Review - Later, by Stephen King

Later by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Later is a return to Stephen King's true style, It feels like a long time since he's written anything like it, and as a good, believable storyline too.

It's written in first person as an account of something that happened in the characters childhood, looking back from the future as thought still processing it. It draws parallels with of the film Sixth Sense in that the main character can see dead people, but with a more detailed rational understanding of what is happening. And it details a specific event, which, as the main character, Jamie Conklin, repeatedly reminds the reader, is a horror story, about a dead person who haunts him and how he initially stops it and how it helps him in the end. It's also a story about how he is used and abused by his mother's ex-girlfriend.

I loved the supernatural element in this horror story, and the details it builds. As always, Stephen King is the master of character building and we get to really relive the story with the character through his eyes and get to know everyone and be fully engaged. There are also some clever twists here and there, particularly at the ending, that adds to it's dark, intriguing tone.

A compulsive read that doesn't strictly sit in the Hard Case Crime genre it is published in, but crosses over well into the supernatural and horror. It's not for the faint-hearted.


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