Jack Torrance just got fired from his job as a teacher. He is now faced with finding a new one in order to support his wife; Wendy, and son; Danny. He at last finds a job as the winter caretaker for The Overlook hotel, situated in the mountains. He and his family will have to stay there from October to May. 8 months of solitude, locked into a huge hotel with no connection to the outside world except for a battered radio. Because of The Overlook’s remote location, They will literally be locked in because of the snow storms.

However, one of our main characters, Danny, a five year old who has the gift of seeing into the future and reading people’s minds, senses something off about The Overlook. He keeps getting flashes of the same word over and over again: REDRUM. What could it mean?  But Danny is extremely smart for his age and doesn’t say anything so that his father can keep this job. As the weeks pass, strange and creepy things start happening at The Overlook.

What will happen to Danny, Jack, and Wendy?

________________________________________________________________

This was my first Stephen King novel. If you are not familiar with his works, he writes horror/fiction. And The Shining did not disappoint. I read that this was one of his best and scariest. So I said to myself; “Go big or go home, right?”.

At first I had no idea why people were saying it was so scary. It had that creepy factor yes, but it didn’t make me want to sleep with the lights on. However, while I hadn’t realized it, Stephen King does this on purpose, and slowly weaves in the scary factor. By the end of this 659 page book, I was totally, terrified. Don’t go into this book thinking that it won’t be scary, just you wait. And coming from me, who is a hard person to scare. Seriously though, Stephen King does a wonderful job at weaving in the creepy. So that it gets scarier and scarier. I would highly recommend this if you like horror.

FUN FACT: This book was made into a movie in 1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is considered a classic.

Rating: 4/5 stars.