Holly by Stephen King - spoiler free review
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2023
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Book details/Content warnings:
Title: Holly | Author: Stephen King | Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton | Pages: 438 | Publication date: 5th September 2023 | ISBN: 9781399712910 | Source: Purchased
Content Warnings: Cannibalism, racism, alcoholism
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Dear Olly,
this is the first time I write you since I have known you. The book will be released in Germany in September 20th and I have pre-ordered it now due to your review and because I am interested in this story by Stephen King. I am very glad your channel had been recommended by Max from KainundAbel who does witty and sophisticated reviews (other genres).
Thank you for your spoiler free review, Olly.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed the review and thanks for watching and commenting
I love your review of Holly! Stephen King is my favorite Author! I just finished it my self and loved it so much. I can see another coming from this one!
Thank you so much! I’d buy another Holly book in a heartbeat!
Good review of Holly. I heard lots of positive reviews for Holly so I'm looking forward reading it when I'm finish reading Needful Things.
Needful Things is one I need to reread at some point
King has always been hit or miss with me. I once got halfway through Tommyknockers then threw it in the trash. Then others I have reread many times like the Night shift. His longer works just tend to wear me down.
Tommyknockers is pretty bad 😂
I definitely think he has more hits than misses though
Well he himself admitted the Tommyknockers was a bad book. But if you don’t have the attention span for a longer works, then don’t read them.
It's better than the trash that came out last year 🤷
@CriminOllyBlog oddly enough I really liked Tommyknockers, but do concede it's overlong
Oh my gosh!! Tommyknockers was 1 of my favorites of Kings back when I was young. Dream catcher/Dreamcatcher was another. I will agree with you that King is a hit or miss kinda’ author.
I did like it, I gave it a 3.5. I agree with them, but I did find the politics more annoying and intrusive than in Billy Sommers. I was very very glad that Jerome didn't feel like he came out of a blacksploitation movie anymore.
Do you feel like he was baiting conspiracy theorists? The things the villains we're doing felt like they came out of a q post, and the triangle earrings seemed a little on-the-nose.
I’m halfway through and it’s taken me almost a month due to the political elements in the story. Not because I don’t agree with him. I feel it takes away the experience of reading. I’m not reading his books to get a ”whoop ass” about politics. I just want to enjoy the ride of a really good story. That’s what I’ve been missing so far. Hope it will get better ’cause I love Stephen King. So far he’s the only one I’m sticking to through the years. He paints a picture of characters and their surroundings like no one else.
He is a really great popular writer
Just as I start to make a dent in Stephen King's long list of books... he releases another and another and another 😅. I'm going to watch this video with some lunch right now.
He does still write them awfully fast!
Has anyone read his Fairytale book? I struggled with it and I'm not sure why. It became a chore to read. 😐
I haven’t yet, but I know a few people who didn’t love it
I have the book, but I've got a couple of others to finish first. This doesn't make it sound too promising.
Not read it, im debating whether to read Institute first.
Fairy Tale starts as a beautiful human drama. Halfway through, the hero enters a fantasy world. Because Stephen King refuses to plot, the fantasy world isn't really developed. Disappointing.
I'm an SK fan but really didn't like Fairy Tale!
I read all the Holly Gibney books in January and I very much enjoyed Holly. Up to the halfway point, it felt alright, but I read the second half in a single sitting. It was gripping!
I loved the Barbara sub-plot and it was fun (as a reader with all the information up front) tension every time Barbara and Holly communicated because if they had just talked about the case, they would have solved it hundreds of pages earlier!
Yeah it was a great work of Suspense
@CriminOllyBlog Suspense? That's a bit of a stretch. Predictable, sums it up better. IMO.
I love King books since I was young and this was a great read. I have to say, for whoever is undecided to dive in to this book, this review is spot on.
Glad you liked the review!
The number of books incorporating the Covid times is really interesting. It's popping up in every genre. Just in the past couple weeks it played a role in 2 books I read. I like Stephen King most of the time; this one sounds quite intriguing.
I think it was such a weird time it’s not surprising authors are taken by it!
@@CriminOllyBlog I read a lot of articles last week about King and this book and he said he wanted to create a capsule novel which captured the time he wrote it in, he wanted to write Covid into it as authentically as possible, he said it was such a crazy time that people might not believe it happened, few decades from now.
@@kaiju_k5042 even now just a couple of years on it’s kind of weird to think it happened.
