A review by joshuabushen
The Shining by Stephen King

5.0

I don't usually enjoy books from the horror/thriller genres but The Shining is an outlier. The book starts glacially slowly, the Torrance's don't get left alone in the Overlook Hotel until around the 200 page mark. But when this book gets going, it really gets going. After the Torrance's are left alone the sense of isolation you feel reading is staggering and the horror builds as the Overlook Hotel begins to work on each member of the family. The shifting perspective used by King throughout the novel gives the reader insights into the mental state of all three family members as the narrative progresses. This allows tension to build for the reader without the characters in the novel realising that tension is building within their own family, until it's too late. The best King I've read so far.