Pet Sematary
Ratings660
Average rating3.9
what the fuck was that LOL the scariest scenes in this book were the "sex" scenes (or when it was mentioned skull emoji
also multiple cases of male author moments lol
This might be the last Stephen King book I read. I'm done. It's not a bad story but I never got the appeal of King's writing style, it's so slow and over-descriptive. A hundred pages in something scary finally happens. That said, out of all the Stephen King books I've read, this is probably the one I like most and the one that really scared me (yes, even more than The Shining). I love cats and this book made me creeped out by them so that's something.
The inspiration for this book came to Stephen when he and Tabitha were staying at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Stanley was also the inspiration for his novel The Shining. There is a small pet cemetery behind the Stanley, and yes, it's a creepy place.
I love this book. I read it as a child because there was a pretty cat on the cover, and then you couldn't stop me reading. It was my initiation to “real” books (meaning books not meant for little kids) and, more specifically, to the horror/supernatural genre.
This book really scared me. Not so much while I was reading it, but afterward it just stuck with me. One of my favorites by Stephen King.
Hands-down the most disturbing book I've ever read. Some scenes I will never be able to shake. It's a great book, but I wouldn't recommend it to sensitive friends, only those who can handle going to really, really dark places.
I’m giving it a 3.5/5. Overall great story but it had so many annoying aspects. I don’t need to know he feels his neighbors breast press up against him at his son’s funeral. And if I have to read « oz the gweat and tewiblw » or « hey ho, let’s go » I’m gonna lose my mind
I started this book in 2020 for the first time but could not finish it. At that time I was horrified by the horror genre in books and movies. 2022 I got in touch with horror and even if it was a difficult debut I started enjoying horror movies. With that in mind I came back to "pet sementary" which immediatly became my first horror book ever read.
I liked it a lot. It had some passages where I was shivering while reading. The ending is great and the beginning is even better. The paste is a bit slow in the middle but due to the short amount of pages this book has, it is not that big of a deal.
Great story that could have been expanded upon and explored with more depth. Ending was rushed and lacked the dark suspense it deserved, rather than just resorting to violence.
Final rating: 4.0
This was my first Stephen King and I was really disappointed. The book is overwritten, bloated and boring.
Mórbido!
Já li muitos livros que lidam com a morte. Na verdade comecei meu interesse por literatura em leituras existencialista: Camus, Sartre, Graciliano Ramos, Hesse, foram meus primeiros contatos com angústia, luto, morte, suicídio e mais. Mas nenhum livro me impactou tanto em lidar com a morte como Pet Sematary. Morte crua, que não pede passagem, que mesmo os filósofos tem dificuldade de enfrentam.
Pra além da história de terror e fantasia, esse livro tem pelo menos 4 ou 5 histórias sobre morte. Algumas contadas como histórias dentro de histórias, outras como parte mais central do livro. Bichos de estimação, idosos, adolescentes, crianças, adultos, jovens. Todo o tipo de morte e diferentes formas de lidar com o luto. Achei fascinante e amedrontador a forma como me relacionei com alguns personagens durante o luto e como ninguém sabe lidar com isso.
O livro começa com uma nostalgia gostosa, simpática e aos poucos vai te levando pra um lugar de incômodo. Sei que o livro tem muito do toque pessoal (quase biográfico) de King, e isso trás esse sendo familiar. O livro tem seus problemas, é claro, com uns diálogos pouco verossimeis, mas não estragam o livro.
I’ve had kind of a mixed bag of experiences with King so far, having only really read shorter stuff like The Mist, and Secret Window, Secret Garden and not really loving either. But then I saw the narrator was Michael C. Hall, and I had to grab it. It helps that the other members of Fear For All love his stuff too.
First off, I thought this was fantastic. Reading something finally full length from King really allowed for the story to open up. Both growing in creepiness, and heightening those emotional touch points. Of course, it might just help that I decided to read one that is considered up there with his best, but still.