Who would guess the guy who started out writing novels about haunted hotels and vampires in a small town would start writing crime novels in the later half of his life.
I think other than romance King has written in every genre by now.
11/22/63 is basically a romance!
@@CriminOllyBlog I have heard some reviews that have noted as his love story.
11/23/63 is predominantly historical fiction but has a very good romantic element. One of his best in my opinion.
@@CriminOllyBlog Lisey;s Story, while not a romance, was clearly a love letter to his wife. Can openers to nipples aside, it was strangely romantic.
@@michellerever3564 I’m reading that one soon!
I was wondering about this. Good to know it’s a stand alone read. Very helpful review.
Thanks, Flo!
Great review! You got me looking forward to reading this
Hope you enjoy it!
Thank you for reminding me that this book came out!! I forgot all about it
Hope you like it!
Thanks for this Olly 👍
I just finished it. Quite liked it. Great review!
Thank you!
I love Holly as a character, cant wait to read this one!
Hope you enjoy it!
I'm 100th like. Still to buy Holly. Your a fast reader, olly. Not into crime but love horror. 400 pages is a novella to King😂 reading Insomnia and it goes on forever
Thanks, Paul!
Thanks for the review. I was looking forward to reading this one up next. Can u please make a book list special for Halloween next month? Cheers
I have one going up next week 😊
The plot stuff might be do to he has said he had to plot the book out more than he normally does.
Ah interesting!
Great review, Olly and yes, I agree about getting to know Holly before reading this - I'm still reading it, but I binged the Hodges trilogy first and it's making the reading experience much better because I know her, Pete and Jerome a lot better :)
Cheers! Glad you’re enjoying it!
She’s also a large part of “the outsider” from a few years back
Great review, Olly -- you almost have me convinced. Almost. Interesting that the US and UK covers are so similar. That rarely happens.
Yeah I thought that too. Liked two different versions of the same concept
What is the order of the previous books including holly? Also is Revival worth reading? Long time King fan, and he’s usually brilliant but when you reviewed billy summers I picked it up and really enjoyed it. So I’m thinking about delving into the holly subverse.
Glad you enjoyed Billy Summers.
It goes:
Mr Mercedes
Finders Keepers
End of Watch
The Outsider
If it Bleeds
Holly
Holy Smokes! Maybe I’ll just jump into Holly, lol.
Big Stephen King fan but really didn't like the crime mystery books myself and I understand why those who do as my partner loves crime books. I personally prefer paranormal themes with supernatural forces at work.
Well at least you have plenty of those from his back catalogue :)
Thanks for watching!
I'm just reading - and loving - it.
Excellent!
I've only recently heard people start to talk about this one, instead of buzzing before its release.
I'm kind of surprised King hasn't written more books with a female main character.
There have definitely been a few, but he does male mc's way more
Love it!
I just finished Holly, and honesty, it felt like I was reading Scooby-Doo. I was first introduced to Holly Gibney in The Outsider and loved her character. This falls way short and almost childish. Again, like a Scooby-Doo mystery, lol. Oh well, can't win em all, I guess...
King, my favorite storyteller, has taken an opportunity to soapbox-deliver more politics than horror in "Holly". The message was not subtle and was unrelenting. Hopefully he got this out of his system.
Mots excellent review, I'm about 1/3rd into it and enjoying it very much although getting more and more nervous about what the baddies are up to, totally unhinged monsters lol!
Thank you! And yeah they were super creepy!
Interesting review. I like the way you keep showing the book cover ever now & then. What are his other books in the trilogy? Thanks for the caveat to read the books in order.
Holly Gibney is mentioned in the Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch. She's also in The Outsider, and a short story in If It Bleeds.
CriminHolly
Ha, love that!
Lol!
I read Holly a couple of months ago and I thought it was very good! The politics didn’t bother me. The opinions seemed like they were genuine to the Holly character.
Yeah, agreed
6:49 That’s the nicest way I ever have heard someone say SK’s books are a bit to long. I like King a lot but a lot of times he goes on a tangent that produces an extra 150 pages or so.
Yeah he does like the odd ramble, and his editors don't seem to mind them either!
Sounds like this book acted like chicken soup for you! So glad to hear the health, energy and pleasure bleeding through in this review.
