"Needful Things" By Stephen King



Title: Needful Things

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 736

Published Year: 1991

Just like the cover of this book suggests, it is the last Castle Rock story that Stephen King has written. It would be kind of fun for him to revive the fictional town where he has spun nightmares, but I am not him and I am not as creative. Luckily for myself, I read Four Past Midnight before this one, and in that collection there were four novellas which one was a story about Castle Rock. While reading Needful Things more things made sense since I had read the story in that previous work of his. I have also seen the movie that was produced about this book, so while reading it, I had an idea of what was coming. I hadn't watched it in awhile though, and like books made into movies, the book in my opinion is usually better.

Now for the plot. A strange new shop opens in Castle Rock and the name of the store is Needful Things. According to the shopkeeper he has something for everyone and can make a deal with you even if you do not have the money to pay the going rate for the items you are buying. Soon people in the town are put up against each other as the shopkeeper offers part of the payment to be done in "harmless pranks". None of these pranks are done against someone that the person playing them already has an issue with so the fights between people escalate throughout the book all the way to the climax.

While started the book it was a little hard to get into at first for me since the action wasn't exactly immediate. Once the action started going, the book picked up and I didn't want to put it down. The words flew across the page and I was surprised at how much I was actually reading. I loved this book by the end and I am ready to read previous works about Castle Rock.