This really does feel like two books that were interwoven together - all I will say is that one story is massively better than the other in nearly every way: a much more interesting plot, more intriguing characters, better pacing. I really hate to say that generally this book felt really padded. The vibe I got is that while he was so desperate to write for Holly again and had two ideas, he didn't have enough material for either idea so just kinda shunted them together. Usually, I get through King books with the kind of rampant hunger that borders on mania but I really felt the page count in this one. It feels bad to consider because the afterword covers the general issues that King had writing this one, apparently it faced a number of rewrites while he was also combating hip surgery - so the bitter Holly hater in my heart can't help but be softened as a Constant Reader of Mr. King and my knowledge of how much he adores writing this character. That being said Tabitha read the draft for this and said "do better".
Holly is... Holly. She's the MC in this one and if you're a fan, this is a return to all her Hollyness along with a few familiar faces from other members of the Finders Keepers universe. If this is your first foray into her series, I feel like you could still reasonably enjoy it even if there are a number of callbacks to both Holly's books (The Outsider, If It Bleeds and Holly) along with Bill Hodges' series where she was first introduced. I'll add that there is not a lot of horror elements even if it's noted that way on Goodreads - there's violence but it reads more like a thriller, I'll say that one of the early scenes involving murder did genuinely make me feel a pang of dread/anxiety because of how it was written. :blobaffection:
Many have issues with King's writing in equal measure of his fans, so I'll just say that as per usual, great dialogue, character work and general fantastic prose can be found even if there's a lot of lacklustre elements here. King has never shied away from political elements in his books but this one in particular is very front-loaded with it which could leave a bad taste in some's mouths. Generally I'd say the villains are what are best to look forward to in this one. As King tends to do in the Gibneyverse, he shows us who the killer is early on and gives us a howdunnit instead of a whodunnit and I really vibed with how he wrote this particular character.
This is not my most poorly reviewed King book - that goes to Billy Summers but this is comfortably nestled between Billy Summers (3 :starry:) and Holly (3.5 :starry:). I think my verdict is that I wouldn't seek this out to buy in hardback but King fans wouldn't favour badly in checking it out in a library or waiting for a paperback release.
