35. Doctor Sleep, Stephen King (2013)
***spoilers are all up in this, y&amp;#8217;all***
I started reading this all the way back in October but life has happened since then (broke up with my boyfriend, moved to another part of the city) so I didn&amp;#8217;t finish it until recently. And I realized it wasn&amp;#8217;t so much me procrastinating reading it because I was busy&amp;#8212;it was because it didn&amp;#8217;t hold my attention as much as I thought it would.&nbsp;
First things first: it helps to have read The Shining, but as long as you have a general idea of what went on, it&amp;#8217;s not going to throw you off. Okay. Doctor Sleep. Whatever happened to Baby Danny?&nbsp;
Here&amp;#8217;s what happened: he grew up to be an alcoholic with a guilty conscious. He drifts over to a small New England town where he finds a tight-knit community that supports his recovery and journey through AA. &nbsp;He aids the almost-dead in the hospice where he&amp;#8217;s an orderly, using his shine to see them on their way to the afterlife.&nbsp;
There&amp;#8217;s a golden child involved&amp;#8212;a girl named Abra who&amp;#8217;s shine is blazing brilliant, disturbing her parents with her telekinesis and psychic abilities. A lot of the book&amp;#8217;s conversations between Abra and Dan (of course they meet eventually, like most King books this is set up in a series of vignettes as outward points that converge to a common situation near the end, like in The Stand) are telepathic.
The villains remind me once again of The Stand, of Randal Flagg&amp;#8217;s camp of baddies. But this time they&amp;#8217;re called the True Knot: a creepy RV-driving convoy of sorta-vampires. They suck out the essence of kids that shine, calling it &amp;#8220;steam&amp;#8221;. Led by the beautiful and terrifying Rose the Hat, this group picks up on Abra&amp;#8217;s psychic scent and decides to claim the ultimate steamy child-prize.
So the throwdown is essentially when the True Knot and Abra, Dan, and their company of lovable Yankees finally meet at where? You guessed it. A camping ground built on what was once the Overlook Hotel. I won&amp;#8217;t give away the end