IT

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.” ~IT

IT by Stephen King: 2/5 Stars

Synopsis:

Welcome to Derry, Maine …

It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real …

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.

My Review:

*May contain a few spoilers*

Lord. Oh, Lord. I finally finished this giant book. Finally.

Let’s get on with this, shall we?

By the way, this review won’t contain a lot of spoilers. I just have one thing I wanna talk about that’s may be considered a spoiler? I don’t know if it’s actually a spoiler though. I’ll talk about that specific thing later though.

This book didn’t need to be that long. Also, if you’re gonna make a book this long it should at the very least be interesting. Shocker…it started to drag. Honestly, it started to drag on after a few pages haha. I’m sorry, I love descriptive books but King always takes it too far. He always over-describes everything! I feel like this book could be half as long and be just as good, but instead, he decided to describe a lot of things and add a lot of things that weren’t even necessary for the story. It was pointless.

Honestly, the only good thing about this book was the audio. The narrator was freaking amazing. That’s the only thing that kept me interested and the only thing that kept me reading. He did an amazing job of portraying the characters and showing their emotions. He definitely gets 5 stars from me.

I didn’t find this book scary at all. It could be creep every once in a while, but other than that it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat or freaked out at night. I didn’t lose sleep over the “horror” aspects in this book. Much like the movie as well. I didn’t find the movie to be scary either. I found it to be more of a psychological thriller I guess. So, I wouldn’t even categorize this book as horror if I’m honest…psychological thriller/fantasy is more accurate I suppose. Not sure what else. It’s different though that’s for sure.

It’s not like any other book I’ve read and I’m glad because I didn’t really enjoy this book. Actually, the more I read the less I started to enjoy it. The more I thought, “is it almost over?”. I’m actually upset I didn’t like this book more because it has a lot of great/high reviews and ratings. I was hoping that I would pick this book up and not want to put it down, but that wasn’t the case as y’all can see. I started this book months ago and I’m just now finishing it. Yikes.

Let’s talk about the “one thing” I wanted to talk about. Children having sex. What the f*ck?!?! The “reasoning” is that it’s supposed to bond them closer together blah, blah, blah. That’s beyond messed up and totally unnecessary. This book could have 100% not included that and been perfectly fine. I think it’s beyond weird and messed up that King thought that was a necessary thing to put in there. Like, they were bonded by cutting their hands with the bottle which I can understand since they’re KIDS. Yeah, a little blood bond because sure that makes way more sense for kids to bond themselves that way than freaking having sex with Beverley. That’s just gross. At least with the blood bond, they could say they saw it in a movie or whatever. The whole kids having sex to “bond” each other is just beyond creepy, weird, gross, and unnecessary.

Honestly, King writes a lot of things that are questionable, unnecessary, and gross. I just really disliked that he made all the boys have sex with Bev as a form of “bonding” them forever. It is just beyond unnecessary. The book literally would have been better if he didn’t add that. Like, they could have just had a freaking group hug or something. Yanno…like the whole cutting their palm to always remember and bond themselves. Yeah, that was perfectly fine. Why did he need to include that they had sex to be bonded? It doesn’t even make sense or work in my opinion. Just not necessary!! Bleh. Probably the scariest part of the whole book. Seriously, the bonding of them at the end when they cut their palms makes more sense than the whole creepy/gross sex thing.

I know for a lot of people the slang bothers them. I can even understand adding the slang because of the time period the novel is set in. Is it 100% necessary? No. However, I can still kinda understand adding that to add to the scene or whatever. I just feel like the kids having sex was too far though. King could have written this book without the slang and the book would have worked. Like I said I can understand the slang being in the book though. It can work because it actually goes with the small town and the time period. The kids having sex though? Nah. It doesn’t make any sense. Period.

I wouldn’t recommend this book. Honestly, the movies are a lot better. I like the movies and recommend those way more than this book. Won’t take as long either. The movies are pretty different from the book, obviously, but they’re actually good. The book is just…too much. Not a very good read. If you’re a King fan then you’ll probably enjoy this book. I don’t know.