Reviews

Rose Madder by Stephen King

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danielvanbeethoven's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and probably one of the most brutal Stephen King books. Brutal in the sense of "very hard to stomach". Norman Daniels is probably one of the best - hence one of the most terrible - villains I've ever read, and definitely among the most terrifying. Whereas Rosie McClendon, his fugitive wife, quickly becomes incredibly relatable. In general, King displays some of his best character work here, even with all of the side characters. And, once more, he creates great female characters, as he did in Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, or Insomnia. (I've found 90's King to be even better than most of his earlier stuff, since I adore each of the aforementioned books).

A note regarding the violence: Rose Madder opens with a truly harrowing scene of domestic abuse. If you can't handle that, then this book probably won't be for you. (In general, this book contains a lot of violence against women which is described quite graphically, though it is very clear that the author doesn't condone any of it.)

octopie89's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

briarsreviews's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad slow-paced

4.0

I won't lie... The cover intrigued me. A Stephen King book with a cow on the cover? And it's a Stephen King book, so I felt like I kind of needed to add more to my horror pile. My city is quite lame when it comes to recommending and selling good horror books. I really need to go to my local indie store now that it's almost October... they'll have tons...

Anywho, this is one of King's better reads, in my opinion. It's still full of naked women and feels anti-woman at times with how much we put the main character through, but this one was scary in a different way. What if your abusive ex comes to find you and won't stop until you are dead? Yeah, that's a fear for most women and is sadly quite true for too many women. And I think he did a good job making this even more terrifying.

This one is violent, so reader beware. I don't want to go into it too much because this book was SUPER traumatic for me to read...so trigger warnings everywhere. Stamp this book, sticker it - TRAUMA in big red letters. But as a read? Traumatically good.

Oh, and it changes over to fantasy randomly so know it's not just a purely realistic horror book.

But the title? Yeah, it's the name of a colour! Who knew!

Four out of five stars.

nicole_marissa's review against another edition

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5.0

One of my favorite books, this is also the only book I've re-read more than twice. Great story line with a good pace that makes you wish you never had to put it down.

joshuachan11's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The main story is okay, but the book assumes you have read a different book that connects I'm sure would help with a lot of context for the confusing parts of the book, but I haven't read the other books so it's just confusing
2 5 out of 5 stars

yodisborg's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Nicholas Sparks via Stephen King in the worst aspects of both. Meandering plot with sudden romance and the villain morphs into a monster and flimsy pretext for a bull mask to be fiund