I think one of King's great gifts as a writer is that sometimes he is able to lift the lid on a character's inner workings in a way that feels absolutely true, and that forces the reader to FEEL along with that character. Sometimes, it's a villain, and that makes the gift even greater. We aren't often given those moments of recognizing the humanity in people who commit to inhumane behaviors. I find that to be of great value. (Doesn't change my mind about the appropriate societal reaction to Bad Behavior. But it reminds me that one of the reasons this behavior is bad is that it forces others to participate, at some level, in the negativity). Ok, done with the Deep Thoughts. So glad you're back and that you had such a good book to comfort you!
That was a deep thought, but yes very true.
And thank you 😊
The cover glows in the dark
Someone else said that, but like doesn’t seem to
@@CriminOllyBlogyes sorry it the American scribner edition (US version ) , that glows in the dark which came today and that does glow in the dark
I started reading this yesterday and I love everything so far. Wish I didn’t have to go to work today just so that I can finish this book 😅
Ha ha it’s certainly hard to put down!
Ha ha it’s certainly hard to put down! Hope you’re work day is over quickly.
@@CriminOllyBlog thank god it’s a short day at work for me. Still, that’s 4 hours wasted while I could use the time to continue reading Holly 😂 oof or should I say ‘oough’
Nice Crimin-Holly review. I may postpone reading this one since it deals with the bad times of COVID so much. Peace. :)
Ha! Thanks Jeremy
I just finished last night and also read it over two days. I really enjoyed it although after I realised the fate of one particular victim I had to put it down for a while, it just broke my heart too much. The politics and covid was a funny one. They were such a major component I started to get a bit fed up. I ended up Googling the American experience of the pandemic and its apparent theirs was very different from the New Zealand one. After I familiarised my self with the American covid story and the ties it had to politics and identity I found it made a lot more sense for the characters to discuss it the way they did - and how often they did it. My only real gripe is that I have the Mr Mercedes trilogy in the TBR pile and I think they may have been 'spoiled' beyond repair.
Yeah I think the UK experience was much more similar to the US one. You guys did a better job of keeping it controlled in the early days.
And yes it does spoil the previous books a bit!
Thanks for this review. The book sounds appealing, in the way I've hoped is Hard Case Crime books would appeal. I ultimately felt disappointed by those books, however, primarily because of the supernatural elements. HOLLY sounds like a straightforward thriller, so I'll be looking forward to reading it. Actually, I may go back and read the other novels (the Bill Hodges trilogy, etc.) that lead up to it first.
I finished Holly today and I thought it was great.
Glad you enjoyed it, Todd!
I’m retired, my husband past a few years ago, lots of time to get back to reading now & I ❤️ to read crime/drama/who done it mysteries. OK……well, 1st I just subscribed to your channel. 👍 TEXAS, USA here … So, I haven’t read King in years but I have read MANY of his past novels, years back in my younger days. I’m stopping this video review because I’m fixing to take your advice so I’m going to order the Holly series by King. I’ll get back to watching this review in a few months. 😂 I’m afraid of spoilers. I am watching some of your other videos.👍 Keep up the good work. I’m also ordering Cop Hater by McBain. I’m thinking McBain May be a new author for me to enjoy reading. Thx. 🇺🇸
Thanks so much for subscribing! I’m normally pretty careful about spoilers, but I totally get why you want to avoid them. I really hope you end up loving the McBain books as much as I do.
Honestly, I'm not a huge King fan. In most of what I've read, he has trouble sticking the landing. But I'm going to give these mystery/thriller books of his a try, and particularly Holly based on your novel.
Hope you enjoy it! I know what you mean about his endings, but I thought this was a good one
King is definitely more about the journey than the ending. :)
Hmmm, damn. It's got me curious. But it's Stephen King......the page count......hmmm 🤔 I like that it isn't a typical Stephen King book and with no supernatural elements. I haven't read the other two. Is this the best of the 3 do you think ? (sorry if you asnwered that in the clip).
I think they’re all pretty equal tbh
Finished HOLLY today (on King's 76th birthday). Although I was unfamiliar with Holly Gibney, I had ripping good fun with this one and hated ever setting it down. Very much enjoyed reading Covid as a character. 5 whipped parfaits out of 5.
