“An entertaining and breezy read, with the stellar storytelling that has justly made King a literary legend.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
This new novel from the King of horror is part of his crime series which included Joyland. This story is about a young boy named Jamie, and just like that movie, Jamie can see dead people. Not only can he see them, he can talk them too, getting needed information from them.
Jamie even convinces his mother, who is a literary agent, when he talks to their neighbors dead wife and discovers he can find out from the deceased the location of some missing jewelry.
The real plot will evolve around his Mother’s girlfriend Liz, a detective on the police force. This relationship will prove to be the moving force of the story, for good and for bad.
In case you needed reminding, King writes horror and this story is no exception. Right at the beginning of the book King warns that this is a horror story and he is right.
This is a very easy, quick read which shouldn’t disappoint King fans even though some of the events in the story are quite predictable. You could knock it off in a day or two at the most.
King has set the bar so high in his genre that when measured against many of his past work this might tend to disappoint some readers, but King’s greatest strength in my opinion has always been how he writes about younger kids and that is what makes the book work. You can’t help sharing the angst Jamie goes through as each time he must interact with the dead he must also deal with his own fears. As always, King is King and I almost always end up enjoying his books.
Recommended.
Reviewed by:
Richard Franco
Added 7th July 2021
