Book Review: You Like It Darker by Stephen King

The latest offering from the King of horror is a collection of novellas and short stories, and

like most of his collections of the type, some stories are better than others. Of the twelve

stories offered in this new edition, there are maybe three that I read and thought ‘He can do

better’. But the others delivered just as King always does, with solid, reliable and well-crafted

tension and feeling.

The ones that stand out the most for me are ‘Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream’, a story of a

man who has a dream telling him where to find a murdered woman which I would bet good

money on becoming a movie in the next couple of years; ‘On Slide Inn Road’ which delivers

a surprising hero; ‘Rattlesnakes’ which picks up the story of the surviving characters from

King’s novel ‘Cujo’ many years later, and delivers some classic scares; ‘The Dreamers’

which feels like a Cthulhu Mythos story; and ‘The Answer Man’, which spans decades and

delivers big small-town feels.

All the stories are delivered with King’s trademark sense of time, place and character,

delving deep into the feelings and experiences of the protagonists and showing yet again

that he is a master at not only bringing the scares, but at writing people. Many of them deal

with the more mundane horrors of everyday life – murder, grief, old age and dying; but

there’s plenty of supernatural scares as well.

As an added bonus, my copy was a Waterstones special edition and included a short

interview with the author at the end! Lovely! That’s a much better exclusive than an alternate

cover design, which is what they usually seem to have!