Yeah I thought the Covid element was well woven in
Is this book worth reading? I read The Outsider before and found it quite mediocre 😑
Well I thought so, but if you didn’t like The Outsider, maybe not
I liked this one. The griping about the partisan political and Covid stuff is unwarranted. King rightfully gets criticism sometimes because he doesn't have a good grasp of why people disagree with his politics. It's not like writers with a political axe to grind have to agree with you to write a good book. Sometimes a book can be great precisely because the author doesn't agree with you, but that's not the case with King. The more political King gets in a book, the more right wing characters just become two dimensional stereotypes and boogeymen. It's just bad writing, if nothing else.
I don't think King is capable of writing realistic characters who have a different political view than his because he doesn't actually understand the other side of the political divide and isn't even remotely curious about why somebody might disagree with him, so he can never actually figure out what they think about anything, let alone explain why they might think that way. It's annoying, not entertaining. It's about as thought provoking as watching partisan cable news. He has an overly simplified view of human nature and history, imo. You get this really clearly from his output on Twitter, but when you read his books, you see it as well. It's like he defaults to a simplistic Manichean view of things, so much so that The Stand quite literally turns into a good vs. evil story. The Stand is great, but a person who understands the world this way isn't going to be able to write convincingly about ideological division. When he tries to do it, you don't get right wing characters that feel real, you get comic book villains or buffoons. This is especially disastrous for a writer whose strength is creating characters rendered with emotional and psychological realism. There are writers who can pull off writing partisan political fiction, but King isn't one of them unfortunately.
But he really doesn't go overboard in this one. Most of the Covid stuff in it really is just him setting the scene and dropping his characters into a realistic environment more than it is King blogging about Covid policy. The lockdown environment actually adds to the story and provides a tone or vibe that works really well for it, I think. He acknowledged in the afterword that some people might have found the Covid stuff to be preachy, so it's not like he's unaware of these criticisms. He argues that it served the story in providing a realistic backdrop and this is definitely true, imo. That was enough for me. Even if it rubs you the wrong way, I don't think it's hard to look past it because it's still a pretty good thriller. And Holly is still a great character, maybe the most memorable one from his later books. I can live with her being a conventional Democrat.
Yeah I thought the Covid backdrop worked well here - it grounded the book somehow. I do agree that he doesn't do well writing characters with different views to his, but I guess maybe he doesn't feel he has to
Damn read the book in one day? I must really be a slow reader 😂 I just finished the Mercedes trilogy. Planning on reading the outsider and if it bleeds (short story for the second time again) soon. Holly will be last I guess. But im curious how it will work out, it sounds a little bit like the second book of the mercedes trilogy which also didnt contain any supernatural elements and also more crime than horror.
After I was disappointed in Fairy Tale; THIS book is exactly what I was craving from Stephen King... all the elements I love about him as an author are present here. I am really enjoying this one. SO happy he didn't write another portal fantasy. lol.
lol I still have Fairy Tale to get to. And am reading Black House next month 😂
agreed with your review on HOLLY I really enjoy King's detective novels and wondered where
he would go with this, since the last two holly books had supernatural elements, enjoyed that this
did not... i think if it bleeds was more of a way to get material for an OUTSIDER 2nd tv season (tho i still enjoyed it)
and Yes the U.S. is still like this, with every political argument in this book it was unfortunately natural...
once again good video, now back to MARY (another book you suggested)
Glad you enjoyed the rewiew. I really do like his take on the crime/mystery genre
He’s hit and miss for me too. Lots of filler and sometimes it’s a grind to get through. I aborted my last king reading because I got bored (the long walk) but have just ordered salems lot because of the hype around it
Salems Lot is definitely a good one!
Thanks for this excellent presentation. Other writers than the author alluded to would hardly get away with pol...cal pro...nda.
Glad you enjoyed it!
just started chapter 3 and i am really into it so far! Definently not the normal king supernatural/paranormal which bums me out a bit but hey its a stephen king book! Great review, gets me motivated to finish this by the end of the month!
Glad you're enjoying it!
I like a few of King's novels, Carrie probably being my favourite after the shinning, but personally, I think he is hugely overrated probably due to the sheer amount of books he has released. That being said, old King was more hit than miss for me, but his last few have been really disappointing.
Personally, I love him, but I do agree that a large part of his influence on popular fiction is down to sheer volume
I agree with all of this. I think he handled race a little better, but there were still moments. No series has made me cringe more on that score than the Bill Hodges books and the treatment of Jerome. I almost think that criticism might have penetrated. I think he might have actual downplayed the language associated with that one person's bigotries for that reason. Maybe.
His fatphobia was still on display though. The book was filled with Covid deniers, but the one Holly had the most vitriol for was the fat woman who she basically wanted to see on a ventilator.
