The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - in and out over a few months

Pages - 659

Publisher - Hodder & Stoughton

Source - Bought

Blurb from Goodreads

Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.



My Review

This is a re read, I haven't read it since I was a kid. I love the movie (Kubrick version only recently seen the other one) and as I was back home I wanted to read it again. There is so much I forgot about the book like actually don't even remember reading but it has been a long time.

You get a bit of history on the Overlook, I really wish we would get a more indepth backstory though as the darkness is so fascinating especially the hold it can have over people. So for anyone not familiar with it Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy and little boy head to the Overlook hotel for Jack's new job, caretaker over the winter, isolated just the three of them. Jack is a recovering alcoholic, when in the grip of booze he lost a lot and has been making it up to Wendy and Danny since. The Overlook is more than just a hotel it is home to a darkness that can influence the people who spend time there and when the people are special, like little Danny the hotel and its spirits want him.

The book features dark themes, King's books always do, not just the supernatural but the evil and darkness within humans. We also have the good too, lengths some people will go to to protect others. We learn about the Shining and how extraordinary little Danny is and the more time he and his family are in the hotel the more creepy things happen.

The thing with King is he creates creepy, atmospheric books that creeps you out, baddies that are terrifying because they aren't always of our world but some are and equally as scary. The Shining is a classic, I loved it when I was younger and I think it still holds up all these years later, 5/5 for me. If you really want to creep yourself out, read it when staying in a hotel, every time I visit one, the corridors, no matter how it is decorated I always envision The Overlook.

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The Sanitorium by Sarah Pearse

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 3 days

Pages - 384

Publisher - Bantam Press

Source - Bought

Blurb from Goodreads

You won’t want to leave. . . until you can’t.

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.

An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.

Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge–there’s something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.

Elin is under pressure to find Laure, but no one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they are all in. . .


My Review

A sanatorium being transformed into a fabulous remote hotel, we open with the early stages of renovation and something dark happens, fast forward five years later to present day. The hotel is up and running and detective Elin Warner is on her way there with her o/h, invited by her brother, celebrating his engagement. Her relationship with her brother Isaac is strained to say the least, she is distrustful, suspicious and when Isaac's fiancé disappears things kick up a notch.

I feel like this would have had a book before this one, Elin has PTSD from an incident, she isn't sure she is going to go back. She is indecisive about moving forward in her relationship, there is a huge issue with her brother. The story does slowly tease out some of the details but I feel we could have done with a bit more on Elin's backstory. Maybe this will be revisited if this becomes a series? I dunno I just felt Elin was a bit hard to settle to. She does come to her own a bit once everything kicks off at the hotel.

The book does manage to keep a feeling of tension throughout, there is enough to keep you interested but I felt myself drifting a bit when reading this. To be fair to the author, I feel a lot of this was about me, we have a lot going on just now and my reading mojo is a bit off.

The story has a fair bit going for it, murder, stalking, unresolved family issues/dramas, relationship issues (more than a few), isolation, police investigation, it has a whole lot going on. I didn't love it but I didn't hate it, maybe a different time I would have received it better, 3/5 for me.

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