Two books in, and I'm still over here waiting for that Stephen King magic to hit me.

But let's talk about Carrie first. So this book has been on my TBR for ages. Every time I mention I want to try more Stephen King, this book always seems to come up. And now having read it, I get it. I can totally see why this debut would've put King on the map and marked him as a literary force to be reckoned with.

My predominant thought while reading this book is that it sure feels like a feminine rage story. But instead of being female empowerment, it's more like disempowerment. Every female in here is a corruption of their circumstances—Carrie's mother, the popular girls in school who bullied Carrie, even Sue and Tommy who tried to be nice to her. They all came together in a tornado of events and emotions that created and fed the monster in Carrie.

This is a relatively fast read, eschewing the more traditional chapter divide for three distinct parts. Every few pages, we switch from one point of view to another, which helps to keep things moving along. King is well known for his doorstoppers, of which thankfully this is not one of them, thus making it a less intimidating choice for a novice like me.

So why only 3 stars? Honestly, I think it just comes down to personal preference. For me, I like my horror to be a bit spooky or creepy. But here, the horror comes from how far these kids would go to bully and hurt each other, which is less spine tingling and more just sad. As for the telekinesis (the only paranormal element in here), I suspect it's something I would've found scarier in my younger days, but as an adult, it just doesn't raise the hairs on my arms anymore.

More crucially, I thought the structure of the story hindered rather than added to its suspense. Often during pivotal moments, we come into it already knowing what's about to happen, thanks to the preceding scene in which a witness was interviewed into spilling the beans. Not gonna lie, that kind of puzzled me. I thought you always want to take the reader unawares and surprise them, not tell them what's going to happen first, then spell out it out for them in long form what you already gave away.

This also leans heavily into Americana, with its setting of small town New England and its rituals of prom and locker rooms and cliquey antics. And this conjuring of high school nostalgia, in all of its good and bad, is a driving force behind the reader's connection to the story. But it didn't quite land that way for me, as it invokes a time I was navigating language and cultural barriers that perhaps shielded me from such unpleasantness. As a result, many of these elements in the story felt over the top to me, but I bet those who fully grew up here would beg to differ.

Maybe one last reason is that it felt dated to me. I know people call Stephen King's books timeless, so I apologize for having a dissenting opinion. For me, some of the female portrayals tended toward stereotypes and the dialogues during the interviews felt like conversations of a bygone era.

I can see why this book is still so popular after so many decades. It is a bold story told in an unapologetically striking manner, and it certainly keeps the reader engrossed throughout. I just didn't connect with it the way I hoped, but that isn't a knock on the story, just on my ability to get more out of it.

I'm still a Stephen King novice at this point. I know he's written like a bajillion books, but I've only read a paltry two. Neither have been homeruns for me, so my search continues.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars

My first Stephen King, though by the looks of things, maybe I picked the wrong one to start with?

The premise intrigued me. A boy is assaulted and murdered in a small town. Several people saw one of the town's most well-known citizens in the area of the body at the time of the crime covered in blood. There is also fingerprint and DNA evidence, all seemingly pointing to the same person. However, he has a ironclad alibi. So what is going on?

Let me start by saying I can see why so many people liked this story. The plot unfolds in an interesting and compelling way, and knowing beforehand the sort of author Stephen King is, I was prepared for the direction of this story.

But for me, one of the things that didn't work was that the crime came across as too gratuitously gruesome, and not in a fun way. Sure, you can kill people in ever more grotesque ways as a means to shock and discomfit readers, but what's the point?

At 560 pages, this was also about 200 pages too long. There was so much unnecessary detail and background, and the dialogue was often rambling and filled with tangential asides. There was so much information I didn't need, and I was often bored, constantly flipping ahead to see where the action would be, then catching myself and coming back to read all the minutia I was subconsciously trying to skip.

Probably my biggest negative is that this just wasn't a pleasant read. Almost every law enforcement official in here, in particular a detective named Ralph, was written to be insufferable and incompetent buffoons. They had evidence suggesting Terry may be the killer, but they also had irrefutable evidence that he wasn't. Instead of taking that to mean that their investigation was incomplete, they ignored evidence when convenient and doubled down on their conviction of this possibly innocent man.

The book was then filled with Ralph feeling sorry for himself that his case wasn't as smooth as he'd hoped, while the DA egged him on to prosecute and his wife consoled him by telling him it's not his fault he may have arrested the wrong person. Like, come on. Am I supposed to feel sorry for these imbeciles?

Even though this is the first book I've read by Stephen King, now I'm not so sure I want to check out more. I read for fun, and I just don't enjoy stories of gruesomely violent crimes and maliciously unlikable characters and meaningless detail. Every once in a while, I come across a book that should be a great story, is well plotted and well written, but I just don't connect with it. And this book fits that description exactly.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars