Pet Sematary Book Review
Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! Today, I am back with another book review. I've always wanted to read a Stephen King novel, and I feel like I picked a really good one to start with! So, let's get into it!
Pet Sematary was recommended to me by a co-worker who has read a lot of King’s work. Now that I’ve read one of his books, I’ve been seeing people rank their top 10 favorites online, and Pet Sematary was always somewhere in the list of ten.
It’s always been a goal of mine to read a Stephen King novel and to be quite honest I’m not sure what has taken me so long. I feel like I started out with a real banger. In Pet Sematary, we follow the Creed family. Louis, his wife Rachel, and their kids Ellie and Gage. They moved to a small town in rural Maine as Louis has accepted a new position at a local university.
The Creed’s neighbor, Judd Crandall (CHECK spelling) quickly befriends Louis. They often sit out on Judd’s porch and drink beer. But one night, when Ellie’s cat, Church turns up dead, Judd takes Louis to bury it in the Pet Sematary, on a Micmac burial ground.
The burial ground is like a well-kept secret among some of the town’s people. Once you know about it, there’s this mysterious pull that you have to it. Throughout the novel, we see how Judd introduces it to Louis, and we see Louis slowly struggling with having this knowledge.
We see the effects of the burial ground starting with Church. Judd tells stories of pets coming back to life. He tells how their behavior changes, how the owners and those around could tell that something was off.
The entire time you’re reading, you know something bad is going to happen. There’s this impending sense of doom. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I loved this book for many reasons, one being the scariest part of the entire book is seeing how far people will go because of their grief, and I’m going to try to explain this without giving away any spoilers. The second half of the book (the start of part 2) felt like it came out of left field. I know I just said you’re expecting something bad to happen, but when the bad thing happens, you’re not prepared.
Once death comes, your mind travels back to the sematary, the questions Louis asked Judd, and you see Louis slowly start to consider that the burial ground isn’t that bad of a thing. He considers it as an option now to evade grief.
King said this was his scariest book, and I can see why. Not only is there the grief aspect, but there are the actual horrifying things that happen. Pets coming back to life, the things Louis does, the descriptions of Church once he comes back.
King’s writing is truly so remarkable. It’s the perfect amount of descriptive language with actions carrying the story. His writing is so surreal and it’s so easy to picture exactly what he’s saying.
Overall, the Kindle version of this book was about 580 pages. It is long, but I definitely think it’s worth it. The chapters were okay, some were really long, and some were short. The book is broken down long, parts as well which I liked.
I highly recommend checking this book out! I gave it 4/5 stars. I do plan on reading for Stephen King novels…. I think this might be my new obsession and just in time for fall!
Alright folks, that is all I have for this week! Come back next Wednesday for another blog post. As always, thank you for reading :)