Rose Madder by Stephen King
From Goodreads
Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight – with his credit card.
Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an odd junk shop painting, ‘Rose Madder’, which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.
But it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman is a corrupt cop with a dog’s instinct for tracking people. And he’s getting close. Rosie can feel just how close he’s getting…
ISBN: 9780340640142
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Publication date: 1995
Pages: 608
Review
Before I start this review I need to make a confession: I had never, up until reading this book, read any Stephen King works, nor had I any intention of reading any either. So what changed, I saw this book in a local book store on special and I liked the premise of the story. Once I picked this book up to read I could see a lot of Joe Hill’s style of writing in it (I really enjoyed the only book of Joe Hill’s that I’ve read so far), so I was certainly interested in reading further. I began to understand quickly why people like Stephen King’s books. From my experience of this book he knows how to effectively develop characters and their stories, almost lulling you into a false sense of security before he adds a twist at the end. I think read somewhere that he is the master of suspense writing and I would have to agree with this. This was certainly a great suspense story, but it was also a great love story which delved into the concepts of escape, new beginnings, and strength of character to overcome the seemingly insurmountable.
Rosie was a very strong and capable woman (although she didn’t know it at the beginning of the book) who was unfortunate to be married to a corrupt, wife-beating cop. Her husband had absolutely no respect or love for Rosie outside of how much he could control her through fear and beatings. He was very good at putting on a front that he was the perfect husband when the reverse was true. Part of the issue that Rosie encountered was that she felt unable to report the abuse to the police as they were her husband’s colleagues. Then one day she found a drop of blood on the bed which triggered a realisation that she either leave then or end up dead at her husband’s hand. So she takes his credit card and leaves. From this moment on I really hoped she would be successful in getting as far away from him as she possibly could at the same time that I hoped something bad would happen to her husband because he was so nasty to her. The ending of this book was really well done and completed the book nicely I feel, but you’ll have to read it to find out what happened.
Recommend for: Adults
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
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