Billy Summers

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

Mr. King is turning into a crime writer and I am worried. Not that I don't like his crime stuff. I really enjoyed Later, Mr. Mercedes was alright and I LOVED The Outsider until a certain point. But Stephen King is my go-to horror writer when I want some chills and I find them less and less. I miss his horror novels and it is upsetting.

Billy Summers did not work for me.

It is a good “last job gone wrong” story with a spin towards the middle and it is a decent adventure but without any thrills or surprises.

My main issue was that spin. In the beginning, I really enjoyed the story. I liked the world that was being built around Billy. Billy Summers, a hitman who settles in a small town for his last job disguised as a writer. A quiet neighborhood, friendly, accepting neighbors, their children, etc. This is what King writes best right! Then something happens towards the middle and changes the whole story. After that point, the novel lost its charm, got boring and predictable. That's my first issue with the book. It was very sad to witness the book lose all its potential for me with the sudden change it made, while it started with great potential and follow in the footsteps of Stephen King's best books.

My second issue was the character work. I found Billy quite superficial for a Stephen King character. I liked what I saw, I wanted him to be successful, I wanted him to live happily ever after but he didn't come out of the page and materialize for me, even though as part of the narrative he articulated what made him what he was.

And Alice, my god Alice. I really didn't like her. Alice lost this book a whole star. I did not find her decisions and general attitude compatible with her experiences and her backstory. King isn't usually as good at writing female characters as he writes men, but Alice is truly unconvincing. Therefore the feeling of love and devotion between them seemed baseless to me and I could not take it seriously.

My third problem was that King's political views were incorporated into the story quite densely. I mean, we know dude, you hated Trump, every sane person did and you are already very vocal on Twitter. We. Get. It. The fact that he vomited his hatred at every opportunity he could find, whether it's irrelevant to the subject or not, without any contribution to the story, got boring after a few times.

I like the multiverse stuff, the ones I caught at least. It's impossible to miss one of the references anyway, as King has repeatedly mentioned it. Keep it, subtle man.

This book could've been amazing. This book could've been amazing if King had continued to tell the story of Billy, using themes of innocence and redemption, as at the beginning of the book, through a small-town, safe home, and accepting community. Could have been one of his recent bests.

Would I recommend Billy Summers? Sure. Absolutely. It sounds like I hated the book after all these complaints, but I read it in a few days, not looking for other options or thinking about dropping it. Billy is a character worth getting to know. I've been reading King's books since I was 11, 12 so that's why I go into the story with high expectations when I start his books. Maybe partly, for this reason, I was not satisfied with the story that I encountered along with the effect of the high praise Billy Summers received.

Sorry, Mr. King, it's not you, it's me.

Hopefully this isn't too much of a spolier, but I really couldn't get past Billy's relationship with Alice. It didn't feel like a believable connection considering how they meet, and I don't think King wrote her as a well rounded character. It felt very much like she was a prop to make Billy a hero and at times it was even a little creepy.

Honestly I'm really confused as to how this book has so many high ratings. It's far from his best work. Not a bad book by any means, but not great either? It still had a solid ending though and I'm glad I finished it.

Stephen King really, really wants you to like Billy Summers. He's a highly skilled hitman but he only shoots “bad guys.” He has a tragic backstory. He's a lot smarter than he appears to other people and has secret literary aspirations. He saves damsels in distress.

This desperation for us to love this character adds up to a story that instead of being intense is rather bland and mild. It's not boring; I was certainly compelled enough to at least find out what the setup was. It just doesn't stand out much from any crime thriller, other than the fact that King wrote it. All of the time spent on the set up of Billy's job, plus establishing him as someone with a very different nature than his demeanor, didn't pay off in an interesting way.

The emotional center of the book is on his bond with Alice, which if the reader can buy into this, would make the story more meaningful. I was never convinced they would have any reason to trust each other and there wasn't any tension between them.

It's a readable book, just not one that's going to be memorable. All the political references are going to make it rather dated anyway, should anyone still care to read this in forty years or so. It's not going to be like The Dead Zone, which I would still read right now.

This story seems to drag on forever! I can't recall the last time I spent more than a week on a thriller. Despite all the hype surrounding this Stephen King book, I think I made the wrong choice for my first read. It felt like it was needlessly drawn out. I did enjoy the parts with Alice, they added some fun to the mix. However, I couldn't connect with Billy's character, so I found it hard to care about his fate. Plus, I'm not a fan of war stories, so those parts fell flat for me. It wasn't until halfway through that I felt like the story finally started to pick up some momentum. I am writing this review at about 300/432 pages because I am starting to get impatient and hoping this novel ends soon or starts to evoke some emotion in me.

