WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

Welp. Now seems like as good a time as any to do a five-star throwback book review.

I’m deep in the mud with wedding planning and house hunting so it’s been a bit of a slog catching up on my reading. I’m currently in the middle of The Children, by Melissa Albert, and The Impossible Fortune, the fifth entry into the Thursday Murder Club series, by Richard Osman, and both are delightful. But the truth is, I’m moving slowly at the moment, and this site has gone a little dormant.

I suppose this is a bit of a tease, but I have a total of eight five-star rated books in my entire history. Four others have already been blogged about here, which means I had four to choose from for this entry. I decided to go with Pet Semetary because it’s my favorite book by my favorite author.

But first, let’s go back for a moment. I know what people probably think of when they hear the name Stephen King. They think scary. They think of several movies they’ve seen from the ‘master of horror’. The Shining, Children of the Corn, IT, Carrie. That’s perfectly fine and a lot of these movies are excellent. I’m a gigantic movie fan myself and that’s a perfectly acceptable entry point.

But that also means that the worst examples of Stephen King adaptations also get attributed to him. And the irony is that three of the very best King books I’ve ever read have pretty lousy adaptations attached.

The first is the terribly corny and over-acted James Franco show 11/22/63. I truly hate that some people will write this book off because the show was so lame. Please please please read it. It’s one of the greatest love stories ever told. Period.

Another is a five-star book I’ve yet to review on this site, so I’ll keep it secret for now. But let’s just say there’s a mini-series in the works that I pray fixes that disaster of a movie which completely missed all that made fans fall in love with this story in the first place. In Mike Flanagan we trust.

And finally, today’s entry. Pet Semetary has perfectly fine, if not a little hokey, jump-scare film adaptations that are – again – perfectly fine. But this novel is SO MUCH MORE than that. I want to really hammer that point home.

The book is not about scary ‘zombie’ pets, as the movies largely portray. This book dives into the human psyche at its core. It explores grief and loss and the impossible difficulty of letting go of loved ones. It features an equal-parts infuriating and unfortunately relatable protagonist that holds a mirror to some of our must regrettable, yet understandable, traits as flawed human beings.

Having seen both the original film and the 2019 remake – again, both perfectly fine movies – prior to reading the book, I was absolutely blown away by its depth. King, himself, describes this story as the scariest book he’s ever written because of how deeply personal it was.

(These reviews are always spoiler-free, but I feel I can reveal at least the introductory plot here because the real value to the novel is about so much more than this.)

Essentially, the main character’s cat gets killed by a speeding eighteen-wheeler in front of the family’s new home in Maine. There is a mystical graveyard located in the nearby woods that, when buried there, allows the recently deceased to come back to life. But these reanimated ‘zombies,’ for lack of a better term, aren’t quite right. They’re different… leading to the most famous and haunting quote from the book: “sometimes, dead is better”.

The story, which goes far deeper than what I’ve just described, was inspired by a real-life home that King and his family stayed in for a brief stint. This house was near a very busy road and there was an incident where King’s son nearly ran into traffic and got hit by a speeding semi. Hence, King playing with this idea of ‘what if’ and ‘what length would I go to to undo this tragedy’.

The book apparently scared King enough that he hid it away in a drawer and refused to release it. Encouragement from his wife and an impending publishing deadline finally forced his hand (and thank god it did) which is how we got here at all.

I will not go further into the details because, quite frankly, it’s not that long of a book and you should all ABSOLUTELY read this one. If you’re an audiobook person, the narrator is actually Michael C. Hall – the star of Showtime’s Dexter – and ranks among the best audiobooks I’ve ever listened to, so that’s a great option, as well.

But let me leave you with this. Pet Semetary is quite possibly my favorite novel and I do not say that frivolously. If you liked the movies, I’m sure you’ll love the book. But more importantly, if you didn’t like the movies, I am also quite sure that you’ll love the book. I wholeheartedly endorse this one. Please give it a shot.

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Pet Semetary by Stephen King