"At night your thoughts have an unpleasant way of slipping their collars and running free."

I read Bag of Bones with a group of reviewer friends, and I really struggled to get through this one. It starts off well enough. King does a good job at writing grief, and it's easy to feel for Mike in the beginning. It was slow-going, but it still held my interest.

Things started going downhill for me when Mattie came in. I feel like there was way too much effort putting into making the reader care about a one-dimensional character, and it just didn't work for me. There's one scene with Mattie in it, and then pages and pages of background about her to immediately follow up.

I may just be in a bad mood about it because I read another King book with a solid love story earlier this year. This one was just flat insta-love, and I had little to no interest in their story.

I know that this book was published in 1998, but it's hard to look past the ****** interactions with women in this novel. I don't think it would have frustrated me as much if Mike would have been written as a villain, but he's supposed to be the protagonist. He claims to care about Mattie, but always imagines her as not being poor. He constantly mentions her poverty, and makes jokes about her clothes & trailer. It was ridiculous.

**CW RAPE**
**POSSIBLE SPOILER**

A woman in this book is raped, and is made into a villain for having a desire for revenge. This was ****** up by itself, but she's also the only black woman in this book, so there's no representation. The old white guy saves everyone from the sexually abused angry black woman. This is infuriating, and people deserve better. I haven't seen things like this in any of King's recent books, but I hope he doesn't write this ******** anymore. I already didn't care for the book, and then that flat-out ruined it for me. The repetitive racist language was also annoying - we got it the first time.

A couple other things about this book & then I'll stop. If you're interested in the small-town custody battle aspect of this book, pick up Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng instead. That book is intriguing & has a lot of heart. I cannot say the same for Bag of Bones.

I know that King can write interesting ghost stories, and this was not one of them. It just didn't have that creep factor. If you aren't afraid of magnetic letters being moved around on a fridge, don't look here for a horror novel.

I have more notes, but I'm just done talking about this book.

Bag of Bones - Likewise Book Reviews

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