Billy Summers by Stephen King

Billy Summers
by Stephen King
⭐⭐⭐

Billy Summers left me feeling very conflicted. On one hand, I really enjoyed the story as well as the characters - I found myself genuinely caring for both Billy and Alice. On the other hand, however, I feel as though I may have read a different book than the mass majority of other readers who have thoroughly enjoyed and claimed that Billy Summers is King’s best work in years. 

Let me preface this by saying that I am a massive Stephen King fan, and I personally feel that his best book in years is The Outsider. I highly recommend that one! I have high expectations for King, and this one just fell short. 

Much of what I would like to include as examples in this review would be spoilers, so I am choosing to be incredibly vague intentionally! I feel as though this book was written as a script - like King wrote it with the sole purpose of making a television show or a film in mind. He follows the overwritten and overplayed trope of a hitman giving his last hurrah. Just one more job before he leaves it all behind. What could possibly go wrong?

The character development is well done, as usual. At this point it is well known that this is Stephen King’s most well-honed skill. The amount of research done on the Iraq war, the mafia, and small town America was by far the shining star of the story. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the ‘badly acted cop TV show on cable television’ vibe I got from the dialogue in the book. 

The dialogue feels inauthentic and even a bit robotic. Often in the story, King utilized dialogue as a tool to replay and remind readers what was said or done previously in the story. It wasn’t horrible, but it definitely caused Billy’s story to feel unrealistic. It brought me out of the story a few times as well. 

As a fan, the little mentions of previous books was thoroughly enjoyed but King could have taken it a little further. I feel like that could’ve really enhanced the story and that it was a missed opportunity on his part. 

Overall, I gave Billy Summers 3 stars (more like 3.5), because it was an enjoyable story. The research was well done, I cared about the characters, and the story was decent enough to want to find out what happens. But this doesn’t feel like a Stephen King novel. Some people find that wonderful, but I feel different about it. It was an okay book.