Format: Audiobook

Primary Doorways: Character, Plot

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Read for: Page turner with strong character voices and a side note of poetry-love

Favorably reviewed in the NYT, Stephen King novel’s Holly, follows the titular character during her investigation into the disappearance of a young woman in a college town. I never had any doubt that Holly would be safe from the villains of the novel. The real stakes of this novel are introduced in the character of Barbara, a seventeen year old poet, who is the mentee and later friend of a famous elderly poet in the neighborhood. King gets on his soap box in this novel, using various characters to play out conflicts between the vaccinated and the conspiracy theorists or old school professors and the next generation of diverse, PC-aware teachers.

Barbara, on the other hand, is a fully fleshed out character and not simply an avatar for a perspective. Perhaps that’s why the stakes feel higher when she has several of her own near misses with the ridiculously evil villains of this story.