The copy I got from Audible included an introduction from the author, he spoke about how he thought this was his darkest novel, perhaps even too dark that it shouldn’t have been published. He also spoke about the origin of the spelling of Pet Sematary, its inclusion in the novel, and eventual taking over as the title. That kind of inclusion and connection really heightened my enjoyment heading into the story.
Louis accepts a new job, moving his family into the rural town of Ludlow, Maine. Their new house seems too good to be true, their neighbor Jud already showing them hospitality. But even from the earliest pages of the novel, theirs a dangerous undertone. Let alone when they get shown the cemetery behind their property where all the town’s beloved pets have been buried…I personally have pets, and although the thought of having them nearby is endearing, this is still just so creepy.
But when the road finally claims another victim, this time Louis’ daughter’s beloved cat Church, Jud tells him to wait for his call and that they’d handle it. And when Church shows back up, after being buried no less, Louis does his best to rationalize the appearance, but underneath it all, he knows better. The general creepiness of this, as well as the behavioral problems that follow with Church, should have been a clear indication of how far this novel would go, but I wasn’t ready.
The loss of a child, is often something that writers avoid like the plague, especially in horror I feel. So for King to go so far into this, so deep, especially given the year when this released originally, is a testament to him. And yeah…this really is super super dark. For me, the imagining of if it didn’t happen, and where his life could have gone, was even sadder to read than the death itself.
It does kind of feel like I’ve managed to live under a rock, as I’ve not had any of this really ruined for me, and I’ve never seen any screen adaptation so far. With the mixed bag that has come from his wide filmography, I think maybe I had started to link that directly to him, even though they are adaptations of his works? This was so eerie and riveting. It brought to mind that building dread that I loved in Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings, that ability to show that building in different ways between husband, wife, and daughter.
Michael C. Hall did such a fantastic job. I would like him to take over narrating my life now. The voices were great, the novel had life, and this once again brought to mind just how much we are missing that he has not narrated the Dexter series.
This was my first Stephen King book. As many others have said, King's writing is superb and it's quite easy to get pulled into the book and read for a while. The story is interesting, unique and definitely attests to Stephen King's special mind that comes up with horrific tales and novels.
Although this isn't 'scary' in the traditional horror sense, it was a disturbing read. The book deals with death and grief, while twisting it and making it into something very wrong and disturbing.
The ending does feel a bit short and there's limited closure but I feel that this is a book that's about the journey, not the destination. However, some of the thoughts that reoccur in Louis' mind feel repetitive and after a while it gets old. These moments pulled me away from the story and they felt rather jarring when the same few thoughts repeated in Louis' head five or six times over the course of twenty or thirty pages. Because of this, I couldn't give it a full five stars.
Overall, though, this book is great. King himself considers this to be his scariest book, as mentioned in the intro, but I, as most people, don't find it extraordinarily scary. If you're into more psychological, grief-ridden suspense, this one's for you.
3.5 I feel like this really should have been a novella and then it would have been a 5 star read. Spending so much time in Louis’s head really didn’t serve the book. You could have cut a 1/3 of his inner monologue and had a much more compelling and terrifying story. It wasn’t until 75% that I was finally into what was happening. A disappointing reading experience because of all the hype surrounding the book.
Novela cargada de terror y suspenso al estilo del autor. Los personajes bien definidos y trabajados. Es una lectura muy buena para los amantes del género.
Me cuesta darle 5 estrellas a los libros de Stephen King por los dialogos innecesarios que abultan sus novelas. Por lo demás, lo recomiendo mucho.
Everyone told me to read this. I'm glad I did, but I think it was oversold haha. It was mostly good, there was just some parts that rambled on and I was like get to the point bro. I knocked it down a star for that. Now, I really want to watch the movie, so there's that.
