Dr Sleep, Stephen King – A Review.

Dr Sleep by Stephen King.

Synopsis… “Following a childhood haunted by terrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance has been drifting for decades. Finally, he settles into a job at a nursing home where he draws on his remnant ‘shining’ power to help people pass on. Then he meets Abra Stone, a young girl with the brightest ‘shining’ ever seen. But her gift is attracting a tribe of paranormals. They may look harmless, old and devoted to their Recreational Vehicles, but The True Knot live off the ‘steam’ that children like Abra produce. Now Dan must confront his old demons as he battles for Abra’s soul and survival…”

Overall rating 2 out of 5 stars.

My review…

I’m sad fellow book bloggers, I’m super sad 😦

I thought I would adore this book, I usually LOVE Stephen King and rate all of his book incredibly highly, but I just can’t do that with Dr Sleep… I would be lying if I said I enjoyed it.

The actual layout of the book put me off right from the start, with the different parts and then chapters within chapters, it confused me and I found it very hard to keep a track of where I was in the book.

The story itself, and whilst I shouldn’t compare it to The Shining you can’t help but not because it literally is the follow on story from that, was awful and should have just stayed in the drafts.

It felt, to me, like there was no clear direction this story was going in and a lot of the elements from The Shining were brought into this book but they felt different and wrong somehow. Almost as if King had forgotten to reread his own book before he wrote the sequel.

At points the book would jump years in the space of a few lines, which frustrated me no end and made it hard to keep up with what was going on.

The introduction of the True Knot was good, it added another angle to the story and I loved how the members were described and written, they had this real earthy feel to them and they felt quite cult like.

But the true standout of this novel was Abra, she was the shining star in a book that otherwise would have been unredeemable for me. I loved how she was written, how headstrong she was and I enjoyed any parts of the book that featured her immensely.

To top off this book the ending was absolutely appalling, it just summed up the rest of the book for me.

I definitely will not read this again and I’m sad to say how disappointed I am in this one because I usually love King’s books. Let me know if you’ve read it and what you thought!

Until next time, Em xxx