I finally read some Stephen King

I can't believe that it has taken me 31 years to read a Stephen King novel, but I've finally done it. I've read 3, in fact!

I decided that October would be a perfect time of the year to read my first King book, so I asked around my friends IRL to decide where to start. I was told that I should start with Finders Keepers, because it is more mystery/thriller, and less horror, than his others. I found out that this book is the 2nd book in a trilogy, but that it reads like a standalone. Of course, me being me, I decided that I needed to begin at the beginning, so I started with Mr. Mercedes, and then went on from there.

I loved this whole trilogy, but the 3rd book was definitely very different than the first two. I will review them all individually here, and then review the trilogy as a whole.

SPOILER ALERT!! The only book I can really review without spoilers is the first one, since it is a trilogy, so I am just going to warn you ahead of time, that there will be plenty of spoilers in this post.

Mr. Mercedes (★★★★★): Like I said, this was my first King, and I am so happy that this is where I started. I am not the biggest horror/scary story lover, so I was very happy when I heard that this is more mystery/thriller. The characters in this story were so real and the story was so realistic that it was freaky. I didn't realize until I really got into it that this book was written much more recently than I thought (2014), so a lot of the world events that were mentioned were either real-world things that just happened recently, or they were definitely things that I see realistically happening in the present. I certainly grew to love Ret Det Hodges, and his friend Jerome, and obviously started my trilogy-long detesting of Brady Hartsfield. I loved all the different rep of mental illnesses, including depression and anxiety. I just really liked how easily King was able to make me care about all the characters, even if they weren't in the story for very long. I definitely couldn't wait to get to book 2.

Finders Keepers (★★★★☆): I had heard that this book could be read as a stand-alone, but I didn't really believe it. Of course, I had to read the first book first, right? Wrong. There are definitely a few things in here that wouldn't have made sense without reading Mr. Mercedes, but for the most part, it's a completely different story. A good one, too. I had a little bit of a hard time following all the back-and-forth switching points of view, but that could've been because I listened to most of this on audiobook. Maybe some formatting in the physical book would've helped with that. I really liked all the bits of how fanboy-ish our protagonist was (before he got cray about it, that is.) Getting the little teaser bits of Brady mentions in this book got me so excited to read book 3, which was tempered only a little bit by the allusions to telepathy and telekinesis in those mentions.

End of Watch (★★★☆☆): I didn't like this one quite as much as the other two books in the series, but I think that's only because the trilogy kind of switched genres on me for this last book. I would classify the first and second books as thriller, but this third book is more sci-fi. I think if I knew going into it that's what I'd be getting, I might have liked it a little more. I still loved all the characters, and I think it wrapped up nicely.

Overall, I loved this series, and I can't wait to read some more King. Also, End of Watch was the first book on my Scallywagathon TBR, so I've gotten at least 1 book accomplished in my first readathon of the month. That's something, huh?

Currently reading:
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Her Body and Other Parties

Keep reading!
Katy