Rating: 
Summary: mixed
Review: no matter how i look at this work, ican't be satisfied. a wife runs from an abusive husband. she must create a new life. her husband begins to hunt for her. but that is part A. part B is that there is another world welcoming rose, trying to protect here. here is where the real goodies are. good descriptions, though not that great in concept. pretty bad actually. but this is where it gets interesting. actually the book may not be so bad, but it got abit confusing. was i supposed to experience thrills? horror? drama? this seemed to be a mix. the synthesis isn't healthy. some of the stuff here gets...corny. especially between rose and her "admirer". this could have been a good read, but it's so mixed i'm having problems digesting it. it just seemed incomplete, confusing, or a bit amateurish.
Rating: 
Summary: Non STOP thriller
Review: Stephen King has really taken it away with this one. He keeps you on your toes as you turn from one page to the next. Once you start turning those pages it is really hard to stop. You yurn for more and more and have to fight yourself to put the book down. The book starts out with a very dramatic scene of a woman being battered for 14 years who finally decides she has had enough. She has been beaten since about a month after the wedding but after having her own baby beaten out of her, finds the courage to leave. However as the book continues this tough journey away from her husband, Norman, is going to be a bigger battle than Rose thought. She almost bets this is a battle that she will lose.
King really keeps you on your toes and uses great details throughout the entire book really letting you feel like you are there. You can feel the wind blowing or hear the man creeping up on you. sometimes you can even fell Norman whispering in your head, like he is talking to you and not Rose. He never leaves you in the dark with whats going on, but keeps you in the dark about what is getting ready to happen. It keeps you intensified and keeps the book in your hand. From harsh language to even worse beatings, King gives you enough details to help you visualize that you are really there.
As King takes you on a thrill filled roller coaster, the chase down of Rose Daniels gets more intense. At moments you will think the book is coming to end and another adventure will just be beginning. It is one thrill right after the next. And the thrills get more exciting as the book goes on.
However throughout the book King also makes it easy for a person to put theirself in that situation, and as one begins to put themself in that position that fear only becomes more exciting and real. it alomost becomes personal. While reading the book one might become scared for Rose's life but when a person puts theirself in that mind set they begin to fear for their own life and might even forget that they are only reading a book.
King does not avoid confusing you in this book however. There are times when the reader might think that they are never going to figure out what he is talking about but within time it will be very clear.
That is another great point about this book is that things that might seem unclear at first, but they always explain themselves later.
This book is overall about a young bride who lives in a world of hell for fourteen years. Her husband is a cop so she has noone to run to. Her family is gone and she feels alone in this world. The book takes you through her long journey that she must face if she wishes to become a free woman. A woman that will no longer be beaten by a man who can not possibly really love her. But will she realy ever escape him and find new love and be allowed to live a happy life? Read this one of a kind, spine chilling, mind boggling, Stephen King thriller and find out for yourself. Live Rose's life through this book and experience the battles lost and the battles won.
Rating: 
Summary: OOook
Review: I thought this book was going to be another fantastic King work. It was just ok, and the whole idea was kind of hokey. There weren't that many times when I stoped reading for a moment only to find myself biting my nails in sheer nervousness. I gave it a three for a decent effort.
Rating: 
Summary: a masterpiece by any other name...
Review: The more I read by Stephen King, the more entranced I become by his work as a whole. In particular, I have come to seek out the various threads of the Dark Tower that are woven through many of his books. Rose Madder, which does indeed weave itself into King's masterwork (while maintaining its viability as a "stand-alone" novel) is a masterpiece.Norman Daniels, though thoroughly human, is a monster more horrible that many of King's worst beasts. Cujo has nothing on him when it comes to ferocity. Annie Wilkes looks downright domestic when compared to Normie. Yet evil is not the whole name of the game in Rose Madder. It is more of a story about finding life-even in the shadow of death. Norman's wife Rose is a character for the ages (one of King's greatest creations)-and in spite of Norman-this is her story. I don't want to give away too much of this wonderful story. Rose Madder is a masterpiece of gradual revelation. So rather than sucking the life out of it, I'll just make a few random comments: First, I give this book my full recommendation. There are scenes of horrid nastiness here...yet there are also moments of great hope and beauty. King captures a great truth of life in this. Rose Madder has some wonderfully developed minor characters (one of which becomes a big character in one of King's later novels-Desperation). One character-Gert, is my all time favorite "King" minor character. She sends Norman a great "message." I must finally note that the audio version of this book is wonderfully done by both King (Norman's Perspective) and Blair Brown (Rose's Perspective). Rose Madder is certainly not King's most "important" or even representative novel. That said--it still gets my five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not his best
Review: "It's best to be ruthless with the past. It aint the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive." Stephen King never ceases to amaze me. It's quotes like one one above that display his talent as a writer. Rose Madder was a...interesting book. I'll admit I didn't see the major twist in the book coming. I guess it was alluded to on the sleve, but I didn't quite understand at the time what it meant. Anyway, I enjoyed the majority of this book. There was one small section that I couldn't get into (I can't say what, without giving something away), but the rest of the book was good. I gave the book only 3 stars (it was between 3 & 4), just because there were some things that I just didn't get into. If you know King, you know he deals a lot with supernatural things, and sometimes I just want some reality. This wasn't his best, but it was worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: missed opportunity
Review: The first half of this book is wonderful. Fully drawn characters, pulls you in immediately and the scenes of domestic violence and mental anguish are truly scary. Then you get to the second half of the book. I saw another reviewer called it 'a confusing mess' and I can't put it any better. Usually, the supernatural elements are the best part of a King book, but here it's like an uninvited houseguest. The narrative gets bogged down and by the time you get to the end you're in a quagmire. A good book, but it could have been so much better.
