Rating: 
Summary: Great premise which got wasted
Review: This book started out great but lost the intrigue for me. It has a great premise. How do you start a new life when your abusive husband is a respected cop and police resources at his finger tips?But Norman gets on Rose's tail with really very little effort and then violently kills and mutilates everyone in his path. This book could have been so much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Great King novel
Review: King has written a masterpiece with "Rose Madder". The tale involves a woman pursued by a monster much more terrifying than any vampire or werewolf, namely the woman's abusive police officer husband who's weak grip on sanity breaks as he trails his runaway wife. King's great characters shine as does the realistic plot. I had read many King novels that came out before "Rose Madder" and had noticed that some of them started to repeat themselves plot-wise (basically small town people tackling a monster of some sort). I had thought King himself had run out of ideas until I read this book. King has once again proved himself a great storyteller.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible Book!
Review: I recommend this book to teens and adults because most teens and adults are intereseted in Stephan King's work. This book is basically about a women who thought she met the love of her life when she was a teenager, but she did not know that she would be stuck with him for years beaten, abused, and told what to do, she was scared out of her mind to leave him, because she knows that he would just find her and beat her even more, but she knew out of one of those beatings she would most likely be murdered. Thats why I recommend this book because the book is a good insight on abusive relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Another #1 Best Seller
Review: Rose Madder is another one of King's best novels. Everyone has heard of someone in an abusive relationship, but King shows how frightening it can be. King uses very vivid descriptions to show how abusive some people can get. When the wife decides it must stop, things get worse.
What would you do if you had a cop that would rather see you dead as to look at you? I recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense and action. This book is loaded with action from the start. Few authors could make so many number one best sellers but King has done it. This was a great action packed book.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been 5 stars
Review: Rose Madder begins as Rosie leaves her abusive husband after 14 years of violence. What a great start! The characters are King's most real and 3 dimentional ever. Rosie exibits all the classic signs of an abused woman. She show the strength to leave and try to begin her life again. Norman, her husband, is the scariest villain in any King novel. This is because he is belivable. He is driven by human emotions: hate, pride, lust, insanity. Norman could give Hanibal Lector a run for his money. Which brings me to why I gave 3 stars instead of 5. Just when things start to get interesting King introduces a supernatural element. I know, I know, I'm reading a Stephen King novel, but I feel this one could have done without his usual ghosts and demons. The supernatural elements felt forced and out of place. The characters alone could have driven this novel to a satisfing conclusion. Good but could have been better.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat good, somewhat bad
Review: The first half is good, let me get that out of the way. In fact, the first 2 thirds are good. When we saw Rose running away, I cried, atleast nearly. I just felt so sorry for her. However, that's the kind of heart I have, the reason I loved Dolores Claiborne. However, near the end, this book slows down to a confusing mess. The ending just doesn't hold you, and the people involved in this other world are not explained. I'm not giving this book a hard time because it's different then most Stephen King books, but because it lacks good writing near the end, as if King was rushing to finish it. Only a reccomended read for those who are nearing the end of reading all of King's books.
Rating:
Summary: This is a wierd book...
Review: Hi there. I'm giving this book 3 stars on the King scale, not on the 'regular old author' scale. I think we all understand what that means. If I'd been a woman, or ever suffered serious abuse, or been over thirty, I'm sure I would have loved this book or at least appreciated it way more. But I don't fit into any of these categories. I'm a 24 year-old male King junkie who gets off on books like Firestarter, Misery, Pet Sematary, etc. I picked this book up after reading the author's introduction to the short story "The Road Virus Heads North" (from the newly released collection "Everything's Eventual.") In his introduction, King says that Rose Madder is 'probably the best read' of his novels. So of course I had to check it out. To the book: It was pretty good. There was alot more subtle symbolism than I'm used to and I'm sure alot of it went over my head. Rose descends into the maze to rescue her inner child from Ze Bool? That's all my simple mind can make of the wild supernatural symbolism in this book. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think this book could've been just as good without a magic picture. Then again, maybe I am so used to 'fast-food' writing that I can't see a good symbol when it slaps me in the face. Of course, I loved Norman. This guy's scenes were wacked. It was great to follow him from cruelly brilliant to completely insane. I felt much more connected to Norman's slow decline than I did to Rose's slow ascent. This is a good book for more mature King fans. For the youngsters among us, we might want to skip it in favor of, say, Dreamcatcher. If you're a woman recovering from abuse and need to get in touch with your buried rage, then pick this book up today.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen King does it again
Review: This book was excellent. It kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the whole thing! The beginning did start off a little bit slow, but for all those Stephen King fans out there, you all know that it's usually how it goes but Stephen King seems to always make it up to us by putting us on the edge of our seats before too long! At first it was seeming like this could be an actual event that could happen, but then as soon as Ms. McClendon started experiencing some odd things :) and ze bool.. I realized that this was definately a novel made by the master of horror :) Oddly enough though, the ending was a little surprising .. definately not something I was expecting :) I do recommend this book though.. once ya get by the first chapter it pretty much takes off and doesn't let go till the end :)
Rating:
Summary: A Fine Line Between Hope, Fear and Insanity
Review: Rosie's ex, Norman, is one mean dude. A real nasty package. He's taken a month's vacation to "visit relatives" and he's got plenty of time to put his cop/detective skills to good use, to find his wife and have a talk with her "up close". She's walked out after years of horrible abuse and things are looking up for her. But now she can feel him getting closer. People in her new circle of friends are dying. You can feel him getting closer, too, and it'll make you want to scream. But Normie's having a tough time. He's having more and more of those little spells where he can't account for how things happened or where the time went. But his hatred drives him on - his sole goal to find Rosie, to make her pay. Normie's like a fox closing in on the hare. It looks like the outcome is inevitable, but what if the hare were ... rabid? Maybe Normie would do well to follow the voice he hears in his head, of his molesting father, that advises "maybe you should just turn around, Normie; you could call it a draw." Then there's the mysterious painting, and the plot that keeps turning on a dime just about every time you think you're on track. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is a very interesting underlying element in this book that has to do with the nature of victims and victimizers. As the story progresses, our opinion of Norman changes as we understand more about how he related (and still relates) to his dead father. Not that we become sympathetic, but the internal dialogs are interesting and often even a bit amusing. My belief that S.K. felt this was an important thematic component of this work is reenforced by the character shifts that occur in Rosie-the-victim near the end of the story. I hope I'm not reading too much into the author's intent, but I found the conjecture intriguing.
Rating:
Summary: Great first half, dull 2nd half
Review: The story is about a woman, Rose Daniels, who finally gets the courage to leave her abusive husband after many years of marriage. After she leaves Norman, her husband, Norman tries to chase her down and punish her. The first half of the story is terrific. Stephen King does a good job in describing Rose's fear in leaving and makes her departure quite suspensful. He also richly details her new life and makes you quite interested in Rose. King also does a good job in giving her husband Norman a lot of depth as well. I read the first half of the book very quickly and was very interested in the story. Unfortunately things went completely south when the supernatural was brought into play. As soon as a supernatural painting becomes part of the story, the book becomes very predictable. The only reason i kept reading is I ws curious how Norman would search for Rose and what events would lead to the ending. Had King not brought in the supernatural aspect (or at least a different type of supernatural event) the story would have been much better and much less predictable. I am a great admirer of Stephen King and love many of his books, but this book dissapointed me. I strongly recommend reading an alternative book of his such as The Stand (my personal favorite), Misery, It, The Green Mile, and Different Seasons to name a few. It is not King's worst book, but not even close to his best work either.
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