I told myself that I would probably only get around to reading one Stephen King book and for some reason I landed on Carrie. It could be a mix between it being one of his shorter novels along with having seen a bit of the movie to wonder how the original work faired. Well I certainly got my answer.

On the whole, it's a pretty miserable book. A young teen gets bullied, traumatized, and abused at every turn until she finally snaps and unlocks a latent telekinetic power that wrecks havoc on a small town. There's nothing particularly entertaining about this book, nothing engaging from how it was written. This happened to be King's first novel, so it could be the inexperience overshadowing everything, but there were moments I just found to be disgusting, from the skeevy descriptions of teenage girls and the handling of the rape scenes. 

The constant cutting in with various book passages, testimonials, and newspaper reports didn't really add anything to the story only to stop it dead for a few pages every now and then. There had to be a better way to naturally integrate the information without feeling like it's taking away from the main action.

Ultimately, it doesn't really read as a horror, more like a tragedy. I just didn't vibe with how the story constantly beats down on Carrie only for her die in the end.