Pet Sematary
Ratings665
Average rating3.9
80's Stephen Kings is my favorite! ❤️
Now that I have an infant child I can appreciate this book way more than I would have before. Losing a child and having the ability to bring him/her (or if you allow your kid to identify as a an Apache helicopter) back to life, would you do it? Even if you're being warned your kid may not actually be your kid? Idk if I could live with myself without trying.
Sometimes King novels are to long or their two short but I think King does best between 300-400 pages (yet my favorite is The Stand...).
If he stays in that amount he has just enough pages to give you character development without all the filling, and he's more fast paced and really gives you a thrilling ride. In this case he gives one hell of a gut punch and it's going down as one of the best he's written. It's too bad most movie adaptations are so bad since they don't follow the books.
The book is way better than the movie...literally chilling in the end...
i'd been reading this for so long that it kind of lost its “magic”, but holy shit that ending
this was just unfortunately average all around. you could have cut out a good 150-200 pages without the story losing anything significant and the only characters i cared about were jud and ellie so.... also way too many sex scenes
Rating: 4.63 leaves out of 5
Characters: 4/5
Cover: 4.5/5
Story: 5/5
Writing: 5/5
Genre: Horror/Thriller/Fantasy/Paranormal/Mystery
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yeah!
Another book on the SK Book Train in Book Lovers Club is done with. Honestly I am happy with this one. I have seen both movies before so I knew what was coming but it was done so well. The ending was so/so but I enjoyed the whole of this book. A rarity it seems from him.
This took me so long to read:(( but towards the last 50 pages or so only it began to pick up.
The beginning was good, middle soo boring and the ending page TURNING.
Towards the end I got chills,coz of everything that was happening but I feel like if the book had been shorter it would def have gotten a 5 star from me!
The last page ended on a cliff hanger, I think we have to imagine what happens next but I wish we had actually gotten the rest coz it left me hanging.
I like it It was really interesting and I couldn't stop when I get to certain point so I recommend it But I think the end was a little bit fast Soo that part could be improved a little bit but after that everything was nice
Casa grande, de maderas que crujen y jardin que da a un cementerio de indios americanos. Con una carretera donde pasan camiones a toda leche , con ninyos, con una gato de mascota....
Planteamiento tan clasico que se ve venir la trama desde tan lejos que es mas la impaciencia porque pasen las coss ya que el ver que va a ocurrir o como.
Pet Sematary is probably one of Stephen King's best known works. It has been adapted for film twice, as recently as 2019, and I have encountered references to this book in other more contemporary examples of horror fiction. It is a significantly influential story about grief, humanity's age old conflict against death, and perhaps also humanity's place in a dark and mysterious world. The book stands on the shoulders of antecedents such as The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs. The audiobook was read by Michael C. Hall (Dexter) who did a fantastic job. Despite the hype surrounding this classic and the enduring popularity of the novel, overall I was disappointed in Pet Sematary. I had seen the 2019 movie prior to reading, and I don't know if that experience spoiled reading the book for me, but I just found the pacing of the novel incredibly slow and the length far too long. One of the people in the HOWL Society book club commented that they thought King over foreshadowed, and I agree. Between that and knowing more or less what was going to happen I got so bored waiting for the actual action and scary bits to occur. There were certainly some frightening sections and moments of excellence in storytelling throughout, but sadly I would describe such sections as islands of engagement in a sea of tedium. I also had some questions about the plot and world building, and thought some of the supernatural elements were underdeveloped. To make matters worse, this book was written in the 1980s and features characters imbued with casual racism, sexism, and ableism which were (probably) prevalent at the time. This makes the book a somewhat uncomfortable read for a contemporary reader in addition to being boring. While Pet Sematary has some interesting insights to offer, I simply didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. As the book says, sometimes dead is better. I might add that sometimes unread is better too. I think my idea of this book was better than the actual reading experience proved to be. Maybe someday I'll give this book another chance, and maybe I'll like it better. I hope so. But for now ⭐️⭐️
Pet Sematary was very, very creepy. That ending... whoa. It freaked me out.
It's a typical SK's book: there are a lot of descriptions and it's slow-paced, which didn't bother me. I think it did wonders to set the creepy vibes.
My favorite King read so far. This book made me want to read every single one of his books. I will never stop recommending this book!!
King says this is his darkest book. Not scariest, though. And I agree, it's brutal. Personal family horror is what he writes best and in that regard this is his second best after The Shining. When he tries he really can write extraordinarily. That more I wish he just scrapped books like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (read it just before this one) and never released them because they're lazy writing exercises extended two to five times of what would and could be their proper length.
As it is with almost all of his books ending is weak. It doesn't outright suck in this one but it's kinda lazy. He went for the easiest way out instead of trying to do something more horror-ish. Doesn't take away from book's quality, though. I learned that King is about the journey, not destination even if a good destination would sure make re-reads more enjoyable.
As it is it's in my top three of his books with The Shining and Night Shift.
This review contains 2 spoilers
Another book I should have read a lot sooner in my life but hey it's never too late. I enjoyed the characters, which seems to be my favorite thing about King's works. As always, I gobbled up every word King wrote. The book was fast-paced, interesting and spooky. I rarely feel uncomfortable when reading horror considering it's all I read but this one delivered the terror. I think it's partly to do with the fact that I'm a mother of 3 and can't imagine losing a child. It also upends my nerves because it brings to mind the question of “would
I do the same for my children and family?” Hm something to ponder. Great read.
