2/5 stars
How’d I find it? My aunt and I share a love of Stephen King, and she passed along this title.
Why not 3 or more stars? Thanks to King’s writing skills and ability to fully inhabit a persona, Later is generally a good time. Readers will find this story easily digested in a sitting or two, and Jamie Conklin makes for an amiable narrator.
However. A well-written story with low stakes requires something to make it shine, and Later lacks that gleam. The use of the title as a literary device didn’t work for me; the payoff it promises fails to materialize in the closing pages, though little should be expected from the one dimensional characters we come to know (Villains gotta vill, right?). The supernatural and crime elements never coalesce either, but this may have more to do with the choice of perspective. The corrupt cop Liz as our narrator would have made for quite an ending. If only!
Most egregiously, King resurrects the Ritual of Chüd but deploys it weakly. Mr. King, if you’re going to reference It, a truly outstanding piece of literature, you better make it count.