Good Evening All,
It’s late Friday night and my first post in a while. My last read was a mammoth one and kind of took all of the reading out of me. So although I have been reading, it’s very much been in short bursts. So it’s taken me a while to get to another review to write. However, I have now officially broken up from work for Christmas and I don’t return until the second week into 2020 so I see plenty of reading time in my immediate future.
Book 📖
I’ve read a handful of Stephen King’s books, but not even close to all. A friend of mine was reading Dr Sleep before watching the film adaptation and I thought hmmm maybe I should read The Shining AND Dr Sleep.
Description 🔖
Jack, Wendy and Danny Torrence are a young family with common problems. Jack is an alcoholic who has been known to have anger problems and often take his anger out on his family; sometimes physically. Jack gets clean, but the anger remains and he ends up losing his job. The only job offer that Jack has is to caretake for the Overlook Hotel over the winter. The hotel is located up in the mountains and there is no in and eat once the first winter snowfall hits. The Torrence family have no alternative but to move themselves into the Overlook; alone. At just five, Danny knows that the Overlook is not safe and his Shine tells him that they shouldn’t be there. But at five, what can poor Danny do? Danny’s premonitions slowly start to evolve into reality and it is a very real possibility that the Torrence family will not be leaving the Overlook Hotel once the mountain is clear.
General Thoughts 🤔
I’ve watched The Shining movie as I’m sure many have, however I watched it many many moons ago and although I had a slight recollection of the story, the book ended up being quite different to what I thought.
I don’t usually get frightened by horror whether it be books or movies. There was something about this book that obviously struck a chord with me though as I quite literally had a nightmare after reading before bed. And I mean petrifying. I can only attribute that to such a fantastic book.
Characters 👫👭👬
As I’m sure you can imagine, there aren’t many characters in the book. The majority of the story is told from the Overlook whilst it is occupied by three people. This only gives the reader a super deep insight into the family members individually and their relationships with one another. Jack intrigued me the most. I have so many outstanding questions about Jack that I know I’m not going to get answers to, but I’m cool with that.
Writing Style ✍🏽
It’s Stephen King for goodness sake and in my opinion, Stephen King at his finest. This isn’t just a horror book. It’s not all ghosts, ghouls and scary zombies. King found a way to draw on the readers emotions whilst petrifying us all at the same time. The family dynamic between the Overlook’s occupants interested me just as much as wanting to know what on Earth was going on in that creepy hotel!
Conclusion & Scoring 🎖
Considering I’m not a usual horror reader, I really enjoyed this book. I’m not quite sure how closely the film aligns to the book so I want to go away and watch that now. If you aren’t like me and you haven’t read this book (as I’m sure most of you already have), I would definitely recommend it if you feel like giving yourself the odd fright as well as the odd tear.
😍😍😍😍😩
Sarah in Readerland 