Book Review – Holly
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2023
Look I’m a Stephen King guy. Have been since I was fourteen and found a copy of It at a garage sale and made the mistake of reading it alone in my room at night. That book broke something in me. Or fixed something. I’m still not sure which.
So when King releases a new book I read it. That’s just what happens. And Holly — which centers on Holly Gibney, the character from Mr. Mercedes and The Outsider and various other King works — is. It’s good. It’s really good actually. Not top-tier King but definitely upper-tier King which is still better than most writers’ best work.
Holly Gibney has become one of King’s most interesting characters. She started as this anxious, OCD-afflicted sidekick and has slowly evolved into a genuine detective hero. In this book she’s running Finders Keepers by herself — Bill Hodges is dead, we learned that in a previous book, RIP — and she gets pulled into a missing persons case that is not what it seems.
Here’s where I have to be careful because the plot takes some turns that are better experienced cold. What I can tell you is that King is doing his thing again. That thing where he writes about small-town horror rooted in very real, very human evil. The villains in this book are. I mean. They’re monsters but they’re also recognizable. That’s what King does best. He finds the horror in the mundane.
The book is set during COVID and I know some people are tired of COVID stories but King uses the pandemic well here. It’s not just window dressing. It affects the plot. It affects Holly’s mental state. It creates opportunities for isolation that the bad guys exploit. And King has some THOUGHTS about pandemic deniers that he doesn’t hide. If you’re a reader who gets upset when authors have political opinions then I don’t know why you’re reading Stephen King in 2025 but okay.
Holly herself is a great protagonist because she’s not cool. She’s not a badass detective who always knows what to do. She’s anxious and uncertain and she does the right thing anyway. There’s something deeply comforting about that. Heroes who are also kind of a mess. That’s relatable.
The pacing is classic King which means it’s slow in the beginning, building character and setting and that creeping sense of dread, and then it accelerates in the back half until you’re reading 100 pages in a sitting because you can’t stop. I finished the last third of this book in one night and then had trouble sleeping. Standard King experience.
Complaints. It’s a little long. Most King books are a little long. There’s a subplot involving one of Holly’s employees that doesn’t quite land. And the ending is. Hmm. It’s satisfying but it’s also a bit neat? Like King tied things up a little too cleanly for a story this dark. Minor quibble.
If you like Holly Gibney you’ll love this. If you’ve never read the Bill Hodges books you could probably start here but you’ll miss some context. If you’re a King person like me then you’ve already read it anyway and you don’t need me to tell you what you already know.
King at 76 still writing books this good. We’re lucky.
My rating: ★★★★☆