Well reread this for the first time since teenage. I loe mr Kings books to 80%. They are fantastic upuntil the end when everyhing gets strange
I have mixed feelings when it comes to this book.
There were passages that I enjoyed A LOT, and would incline me to rate it incredibly high. But there were also pages where I felt the story was not as strong, especially once we knew what was going to happen, what Louis was going to do all along. I personally thought that around 80 to 100 pages could've been more fast paced and to the point.
I really liked that instead of being horror centered on paranormal stuff, it's more focused on death, which can be terrifying and way more relatable than ghosts and all those creepy creatures we can find in books like this. I found some really interesting pieces on death and bereavement in this book that truly exemplify how a person deals with death and the toll it can take on a group of individuals.
Overall, I would recommend this book to a lot of people, and I found it way more enjoyable and appealing than past Stephen King stories I've read.
This book has made me think about things I haven't thought of in a long time. Before you read this I have to war you that it will deal with death and grief in a very real and emotional way. Therefore if you lost someone close to you very recently it may be to emotional, in that case I would recommend you to wait until you are ready to read it. Because wow does this book make you feel things.
Stephen King has said that this is his most scary book, but if you are looking for a more traditional definition of scary (as in horror movies) then you should read the Shining. This book is scary because it toys with the concept of death and how far a human can go in his state of denial after a close death. The zombies aren't even that scary.
Dam. I am always impressed by King's ability to know the human mind and manipulate it with his writing. Like i said in the introduction this book has made me think a lot, and it got me caring for characters I thought i did not care.
I knew Gage was going to die (it gets spoiled in the introduction) and I never thought I was actually attached to him. But man, the scene with the kite and how it gets revealed he died it got me tearing up. This is the most effective way to reveal someone died, by giving us their last happy memory instead of all the details of the actual death. Which makes sense, when you lose someone you start to value the insignificant moments you didn't before.
I must say I actually liked better the introduction than the ending. I was fully invested until the point of no return, where Louis decides to bury Gage in the Pet Sematary. From that point on it felt like watching a car crash in slow motion, where you know it is going to end badly but the agony is dragged out unnecessarily. (In retrospective it was necessary)
If you think about it this part is only 100 pages in a 500 pages long book, but somehow those 100 pages felt longer than the whole introduction. I understand the role of those pages, where Louis is rationalizing something irrational due to grief. We are shown through several examples that people nor pets come back the same way as they went after being buried in the pet sematary. But somehow he manages to convince himself that this case is an exception, which is so relatable. At the end of the day, the fist stage of grief is Denial.
This is the only time in a horror media where I understood why the main character went into the dark basement.
I truly don't know how to feel about the ending of this book. Either it is absolutely genius or just cheap and lazy.
Because after everything that has happened with Gage, Louis decides in a heartbeat to also bury Rachel in the Pet Sematary. Which somehow feels stupid. I understood why Louis did it with Gage, but did the result of his experiment not open his eyes to reality? Why does he think that this time it won't be the same? he didn't even have time to grief over his wife. But then it does also feel like it will be different this time, but I don't know if that is just me being optimistic and buying into Louise's denial or what.
It also feels like the ending is rushed and inconclusive. There is no closure and I don't know if it deliberate, because you could read it as the lac of closure is directly related to Geage's premature death, he did not get any closure in his life. He may have been an Olympic swimmer, but we will never know, as we will never know the ending of this book. Is this deliberate or am I just trying to search for answers where there aren't any? I don't know and i don't know if this confusion was also deliberate or not.
This book has made think a lot of how we can convince yourself of the things we want to know, and the interpretation of this ending may be the prove of this or not, who knows.
P.S I know that the Micmac burying ground and the Pet Sematary are two different places, but I believe that the name Pet Sematary is more iconic that Micmac burying ground, that why I've used pet Sematary throughout the review.
I mean this was pretty god damn solid. I looved the creepyness. this time I got actually scared and not that half ass I usually get. Was it amazig? No, but I did like it.