin at the End of the World was the most anxiety-filled book I’ve read in some time. The story opens with Wen playing outside in the woods while her dads are inside just enjoying their plugged free vacation. Then a man comes up to her and carries a conversation for awhile then tells her what happens next isn’t her fault and that her dads must do what he says. Next, we see four people trying to get into the cabin saying that the world will end if they don’t sacrifice one of themselves…soon.

They claim as time goes by and they don’t do as they say things will happen worldwide and they have proof when alerts start coming on the news to back up their claims. Is it all a coincidence or are what they saying is true? The next questions are why Wen and her fathers targeted? What is their connection to all of this?  As time goes by the things that happen are gruesome and horrifying but for me, this isn’t what makes this story scary, it’s the fact that this could happen to anyone. For me, it’s the everyday circumstances that can happen to anyone that scares me the most. It’s the real things in life that I find the most horrifying and believable.

As the story moves along it just got sadder and scarier for me. As a reader, I kept flip-flopping as to do I believe these people since some of what they are saying is happening or are they just some crazy people who randomly picked this family to terrify. Paul Tremblay gives us a book with so many questions and lets us be the one to try and figure out what to believe. My one complaint was the ending while I understood where he was going with it I still wanted more. This is one book that days later is still with me and for me, that’s a sign of a great read.