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Well, what do I say about this book?

It was not an enjoyable book to read for a number of reasons. I almost DNF'd about a third of the way in, but stuck it out to the end because I wanted to see how it was concluded.

CW: School shooting/violence, bullying, domestic violence

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD:

We start with our narrator, Charlie Decker, who is at school going about his usual business. We learn a little about him, and that something has happened to cause him to be in a lot of trouble, and it transpires that he 'tried to kill' a teacher (this is not a spoiler, we find this out very early in).

Charlie gets pushed over the edge during an interaction with the school head, and decides to finally use the gun that has been in his locker for a while now. Now, when I say 'pushed over the edge', its clear that Charlie is already a pretty messed up kid. He's aggressive, angry, extremely unpleasant. He's a complete sh*t for the rest of the book too, there's no redemption arc to be found here.

Charlie murders a couple of teachers, and proceeds to hold a class of his peers hostage for the next few hours, telling his story, talking about events in his life that have led up to this.

I couldn't quite decide if Bachman/King was going for an unreliable narrator here because this is written in the first person, but Charlie Decker is a totally unlikeable character, and yet all but one of his classmates come to see him as some kind of hero; its actually both disgusting and insulting. About two-thirds of the way in, I started questioning whether the events happened the way they did, and whether this is just Charlie's very skewed perspective, but it isn't. We are being asked to believe that the events happened in the way he says (and the last few pages of the book confirms this).

His peers are mostly awful people, and I'm unsure whether Bachman is making a comment on how kids can be, but they seem like they're horrible without a real reason. They're all so whiny and uncaring. Other than one short reaction from one of them, the kids seem fine with the fact that Charlie has gunned down two people in front of their eyes, and never really seem concerned that he may turn the gun on them. There's never any real peril either, because the whole book feels like Charlie just wants to make people feel sorry for him and his tales of woe.

The fact that his peers see him as a hero, despite committing two murders and holding them hostage as some sort of stand, is incredibly gross and so, so inaccurate. The reaction of the teens to the murders is so wildly wrong that its hard to recover from that. As a reader, I couldn't warm to these people at all. Only one of them challenges him, and its a character whom Charlie has real issues with because the person seems like a stand-up kinda guy. He both seems to admire him, and also wants to tear him down. His orchestrated destruction of 'Ted' at the end almost seems like it becomes the point of his actions, but its brutal and pointless.

There are moments in this book where Charlie is talking about past events in his life where we as a reader can actually see him as a more-rounded character. The story where he speaks about the time he took a trip with his friends and ending up getting very stoned at a party seem fairly well-written enough for us to have a moment of connection with him. These are the moments where I considered whether a 2 star rating was warranted, but there wasn't nearly enough of these connectable moments. Charlie is a complete sh*t, and has no redeeming qualities. He just comes across as an early-stage incel with mummy issues, who thinks his life experience to date has made it ok for him to kill people and act this way. He's so incredibly entitled that its just nasty.

Stephen King is one of my favourite writers; I have loved his work for a long time, but this book is just so very poor.