A review by minimicropup
Holly by Stephen King

challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense slow-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? No

5.0

Our home was sparkling, our dinners ridiculously complicated (so vegetarian tho) from me seeking every opportunity to listen uninterrupted. I love a good food/consumption horror. Holly and her crew are also such characters. They felt like real people I spent time with; I really miss them. And even though I wasn’t rooting for the villainry, I was captivated by their story too. It wasn’t perfection but I think that’s what I liked about it. The story had its cringe moments, but the Author’s Note, context, and a bit of patience helped me understand the intention.   
 
Energy: Foreboding. Endearing. Ravenous. 
Scene: 🇺🇸 Fictional Deerview and surrounding cities in Midwestern USA
Perspective: We mainly follow a private investigator reluctantly taking on the case of a mother searching for her missing young adult daughter, and an elderly academic couple investing in their health.
 
🐕 Howls: The black-and-white split in characters where vaxxed are Democrat and unvaxxed are Republican. However, I haven’t lived an American experience, so I can’t really comment on this; was it over-the-top or true to form? It just felt like a jarring Statement sometimes.   

🐩 Tail Wags: Diverse ages with character development. Immersive, cinematic writing. The story. The balance of gradual suspense-building with high-stakes scenarios that I could effortlessly imagine. Capturing 2021-2022 without me wanting to put it down. The mix of nuanced and in-your-face dangers of ‘science as infallible’ contrasted with the dangers of dismissing science entirely. 
 
🤔 Random Thoughts:
  • Check the content heads-up because COVID pandemic times were prominent. It brought out all my gratefulness that we are no longer in 2021-2022, while also giving nostalgic feels for the quieting down of the world. But it could be too soon, too much, or too political depending on reader experiences.
  • My favourite tropes + slow-burn made this a perfect match for me. If you’re looking for nuanced (or zero) COVID themes, or something where the stakes remain high and are plot driven, it could feel never-ending.
 
🎬 Tale-Telling: Breezy third-person omniscient narration for most characters. Non-linear but easy to follow going back to 2018. 
👥 Characters: Charmingly unhinged, quirky but likeable, and everything in between 
🤓 Reader Role: In the know. Hovering above the town, lurking in corners, following characters around
🗺️ World-Building: Immersive, sensory, atmospheric, intimate
🔥 Fuel: Driven by character evolution and emotional investment. Why are our villains doing what they’re doing? Does it actually work? Relatable dilemmas, mad scientist intrigue, and characters crossing paths in surprising but not contrived ways. Ultimately leading to well-timed high-stakes survival. 
📖 Cred: Believable, relatable, true to reality. Moments of hyper-realism for the grittier parts of life. The crimes felt like something that could be a Netflix ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ crime doc. 
🚙 Journey: Steady and attention-keeping. Like an unmapped go-with-the-flow road trip with friends, scary stories, and a cozy blanket in serial killer territory, later realizing how easily it could have gone wrong. 
 
Mood Reading Match-Up:
  • Forever Young. Footsteps. Car doors. Skateboards. Doorbells. Silence. Knife chopping. Aromatic roast smells. Dessert spoons clinking. Zoom calls.
  • Immersive, cinematic style strangeness and descriptive food and body horror
  • Demented serial killer psychoanalysis
  • Co-sleuthing with private investigator, missing persons mysteries
 
Content Heads-Up: Confinement (kidnapping). Food horror. Vomit, body fluids. Loss of a parent. Dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease. COVID-19 (deaths, masking, vaccinations, mandates, politicization, uncertainty; character opinions; descriptive, thematic, on page). Homophobia (character views and opinions; slurs and rants on page). Racism (character views and opinions; slurs and rants on page). Smoking (nicotine; descriptive, on page, cravings). Medical-Cancer (brief; on page). Medical-Alcoholism (self-medicating; on page, descriptive). 
 
Rep: Gay. Heterosexual. Cisgender. Black and White Americans. Diverse body sizes.  
 
📚 Format: Everand Audio and Digital
 
🥰 Potential Fav of 2024. 
 
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