Being a true Mainer, while my mother was pregnant with me, she was reading a book by Stephen King. Specifically she was reading The Dark Half by Stephen King. In that book there is a character named Shayla and that is where my name came from. Growing up in Maine already gives you a sense of closeness with Mr. King but having him be the reason for my namesake always drew me even closer to him. In fact, for my 23rd birthday I was gifted with Stephen King’s personal copy of The Dark Half that he signed for me. I grew up watching many Stephen King shows and movies and read a few books. My favorite book of all time being The Long Walk by Stephen King, himself. All in all, however, I’ve only read about 5 of Mr. King’s books in total. I feel like this weird connection and fascination I have with him has ultimately only led me to one place. And that place is right here, preparing to read all his books. With all honesty, I get crazy ideas like this all the time but only seldom do I see ...
Before reading: A new King decade! Weirdly enough, this is the decade we started this journey in so I'm excited to circle back to it. This is a set of four novellas, two of which I am familiar with and two that I am not. This is usually a pretty good format from King so I'm excited to get into them. As usual, I will do an overall review as well as individual reviews for each story. After reading: Wow wow wow. That was actually so good. Dare I say better than Different Seasons ? At first I would have said no, because Shawshank and The Body are so so good. However, after stewing for a little bit I would say this one is actually better because all four stories are worth reading. While this is a very hard read because all of the stories are, get this, "full dark no stars," it is also an enjoyable read. In the afterword, King says what ties these stories together is the fact that they are all about dark and terrible situations and how people would respond to them. While ...