Tamara

This is definitely a "slow burner" book, and it feels like it takes at least a good 400 pages before everything starts to really take off and have a good snowball effect. There are a lot of characters in this book, which is sometimes hard to keep track of and remember who is who, but I do feel like this is imperative to the story itself as it makes the devastation of Salem's Lot feel more personal and more catastrophic. I do feel like the ending could have been so much better, as I feel like once they had that final 'lightbulb' moment, I thought "Oh, that's it?"

You can tell this is an older book, especially when it comes to any female characters and an unnecessary description of her breasts at that current moment, but it's still a cracking Vampire story nonetheless.

I think this is one of the only moments that I’ll say that the film is better than the book. It was a good read, with some chapters I found myself flying through the pages with wonder and interest, but I couldn’t help but end up bored with some passages and even chapters, especially the first chapter. It’s definitely a book everyone should read in their lifetime, but I can’t help but feel like I was forcing myself to read it sometimes.

HOLY SHIT

I initially picked up this book hoping it would be similar to the 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I hadn’t realised it wasn’t the first book in the series, but I don’t think reading The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels beforehand is necessary - this book provides a brief introduction to the Society and some of its characters for new readers.

That said, I found it a bit hard to get into. It makes frequent and sometimes seemingly random references to classic literature and authors like Jane Austen, and the Wicken League (as the group is called) struck me as uncomfortably and, in my view, unnecessarily anti-men. The writing style is quite wordy and overly descriptive, which makes the reading experience feel more complicated than it needs to be.

I might return to it at some point, but for now, it's not really my cup of tea.

I'm a big fan of Stephen King, and I understand that this is nothing like what he normally writes — especially as this is meant to be a short book — but I can't help but feel that it just seems to be the equivalent of listening to an elderly neighbour gossip about the locals for about two or three hours. It's not really my cup of tea.