Pet Sematary by Stephen King (not-so-proper Book Review)

Hi Blisses,

TITLE: Pet Sematary
BY: Stephen King
GENRE: Horror, Thriller
PUBLICATION: Nov. 14th 1983
RATING: Five Blissful Chilling Pages with Lilies Graves

— F E W S P O I L E R S —

First of all, I wasn’t a Stephen King’s fan. Key word: WASN’T. I mean, I know he’s a great writer based on everything I’ve read from him before Pet Sematary, but I wasn’t a fan. I was just not into horror novels. But reading Pet Sematary made me a huge fan. I think I can just end my review here because that says a lot, right? But please keep on reading because I still have a lot of things to say, though I will share nothing but what I felt about the book. Fact About Me: You’d know how much I love the book I read when my review leaned into emotions and ignored the technical aspects of the book.

Pet Sematary featured the Creeds Family, a family that is perfect, at least for me. A physician husband (Louise), a beautiful wife(Rachel), daughter(Ellie), an adorable baby(Gage) and a cat named Church. The story took off with the Creeds Family moving to a new house in Ludlow, Maine. The house is situated in a large property including the woods where the neighbourhood kids created a cemetery for pet. The said cemetery is showed to them by their new elderly neighbor, Jud. But Jud also told and later showed Louise about the ancient Indian burial ground there, deeper in the woods. Though it is only when their pet cat Church died while Rachel and the kids are at a Holiday, that Louise learned the mystery of the burial ground. For Church came back, strange but alive, and his family didn’t even learn that Church died. Then the terror begun.

I watched the latest movie adaptation before reading this book and at first that affected the thrill and mystery of the story for me, but once I realized that there’s a lot  that the movie changed, my interest increased. (By the way, I think the old adaptation hold truer to the book than the latest) I wasn’t even caring that I didn’t like Rachel as a character. All I care about is how dark the story is getting. From the beginning, based on Louise thoughts, it’s very obvious his psyche would play a big role in the events that would follow their move in Maine. I guess that’s why he was warned by the boy who died in the University where Louise works.

“Don’t go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember.”

Stephen King, (Pet Sematary)

This is a tale that is downright frightening. It was written to scare and that’s exactly what it did. I swear to God, the hair on my nape rose more than a few times while reading. I think I read somewhere that this is one of Stephen King’s scariest works and I agree. Hands down. Not that I’ve read a lot of his works but Carrie, Under the Dome, Salem’s Lot and IT fell low in my list compared to Pet Sematary. When I read Carrie and It long time ago, I was young but didn’t jump at every creak while with this, I cussed a few times at my bedroom door, which isn’t made of hard wood so it moves and creak with little wind.

Another fact about me: The idea of a dead person acting as if their alive really scared me. It’s very chilling. Zombies are different because they move slower and just different. Also ghosts are not that scary because well, they’re just ghosts and I’m not easily scared, really. But the idea of a supposedly dead living in the same house, in the same bed, with living, breathing people, that’s really frightening, I can’t even. That really scares me. When I watched the film, I didn’t turn off my night light for three nights and the movie wasn’t even that good.

Sure, this book has its fair share of flaws. Like I said, I never liked Rachel’s character and also it’s written in a classic Stephen King’s way which always makes me think he writes his books longer than necessary. I didn’t mind because I was too invested in the story and the chills.

I feel like I’m just repeating words and not really saying much so I’m stopping now. Just know that even with its flaws I rated Pet Sematary five chilling stars. I’m going to watch the old adaptation sometime this week and hopefully, it’s way better than the latest. Why, I want to see little Gage come back to life. In the latest adaptation, it was Ellie who died and came back to life.

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What do you think of this book? Have you read it or planning to? Let’s chat.

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