Rating: 
Summary: Well-written.. but very UN-horrifying as a whole
Review: This book, from its cover design, its author's reputation and its blurb at the back, seems completely to suggest a tale of seething terror.
However, I find that it is more a tale of jungle survival couched as a horror story. The horror is really very much in the background, while the reader (and protagonist) are mostly absorbed in the nitty-gritties of finding food, fighting bugs and avoiding the rocks when falling into a river.
It is admittedly a very charming book, especially in the characterization of 9-year old Trisha McFarland and the depiction of her struggles, her ever-deepening exhaustion and that fine line between comedy and tragedy; between hope and the abyss.
Yes there is a good build-up of fear about the "special thing" that lurks in the forest; stalking Trisha; BUT I found myself actually laughing when the terror should have climaxed. Laughing. Sure, you might choose to interpret that I am twisted, but I think the climax was more than a little funny.
Wonderful entertainment in all, but not what I bargained for when I bought a purported horror novel!!!
Rating: 
Summary: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Review: This was absolutely the worst book I ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Proof (if any were needed) that Stephen King can WRITE......
Review: Wow. I haven't been so impressed with a Stephen King novel in years - not since "Salem's Lot", and he wrote that back in the 70's.I'm impressed with this for far different reasons, of course. "Salem's Lot" was a pure horror novel - a small town in Maine is visited by a vampire. "Tom Gordon", by contrast, deals with a totally different kind of horror. No vampires, werewolves, or any of the other creatures King's dark imagination has come up with in his other novels. No, this horror is something that everyone can identify with in one form or another - the horror that occurs when a child turns up missing. King deals mostly with the child's point of view here - what happens to that child when she loses her way, to put it euphemistically. In this case, Trisha McFarland's imagination simply runs wild. She imagines good things - her conversations with Red Sox relief pitcher Tom Gordon, for example - and bad things - the "thing" that is following her throughout her journey. I won't spoil the resolution of that particular part of the story, except to say that it has a happy ending. And I actually cried when I got to the end of this book - something I never dreamed I'd do for a Stephen King novel. Oh, it's not perfect - but it's a damn sight better than a lot of what King has written over the last few years. And because of the kind of horror it deals with, it's also one of his most frightening books ever.
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