Author: Stephen King
Year published: 2023
Category: Adult fiction (thriller)
Pages: 464
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (OH)
Summary: When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency, hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly Gibney is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just passed away. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny’s desperate voice makes it impossible to turn her down.
Meanwhile, mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are also harboring a shocking, unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to…for they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Now Holly must summon all of her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver these unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries in this chilling and unforgettable masterwork from Stephen King.
Review: I don't read horror novels, so the only Stephen King books I read are the non-horror ones (links to my reviews): Billy Summers, Mr Mercedes, and Outsider. I'd heard good things about Holly and somehow managed to put it off until October, so I told myself it was a Halloween read.
King is such a good writer; he pulled me into the story from the first pages. And Holly is a character that we've seen in Mr. Mercedes and Outsider, so that's fun (even though it's been so long since I've read those two novels that I don't remember her details). I like that she is flawed and real. Her grieving for the loss of her mother (this happens at the very beginning, so it isn't a spoiler) is raw and real.
It's interesting to read a thriller that tells you who the "bad guy" is right at the beginning. I kind of like it, and I enjoyed thinking about how and when Holly was going to figure it out. About a quarter of the way in, there is a revelation about Emily and Roddy Harris. Ew. That's all I'll say so I don't spoil the novel if you haven't read it yet.
King does an amazing job of building tension, keeping the reader flipping the pages, and weaving a story that is intense and so well done. I flew through the second half of this book; 464 pages felt like nothing.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Cover Lovers--the name of a flower in the title (Holly)
- Mount TBR
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