Oliver Howard
🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑 I think with any book of this length, you are bound to feel invested in the story and characters. And though I did, I was underwhelmed by *how* invested I was in the characters. All of the characters were likable enough, but I never felt super attached to any of them in particular. The reason I read this book was because of how highly people praised the story of friendship and all of the characters, but to me, that was not the strong suit of the book so I was a little disappointed in that regard. Also, what the hell was *that* scene? I knew it was in the book, but I thought there'd be at least some sort of justifiable reason for it. But no, King is just kind of weird. My last critique is there definitely was a lot of fluff in this book and could have been cut down. He spent too much time in the interludes and often went off on tangents that didn't have much to do with the plot. I like his descriptive style, but he seems to get distracted easily when writing. Now for the things I liked: The plot, the horror, and the structure. The plot was all I wanted out of this story. I felt the mystery, the fear, and while controversial, I actually really enjoyed the cosmic aspect at the end of the book. It was trippy and weird but also kind of fun. The one negative there was that It became too real and lost some of its mystery and therefore became less scary to me. Almost all of the horror scenes were actually pretty scary. The two stand outs were when Ben was walking home and first encountered It and the one with the refrigerator and the leaches. I also thought the use of the two time periods was really well done and added to the book. I haven't seen the movies, but I imagine they lose some of the emotional beats because they are linear. I thought it especially worked well at the end when they are fighting Pennywise in both time periods and you get to see the difference in their approaches.
🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑 I think with any book of this length, you are bound to feel invested in the story and characters. And though I did, I was underwhelmed by *how* invested I was in the characters. All of the characters were likable enough, but I never felt super attached to any of them in particular. The reason I read this book was because of how highly people praised the story of friendship and all of the characters, but to me, that was not the strong suit of the book so I was a little disappointed in that regard. Also, what the hell was *that* scene? I knew it was in the book, but I thought there'd be at least some sort of justifiable reason for it. But no, King is just kind of weird. My last critique is there definitely was a lot of fluff in this book and could have been cut down. He spent too much time in the interludes and often went off on tangents that didn't have much to do with the plot. I like his descriptive style, but he seems to get distracted easily when writing. Now for the things I liked: The plot, the horror, and the structure. The plot was all I wanted out of this story. I felt the mystery, the fear, and while controversial, I actually really enjoyed the cosmic aspect at the end of the book. It was trippy and weird but also kind of fun. The one negative there was that It became too real and lost some of its mystery and therefore became less scary to me. Almost all of the horror scenes were actually pretty scary. The two stand outs were when Ben was walking home and first encountered It and the one with the refrigerator and the leaches. I also thought the use of the two time periods was really well done and added to the book. I haven't seen the movies, but I imagine they lose some of the emotional beats because they are linear. I thought it especially worked well at the end when they are fighting Pennywise in both time periods and you get to see the difference in their approaches.