It

⭐⭐⭐
This book is good and worth reading. I enjoyed it but it felt a little lacking. I may recommend it to a certain audience. It gave me mixed feelings, possibly with potential it didn't quite live up to. It's a good experience, not amazing, but not bad.

3.5 Stars

I read this because my husband LOVES Stephen King and highly recommended this book. It's one of his favorites. I don't hold that against him. Different strokes for different folks. I'm glad he and others were able to enjoy the story. I have enjoyed other Stephen King books that I have read and do think he is an amazing author. This particular book was just not it for me. No pun intended.

First off, I want to make it clear that I went into this book thinking that it was more of a horror story and less a coming of age one. If you go into realizing that it is a coming of age story with some horror sprinkled in you might enjoy it more than I did.

King did an amazing job with character development. King fleshed out each individual character beautifully (as he always does). That being said I feel like this book was just way too long. In my opinion the story could have been told in a third of time. Some parts had me wondering what Stephen King was even thinking when he wrote them and just seemed unnecessary. Like what the children did to find their way out of the tunnels when they got lost. WHAT WAS THAT!?

There are parts of the story that included fairly detailed violence towards animals, specifically dogs, and animal cruelty as well as detailed domestic violence. If those are sensitive subject matters for you. You might want to either skim over those parts of the story or skip the book all together.

The bottom line is I didn't love or hate this book. I just felt meh about it.