Plot Summary

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Finders Keepers detective agency puts operations on a temporary hold. Holly Gibney is on bereavement leave after the death of her mother, which has left her to grapple with some deeply complex feelings towards their relationship. Her partner Pete is currently infected and unable to provide any assistance. When the agency receives an anguished call from a woman looking for help finding her missing daughter, Holly knows she should turn her away. However, Holly finds herself drawn to the mother’s desperation, and she sets off to help Bonnie Dahl come home.

Down the street from where Bonnie disappeared lives professors Rodney and Emily Harris. Though on the outside, they seem like nothing more than esteemed retired professors, they are harboring a monstrous secret in their basement. The professors’ indulgences could be related to Bonnie’s disappearance…but it will be up to Holly Gibney to figure out what exactly is happening in this quiet suburban neighborhood.

My Thoughts

We will go ahead and address the elephant in the room. Prior to this book being published, social media caught wind of the fact that this book heavily features King’s personal political beliefs. If you’ve followed him on social media at all within the past few years, you’re probably familiar with his extremely liberal political viewpoints. This is no secret. The book was review-bombed by people of dissenting political beliefs prior to it even hitting bookstores due to their distaste for King’s political alignment. This phenomenon was heavily documented in multiple articles, so it was no big surprise to find that King makes his stance on COVID, vaccines, anti-vaxxers, police brutality, and Trump VERY well known in his latest novel Holly. Personally, I typically share very similar political beliefs with Stephen King (and I will leave it at that), however, even I found the political commentary to be a little heavy-handed. Now, I am always the first one to argue that horror has always been political, so I typically don’t have these kinds of issues when it comes to social and economic commentary being featured in my horror novels. However, in this case, it often felt unnatural to the dialogue and ended up feeling incredibly forced at times. King’s insertion of his politics into this book was surprisingly not really that big of an issue for me, but I figured I would touch on that subject since it was a hot topic of discussion when Holly was first published.

My main issue with Holly was the fact that I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed by the time I finished reading. Readers have been following Holly Gibney for multiple years through multiple books, and so when it was announced that she was getting her own stand-alone novel, I really thought that this would be her time to shine. I was expecting a more grandiose plot for Holly to unravel. Though the story of an investigation into a missing woman is not a new concept, from the details in the plot description regarding the elusive professors, I honestly expected the story to be a lot more intricate and interesting. I won’t spoil the plot, as the book was just released earlier this month, but I will say that I didn’t find the investigation itself to be very intriguing, nor was the “big reveal”. The story is structured in a way in which the reader already can figure out the “mystery” pretty quickly, and then they spend the rest of the book watching Holly come to her own conclusions and wondering when she herself will figure the truth out. In comparison to the insane mysteries Holly investigated in The Outsider and If It Bleeds, sadly the investigation in her stand-alone novel feels very lackluster.

Holly herself is a very polarizing character amongst King fans: you either really love her, or you absolutely cannot stand her. Though I personally haven’t read the Mr. Mercedes trilogy (and inadvertently spoiled it for myself by reading The Outsider upon its release), I have always been a fan of Holly Gibney. She’s mousy, quirky, inquisitive, and kind. Though I wish she had received a better plot in this novel, I will say that I greatly enjoyed her personal growth throughout the book. Holly spends much of the book struggling with the recent death of her mother. They had always had a very difficult relationship, and her mother’s passing due to COVID infection (after vehemently refusing to vaccinate) has opened up some old wounds. As Holly works to locate Bonnie Dahl, she also uncovers a lot of things she didn’t know about her own family. Bonnie and her mother also had a strained relationship, which understandably tugs at some of those scars that Holly wears from her relationship with her own mother. I really enjoyed the parallels of Holly coming to terms with her trauma from her mother and Bonnie’s estranged mother desperately trying to ensure that she is safe. King is notorious for nailing toxic parent-child relationships, and he perfectly captures the nuance of still loving a parent who is also the cause of a lot of your pain. I feel as though we got to know Holly on a much more personal level in this book, and for that I am incredibly grateful. I have a lot of love in my heart for Holly Gibney, and I’m glad we got to spend more time with her character.

Overall, I had high expectations for Holly, but sadly they fell a bit short. I ended up rating this book only 3 out of 5 stars, which is arguably the lowest I’ve ever rated a Stephen King novel before. While I would love to see more of Holly Gibney in the future, I would love to see her also be used to her full potential.