#Review #5stars Thinner, by Stephen King

MY REVIEW:

I’ve been reading a lot more King books over the last couple of years than I did before, and it’s really been kind of bitter sweet! I absolutely love the group of readers that I join in to chat with about the King read of the month, and without them I wouldn’t have read even half as many as I have lately. I really enjoyed Thinner, it was a quite the page turner for me! I’m giving it a 5 and I honestly can’t decide if it’s because I liked it so very much that it deserves a 5, or if I disliked the last few enough that this was a huge breath of fresh air!
First off, there’s gypsies which is absolutely awesome! I love everything gypsy! It even inspired me to watch one of my favorite Netflix series all over again, just because of the gypsy angle. Anyway, that was the first big mark up on the plus side for Thinner… the second being the story as a whole. 2021 is drawing to an end and this is only the second King book that I actually enjoyed every page of from beginning to end. In all the others I’ve read there’s been massive chunks that I felt it could do without, or characters that I wish would have been completely eliminated and the story could have gotten along just fine without them. Anyway, Thinner was different, better, complete in a way. Every character was imperative and brought a great and necessary aspect. Every angle to the plot felt nourishing, and the ending had that real gritty King punch to it!
So the story went something like this: Billy is an Attorney with a loving and supportive wife who can be a bit of a crybaby sometimes which is annoying and in the last quarter of the book you really want to smack her in the face. One day, as a band of traveling gypsy’s are passing through his home town, his wife decides to get a little handsy in the car. She’s isn’t usually so bold when it comes to kinky – out of the bedroom – bedroom acts, so naturally Billy is all in. Unfortunately, the distraction along with a very poor move on an old gypsy lady’s part causes a tragic accident. The deadly mistake triggers this woman’s family to act out against Billy along with the police and judge in Billy’s case. A few curses are made, and the effects of them are detrimental.
You see, Billy has always struggled with his weight. This particular curse attacks what the victims of it struggles with most in life. When Billy begins to loose weight rapidly, his wife naturally fears cancer or some other physical ailment. When the doctor gives him the all clear, things get even stranger. The other men effected are also suffering strange physical changes that are completely gory and absolutely terrifying. Billy knows that the gypsies are the blame. The old leader of the band in particular, who had physically touched him and the others cursed. His wife, doctor and few others think that Billy has lost his mind in thinking so. He could care less what they think, as soon his weight loss is rendering him nothing but a skeletal bag of bones. He decides to follow them, and try his best to track them down and beg for a reversal of sorts to the curse.
It takes some time and some struggles to find these particular gypsies, but he does so, and he calls in an old mob friend to help him when he does. I love this guy. He’s my favorite character next to the old magical gypsy man! I don’t want to give anything else away, but I can say that what the Mob guy does is epic, and the ending is gut wrenching. I loved it! 5 stars, and as I said before, what a breath of fresh air after the last few King books I read.

DESCRIPTION:

The “extraordinary” (Booklist) novel of a cursed man’s quest to find the source of his nightmare and to reverse it before he becomes…nothing at all. This #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, “pulsates with evil…[and] will have you on the edge of your seat” (Publishers Weekly).

“You can’t do anything… It’s gone too far. You understand, Halleck? Too…far.

Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all­—an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections, and gets off with a slap on the wrist…much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: “Thinner.” Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly—and rapidly—by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away…