After moving into their new house, the Creed’s new neighbor, Jud Crandall, shows them the backyard path to the Pet Sematary. The busy street they live on kills many animals, and the local kids started the cemetery for that reason. When Louis Creed’s daughter’s cat dies, Jud decides to show Louis the hidden portion of the cemetery–the Micmac burial ground.

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Why this book?: It was Halloween, and I felt like horror. It was also a fairly decent movie!

 Slow, slower, slowest

The detail that really ruined this book for me was how slowly paced it was. With horror books, you’re supposed to be on the edge of your seat for the entire thing, flipping pages one after another after another so you end up finishing the book in half the time you were expecting. At least, that’s what I expect.

Pet Sematary was probably the slowest horror novel I’ve ever read. It’s right ahead of The Shining, another King book that I was extremely disappointed in. Simple activities and happenings that should have only taken a paragraph took pages, describing everything to the most minute detail. It was thorough, and while normally that’s nice, this time it was just exhausting.

Lifeless, hollow characters

In addition to the snail-slow writing, I really found no interesting characters. They were all dull and lifeless, really never causing me to care about any of them. I thought Louis was selfish and stuck-up, and Rachel to be annoying and had zero original character. Jud was a little more interesting, prompting me to believe that it might have been better if the book was based further back, and focused on Jud and Norma, and the events of discovering the Pet Sematary and it’s dark secret later on.

The kids were harder for King to screw up. The way Ellie just randomly had prophetic dreams irked me, because they’re just pushed in there without thought. It makes no sense for her to be prophetic at all, if only to further the plot.

I did find the overall arching plot to be interesting and intriguing, and that’s the main reason why I read all the way through. The writing, while extremely slow, was still fairly decent.

Final Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Overall?

It was a nice idea, but was ruined with the dreadfully slow writing and lifeless characters. I found myself falling asleep reading this book, and nearly DNF-ing it.

Would I Recommend?

Probably . . . not? I mean, others might find it amazingly good, but the writing just was so slow that I didn’t see what everyone else seemed to have been seeing.

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Additional Information:

Published: November 14th, 1983

Publisher: Pocket Books

Page Count: 562

Genre: Horror/Thriller/Supernatural

Synopsis: via Goodreads

When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son-and now an idyllic home. As a family, they’ve got it all…right down to the friendly car. But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth-more terrifying than death itself-and hideously more powerful. The Creeds are going to learn that sometimes dead is better.