Just finished reading and I think the ending is beautiful. Everything else - meh.

Well, that took a while, didn't it?
As you can see it took me about forever to finish this, so I need to come clean: I rarely watch crime movies or series, and haven't read a whole lot of crime in my life; same with war, whether it's WWII, Vietnam, civil wars, or whatever. Those are just topics that don't interest me, and those are mostly what this book is about. Again, King is a good writer, but the subjects are just blah to me.
At the halfway point it got a little better, not much though, and there were a few instances where the story seemed to be picking up, only for it to be bogged down again.
Also, in the first half of the book there were so many characters introduced that I lost track of who was who. That got better around the halfway point, too, but there'd still been too many characters with no real bearing on the story.
So, 1½ stars, rounded up to 2.

Not the usual Stephen King read. I scratched my head thru the whole book looking for Mr King's signature twist into alternate reality, looking for the creepy part to arrive that I assumed was referred to in the book jacket summary. Just a couple easter eggs to [b:The Stand|149267|The Stand|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1213131305l/149267._SX50_.jpg|1742269] and [b:The Shining|11588|The Shining|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353277730l/11588._SY75_.jpg|849585] about the 3/4 mark.

Many interesting ideas to contemplate thru the entire book! The traumas of childhood, war, rape, and revenge, the meticulousness and [can I really call it] split personalities required for an assassin, and the master craftsmanship of a good and long time writer as Mr King.

The book “Billy Summers” is seen by some as an atypical King book. Presumably, this means that there is nothing unexplained or supernatural in it. Let's leave aside the cameo of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining for a moment.

But it's not that atypical. King's vast body of work contains quite a few books and stories without supernatural phenomena and monsters. And Billy Summers is one of them.

As always with King, the writing style is like a hot knife through butter. No hiccups, no strange turns of phrase, and no stylistic breaks. And if they are there, it's intentional. Once again, there's nothing to criticize about the translation. Stephen King is usually well translated into Dutch, so kudos to the translator. This is also the reason why I often read King in Dutch.

The book was surprising but still predictable. The first part of the book reminded me a bit of 11/22/63. The description of Small Town America. King is a master at this. Not much happens, but in a few strokes of the pen, he sketches a complete neighborhood with its characteristic residents, social norms, and customs. The reader becomes almost a part of it. A six-pack, a few burgers, and MAGA.

My expectation was that this part would be the main focus of the book, but nothing could be further from the truth. For me, this was surprising. But once it becomes clear how King wants to continue the story, the ending is not very surprising anymore.

Although the plot itself is not very special, King manages to create a gripping story. He slowly brings together the past and present of Billy Summers. Intentionally awkward at the beginning but gradually becoming a smooth whole. Here, you can clearly see King's mastery and experience.

Furthermore, it's not an exceptionally outstanding book. A good story, a few hours of entertainment without pretensions.
4 stars.

4,5/5⭐️
Wat een prachtig boek! Hoe de achterflap wordt beschreven is maar 40% van het boek. Daarna krijgt het een ander soort wending, maar het past heel goed bij het verhaal! Het einde is ook heel mooi uitgewerkt.
Dit is het eerste Stephen King boek wat ik heb gelezen en ik vond het super mooi geschreven!

Ja wat kan ik zeggen. Iets waar King altijd in uitblinkt is het neerzetten van ontzettend sterke karakters. En dat is in Billy Summers ook niet anders. Een heerlijke crime novel die erg realistisch is neergezet. Natuurlijk, ik een King-fan, en vind alles goed. Toch jammer dat ik hier echte spanning een klein beetje mis.

Stephen King writes a crime novel from a hitman's point of view.

Typical King prose, solid and readable. The characters were interesting. The story itself got a little slow at points. Probably could have hacked 50-100 pages from this thing and still had a banger of a story.

All in all, not my favorite of his works, but definitely a solid entry. I'm kind of enjoying King's work in the world of crime fiction. It's definitely not as interesting as his horror stuff, but I find it in some ways much more readable.

How can I convey Billy Summers to you? For starters, I don't think it's a typical King book: no secret stash of horrors in sight, unless you consider humanity as such. Stephen King is an absolute master in describing people and places and before you know it it's too late: you just need to hold on by Billy's side until the end.

Picked up a King book after a long long time and it's great to see he hasn't lost the knack of stories that hit the raw emotions. The narrative is spun effortlessly and before you know it, you can't wait for it to reach the end. Billy is wonderful but so are the smallest characters he comes across. Highly recommended as King continues to Snipe away.