I love Stephen King books, and the start his career coincided with my graduating into adult books, although objectively I was probably too young -- 9 or 10. I remember my mother crawling next to me in bed and telling me there was a short story set in the same world as Salem's Lot!
If I met him, I could never begin to tell him what his books have meant to me. I might just weep and babble. That doesn't mean that I love every sentence or ever unconscious bias.
But Holly was such an entertaining read for me. The pages turned themselves, and I thought, "This is a man who got in his 10,000 hours to master his craft decades ago, this is him at his full power."
Very, very well put.
I wanted to stop reading because it just seemed so boring but I always have to finish what I’m reading. I know a lot of people at going to dislike this book for all the mention about politics etc. I can’t make up my mind what I think about this one yet.
💚🖤
writers have always had political views. To call it overly political is a stretch, given the history of all writing.
Insomnia had a lot of politics, but this one didnt have much.
I’ve just ordered the Bill Hodges Trilogy by Stephen after happening upon a review for Mr. Mercedes- the first in this series.
Thus, I’m now excited about Holly as well. Thanks so much for your thorough review.
Glad you enjoyed the book. If nothing else King's politics make his books feel more in the present than they have for a long time.
Yeah very true!
I love Stephen King, he is a huge idol of mine, but I'm not too sure how I feel about his new books because he's clearly been using them as a vehicle to push his political views lately, and it really puts me off authors when they do this, even my favourite ones. I will probably still read it out of loyalty, and I'm sure it's still a good story, but I'm fairly sure if there's a lot of it, I'm just going to end up being distracted out of the story, and will probably end it by being angry as well because I already know the baddies are going to be conservatives. 😂
I agree with issue pushing , not keen either. We just want entertainment not a lecture 👍
It is less intrusive in this than in some of his other recent books, but it’s definitely still there
It's pretty bad in my opinion, I'm not a big Trump guy but I'm sick of King whining about him and he even blows Joe in this book. He talks about how Holly cried after Biden winning which was hilarious and it doesn't even fit that character.
not even gonna bother. I'm from New England and been a king fan since I was a kid in the 80s but the politics in this book is to much
I bought this book cuz it had my name on it lol
😂
I am almost done with this book and I like it overall. Disappointing that he didn't tell us how he really feels about anti vax and anti maskers. I mean he does mention it like 467 times but he could have drilled it in more...BTW I was vaxed at that time and wore a masked when required.
He definitely had some opinions to share
More wokeslop for the most devoted consoomerist
The book sucked... no mystery to it or suspense.. like we didnt know holly was going to solve the case. And kings trump deragement syndrome really ruins it. I thought about tossing the book out several times while reading it. Billy summers was bad too, but i like fairy tale.. b.c of the none intrusive politics.
To be fair Holly isn’t the only mystery novel that ends with the detective solving the mystery
@@CriminOllyBlog yeah exactly, pretty Predictable
By far his worst character ever. I'd rather read 10 books featuring the Trash Can Man.
LOL wow
I enjoyed Holly too.
Love Stephen King but man he is getting way too political in his later works, its down right annoying, im about 1/4 of the way in to this book and half the story so far is political. We hear about politics all day every day, I want to read a book to escape from reality.
I hated the book. Typical and boring and its obvious from the first chapter. Guys they are cannibals, and they are not even interesting. Don't read it. IT IS NOT WORTH READING. IT IS BOOOOOORING!
I’m sort of stunned by the outrage to how political the book is just because it doesn’t match the politics of some readers. Other than one or two swipes at Trump, Holly takes COVID precautions. That’s just her protecting her health. It’s unfortunate people still read politics in what is a health issue. Not a politics issue. I didn’t think the book was gripping. It felt plodding and unremarkable. And the deluded couple felt more like a derivation of the bad guy in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.
Stopped reading King because of the politics.. sooo boring.
Give a specific example or you're lying. You've never actually read King, or anything else, have you?
@@dustywaynemusic6297 read the book that's the example. I'm not reading this one
Horrible book. So sick & tired I’d COVID and politics.
King always create environments that offer a strong dose of reality and as far as the politics let’s face it in the timeframe he is writing you could not escape Trump and COVID. Had he written a book depicting this time frame and not included it it would have been disingenuous.
I was thinking the same thing. Keep politic and Covid shit out of this. But I’m done. No more King for me.