Rating:
Summary: A Rose for a Rose
Review: Steven King has done it again. He has managed to keep me in suspense with every turning of the page. Rose Madder is about Rose, an abused wife who has been in fear of her husband Norman Daniels for fourteen years. Norman Daniels is a dedicated cop and is an abusive husband. Rose then notices one morning a drop of blood on her plain white bed spread and she is then persuaded to flee from her home in search of a new life. She managed to escape, but Rose fails to realize that because Norman is a cop he can easily track anyone down. The entire book is excellent to read when you have too much time on your hands.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced thriller with a touch of the supernatural
Review: I read this novel in one day of endless delays in an airport. It kept me entertained through what may have otherwise been an interminable 24 hours, and really, that's all I asked of King when I bought this book. I was a bit weary of the battered-woman-runs-away-and-starts-over theme, as I have read many books with this theme over the last five years (Sleeping With the Enemy and Black and Blue come to mind). However, Rose Madder has a refreshing twist to it as it is alternately narrated by the abuser and the abused, and reveals the abuser's increasing descent into madness as the plot progresses. Rose Daniels has been tormented by her husband Norman, a strong, smart cop, for 14 years. One day she is jolted into escape by the sight of a single drop of blood on the sheets as she is making the bed, and the recognition that if she does not leave, Norman will kill her. With nothing but Norman's ATM card and the clothes on her back, Rose flees to Chicago. There she finds a women's shelter and begins a new life as a reader for recorded books on tape. She also purchases a painting of a woman staring off over a pyramid and bluffs, wearing a rose madder gown. The painting speaks to her, and she eventually enters the painting. It plays a pivotal role in Rose's escape from Norman. It helps her to escape him, but also sparks a rage in Rose that is evil and becomes overpowering. The best part of this book is the narration through the eyes of the completely unglued Norman, who is determined to hunt Rose down and sentence her to a slow, excruciating death. As his hunt for Rose intensifies, he spirals ever further into utter madness. The weakness of this book, to me, was King's reliance upon the Rose Madder painting to help Rose defeat Norman. I thought initially that the supernatural element of this story added to it, but in the end it seemed overdone and not necessary. There is an entire segment in the middle of the novel describing Rose's entry into the painting that drags and significantly detracts from the overall quality of the story. Overall, though, this book was well-written, richly characterized and exciting. It contains some pretty disgusting and gruesome depictions of Norm's violence. King's sensitivity to domestic violence also added to Rose Madder's appeal. This story will definitely keep you entertained and on the edge of your seat throughout.
Rating:
Summary: This is an.... interesting book
Review: I really thought that this book was excellent! i don't really know if this is a book for everyone, I mean many men probably wouldn't like this book because in my opinion it TOTALLY trashes the male character, this is only a book that i would recomend for DIEHARD king fans, some books are better for the older women who like horror stories and this is defintely a novel that I would only recommend for people who don't really like many of kings othr novels becuase this is a MUCH MUCH different type of book than some other types of scary novels and its MUCH MUCH different than any of the others that i read b4! ! ! ! ! !!!!! ! the DeadZone being an example i fuond these books to be profoundly different
Well i 'd just like to say that this book is mych better than say Hearts In Atlantis, i found that nostalgic and DULL but not very good at all, i found elements the same in that book and in Rose Maddr however, for instance he uses crazy and unbeleivable supernatural powers to make both books remotley intersesting and as an afterthought i'm going to decide to change my original 4 star rating to a 2 star, i alluded to things that i hadn't tought of b4 and i ralizedthat this book isn' t original at all!
ONLY FOR DIE HARD KING FANS AND THE OLDER WOMEN!
Rating:
Summary: "We Need To Talk-UP CLOSE!!!
Review: The above words are the most frequent spoken by the character Norman Daniels, Rosie's MONSTER of a husband! Rosie has been with her cop husband Norman for 14 years too long, when the abuse became way too much to bear. So one day finally, early in the book, she escapes from the house with Norman's ATM card in hand,fetching the nearest cab to the bus depot. She draws $750.00 out of the bank first though, and throws the ATM card in the trash. She ends up about 750 miles away, at a shleter for abused women like herself. It is there that she makes a new life for herself, though she is still scared. When Norman discovers her escape, he's FURIOUS, and manages to track her down. He catches up to her eventually, and what happens next-well I won't tell. You have to read to find out. This was one of my favorite King stories which I have read twice.
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