This is the first Stephen King book I've read (I'm a scaredy cat, what can I say? No pun intended.) I've never seen any of the adaptations for Pet Sematary, and I didn't know anything about the story before going into it. I listened to this on audiobook, and I wish I'd skipped the author's note at the beginning of the book, not because it wasn't interesting, but because there are a couple things he says that give away plot points of the story, so I kind of expected them from the beginning. It was obvious that the author's note is something that was added far after the fact (I think it was added to the 2000 edition of the book) so maybe there was an assumption that many people had either read a prior edition or that they'd seen one of the adaptations.

Anyway, I actually ended up enjoying this quite a bit. I found it more contemplative than I was expecting, and the commentary on grief was really well done. I will say that anyone who is sensitive to stories about familial death should be wary of this book.

The first half to two-thirds of this book kind of flew by for me. I did feel like the pacing in the last third or so of the book

after Gage's death

was a little slow for me. I'm sure King was very precise in what he was doing in order to create tension, but I feel like at that point everyone who has been paying attention knows exactly what he is going to do. The fact that it took so long to get from that point to the end was a little silly. That being said, the final couple of scenes were at the same time creepy, terrifying, and heartbreaking.

I've never been super interested in reading Stephen King's books, because like I said, big wimp here. But now that I've actually done it, I am definitely interested in checking out some of his other works.