The Outsider by Stephen King #stephenking #simonandschuster #horror #monsters @absltmom

  Here I was traveling to New York while my wonderful husband was driving and how was I going to pass the time? Why not read the Stephen King book The Outsider, I thought and in true King fashion this book was a chunk of a novel. So head in the book, I was mesmerized as the time, miles, and pages flew. Why it was even a bother to stop for a bathroom break! I shushed my husband many times as I delved further and further into the story of a horrible murder done by a man who seemed to have the ability to be in two places at once. It was a riveting story and I thought wow, King is onto something here, something awesome, something that I would not care if my husband drove to Canada because it was that good, and I hate car rides! But then wow, the bottom fell out. What!!! Why did the awesomeness have to stop? Gosh, Mr King you were on a roll here but then it become what??? You wound up repeating the old format, tried and true as it has been, but now getting slightly worn and overworked. At this point yikes! it became a mediocre read and I became a reader disheartened and frustrated.

I do like King’s novels but so many of them recently have fallen into that predictability range of well there a monster and he is evil and there is some good guys who battle the monster. I like the format as old as it is getting, but in this book, it seemed to spoil that first half, so much so that I was quite glad when we reached our destination and I could push this book to the side. I did finish it in drips and drabs but it never picked up that amazing momentum it had in the beginning. King had something going really going, but he fell back into his old villain state that we have seen countless times in his books. So disappointing….

This was not a bad book, just one that could have been formidable and broken out of the tried and true. Instead it stayed ordinary and unimpressive.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes The Bill Hodges Trilogy, Revival, and Doctor Sleep. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers Association. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.