If I have any complaints; as an animal lover Church should have lived.
Pet Sematary really snuck up on me. Around half way it was 3 stars all day long and although enjoyable it was a bit pedestrian; however, slowly it got it's claws into me and before long I was severely invested in the family and even considered not finishing it when the sadness hit.
I'm just... speechless. Stephen King wasn't kidding when he talked about how he felt like this was his scariest book. Not in the usual, jump-scarey, gory sense, but in the subject matters and topics that it deals with with raw, brutal clarity. This book had me on the verge of tears at some parts, or froze a permanent grimace on my face at others, but it was all engaging and I got sucked in so hard that I was late to feed my cats (hah!) dinner because I just had to get to the end.
Dr Louis Creed decides to make the move to Ludlow, Maine, with his wife Rachel, two young children, Ellie and Gage, and their cat Winston Churchill to start a new career as a doctor in the local university's infirmary. It's not a glamourous job, but it's a relatively pleasant and stable one. The Creeds make friends with their elderly neighbours, Jud and Norma Crandall. Jud shows the family around, and takes them hiking along the nature path behind the Creeds' new house, which leads to a communal pet burial grounds called the Pet Sematary.
What follows after is a master class in how to write a seemingly normal narrative with a sickening sense of something's not quite right and eerie foreboding. But what this book delivers isn't just horror in the supernatural sense, but also horror in a very, very human sense. This book is all about death: how children begin to parse it, how adults confront it, and how old people look at it straight in the eye. It's about grief, trauma, and how the road to Hell is always paved with good intentions.
This is my first ever Stephen King book so I don't really have much to compare it to, but I am absolutely bowled over by his writing. I've said before in other reviews that I'm an impatient reader, I like to skim passages because I want to get to the end quicker, but Stephen King had me clinging on to every word, even when it was seemingly unimportant. There's no high-flown vocabulary or weird gimmicks here, it's just the sheer magnetism of his writing style.
Horror is a genre that is almost entirely new to me. I have steered clear of it because I'm not very good with jump scares and things that go bump in the dark. I don't know what freak mood I'm in to make me want to dip my toes in this genre now but I'm very much enjoying the ride. What I like most about it is that so many horror novels, especially King's, is only superficially concerned with the scary unreal things - the real crux of it is examining the horrors of being human, the things that scare us in everyday life. Often times, the human protagonists almost always end up just as scary as the supernatural antagonists, and I love it.
This book is deeply unsettling to read. It's brutal and it's uncomfortable af. But it's also insightful and reflective on so many things. I have so many quotes saved from this because King goes off on short tangents sometimes to reflect on some irrelevant topics, like the realities of marriage and parenthood. In Pet Sematary, of course, the most uncomfortable bit to read was when Gage died from the accident, especially during the fight between Louis and his father in law over the coffin, knocking it over and causing the latch to open just a bit, just enough for Louis to have seen Gage's hand. That was the part where I had to close the book and set it aside for a few minutes before continuing. I've never done this with a book before, but I guess there's a first time for everything. A lot of the things in the plot makes you uncomfortable, but it also never feels meaningless or cheap, like it's just there for no reason. These aren't jack-in-boxes in haunted houses, but real solid traumatic events that's handled with brutal honesty and insight.
I never thought I'd say this, I thought I was past this, but this book gave me nightmares on the first night I read it, after the scene where Victor Pascow comes back in Louis's waking dream. There was just something so visceral about the way events played out during that part, and I also made the poor decision of reading that at about 2-3am in the morning before turning in. I woke up in the middle of the night because of that.
In short, I will need some time to digest and recover from this book, but I will definitely be reading more Stephen King again.
“¿Tan fina es la línea divisoria? ¿Tan fácil es pasar al otro lado? ¿Es esto la locura?”
En este libro, mi primero de King, se puso a prueba mi precaria paciencia. La primera parte, que es un poco más del 50%, me pareció floja y soporífera. La leí casi en diagonal y me decía a mi mismo: “demasiado relleno, no está pasando nada”. Bueno, al parecer es el estilo del autor, le gusta llevar las cosas con calman y a un ritmo desesperante. Pues, ¡no! A mí casi me causa una embolia cerebral, me gustan los plots más rápidos. Si hay algo que rescatar es la solidez de los personajes. El 40% restante mejoró y, practicamente, salvó a King de mi furia. Eso a pesar de haber sido bastante predecible, cosa que no le es ajena al terror. Se vuelve más interesante, si es que se puede usar ese adjetivo para referirse a la tragedia, la depresión, lo macabro, y lo demencial. ⠀
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Por cierto, estoy muy lejos de mi zona de confort, es primera vez que leo una novela de terror. Para mí solo fue un thriller, más psicológico. Terminé imaginando si sería capaz de hacer lo que hizo Louis con su hijo Gage, quién sabe, procesamos el dolor y aceptamos la realidad de diferentes formas.⠀
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Su prosa está bien, lo mismo su sentido del humor. Hay otras cosas que me han gustado: lo paranormal, el misticismo de los micmacs, la reflexión sobre lo efímero de la vida y el misterio de la muerte; esa mano negra que empuña la guadaña y que nos respira en el cuello constantemente. Solo se muere una vez, ¿no? ¿La muerte es el final del camino? Gandalf diría que no, y yo le creo todo a Gandalf.
