published: 2019
heard / read: 2/6-11/2020
book: 10 in 2020
Great events turn on small hinges.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
THOUGHTS
woooooow.
my very first Stephen King book.
EVER!
and if they could somehow all continue to be like this, well then i'd read more.
now, i really have no idea why i picked this up. i own the shining but its been years and i know that i wont get to it (and i've made my peace with that) so im not sure why i got this one. but if i had to guess, it was 100% because i liked the cover. and because the synopsis did not sound scary at all.
i think the reason i'm scared of King is because i saw Christine when i was young and that scarred me a bit. ...and then you have IT, and Pet Sematary & Cujo and well, i mean, you can see where i'm going with this (besides anywhere near anything that i am trying to say about this book).
anyway, this read, er listen was......inneresting.
its almost 600 pages!
in some parts i was all "hell yea" about it but in others i was just like "why is this sooooo long!?" im glad that i heard it but i was even more glad once it was over.
i will say this and its probably the most important thing to come out of all this nonsense that im saying / you're probably skimming through right now.
ya ready?
by the time i was done with this book, after everything that went down, i couldn't even fathom the beginning of this story. it seemed so far away. a different universe.
this book takes you for a fucking ride. to get to the end and then try to imagine the peaceful beginning really fucks you up.
Homeboy is just trying to get to New York in a slow way. and then we're at the end and holy shit!
what. a. difference.
what a ride!
not just for Tim but for Luke and everyone in between that was affected.
how are you really going to run a place like the institute and not "take the necessary precautions" to make sure that shit NEVER hits the fan? i found that so hard to believe because how do you get so cocky about it all, ya know?
i just couldn't believe every single thing that every single character in this book went through to get what we get in the end.
it ends "nicely", with no loose ends, erm so to speak (it's safe to assume that...well, i don't want to spoil it here). i don't see there being a book 2. and while i would have liked for the kids to end up together in some type of capacity, im just choosing to believe they all do good by each other in the aftermath of the end.
its a good read. but it is a bit of a read. i started reading this back in October i think or whenever it came out and i got a few pages in but in the end, gave it up and ordered the audiobook through my library app. so either way is good but if you want something to listen to, i definitely recommend the audio.
so yea.....uhm, i guess i could say more but i dont want to accidentally spoil anything...and i just wanna move on sooo, yea.
jump over for the most basic spoilers ever!
now, i really have no idea why i picked this up. i own the shining but its been years and i know that i wont get to it (and i've made my peace with that) so im not sure why i got this one. but if i had to guess, it was 100% because i liked the cover. and because the synopsis did not sound scary at all.
i think the reason i'm scared of King is because i saw Christine when i was young and that scarred me a bit. ...and then you have IT, and Pet Sematary & Cujo and well, i mean, you can see where i'm going with this (besides anywhere near anything that i am trying to say about this book).
anyway, this read, er listen was......inneresting.
its almost 600 pages!
in some parts i was all "hell yea" about it but in others i was just like "why is this sooooo long!?" im glad that i heard it but i was even more glad once it was over.
i will say this and its probably the most important thing to come out of all this nonsense that im saying / you're probably skimming through right now.
ya ready?
by the time i was done with this book, after everything that went down, i couldn't even fathom the beginning of this story. it seemed so far away. a different universe.
this book takes you for a fucking ride. to get to the end and then try to imagine the peaceful beginning really fucks you up.
Homeboy is just trying to get to New York in a slow way. and then we're at the end and holy shit!
what. a. difference.
what a ride!
not just for Tim but for Luke and everyone in between that was affected.
how are you really going to run a place like the institute and not "take the necessary precautions" to make sure that shit NEVER hits the fan? i found that so hard to believe because how do you get so cocky about it all, ya know?
i just couldn't believe every single thing that every single character in this book went through to get what we get in the end.
it ends "nicely", with no loose ends, erm so to speak (it's safe to assume that...well, i don't want to spoil it here). i don't see there being a book 2. and while i would have liked for the kids to end up together in some type of capacity, im just choosing to believe they all do good by each other in the aftermath of the end.
its a good read. but it is a bit of a read. i started reading this back in October i think or whenever it came out and i got a few pages in but in the end, gave it up and ordered the audiobook through my library app. so either way is good but if you want something to listen to, i definitely recommend the audio.
so yea.....uhm, i guess i could say more but i dont want to accidentally spoil anything...and i just wanna move on sooo, yea.
jump over for the most basic spoilers ever!
kthxbyye!
#bookslesreads on IG
*edit: after writing out the basic spoilers, i realized that this book might just be even better a second read around. so many details that tie up together and just all the work it took, i think re-reading it while already knowing what happens might make this even better the second time around. or first if you're down with spoilers like i am!
*PS2: BLOGGER took away the spell check. So, mah bad for any misspelled words. I can only reread the same shit over and over.
Kthxbyyee!
*PS2: BLOGGER took away the spell check. So, mah bad for any misspelled words. I can only reread the same shit over and over.
Kthxbyyee!
Luke is super smart AF. like at 12 (?) he's on his way to 2 top colleges at the same time to study and major in two different things til he gets kidnapped in the middle of the night.
he awakens in the institute in a room that is familiar to his minus a window.
the institute is a place where they take super duper smart kids and then basically abuse them into turning their telekinetic or telepathic powers to another level.
basically the institute is using the kids with abuse and control to kill people all over the world. "bad people"
they have been doing this for years and have killed thousands upon thousands of kids in order to achieve this.
one night, Avery comes in. hes what? 6? 10? i dont remember.
Luke & Avery both manage to make friends with Maureen. an older lady who is basically on her death bed who is in charge of changing the rooms over for each kid in the first half.
Luke learns that she has cancer and that she's saving money and has a lot of debt because her dead beat husband so he helps her out by giving her the name of some lawyers that can help her out. all in all, she's saving money to leave to her child who she placed for adoption years back.
i guess she takes a liking to them because she helps Luke escape.
for as "grand" as this place is, its not all that secure.
they plan an escape route.
Luke leaves through the fence in the playground but before he leaves, he chops off his ear with a knife that Maureen gave him and throws it back into the playground so that they wont be able to track him. (all kids are tracked with devices placed on their ear) . he gets away and they don't notice that he's gone for a good long minute. he's on a train that eventually leads him to the town where Tim is at. after telling Tim the truth, he also plays the usb that Maureen gave him for them, er well for anyone really. in that she explains what the institute is and what they do and background on everyone or whatever.
once Luke is gone, Maureen kills herself. and that's when they notice he's missing. (Well, tbh, it was a little bit of avery's fault. He should've not tried to cover up the hole in broad daylight.)
eventually Mrs. Sigsby and her crew manage to track Luke down (because they have plants everywhere. the institute is huuuuge beyond your wildest dreams).
eventually Mrs. Sigsby and her crew manage to track Luke down (because they have plants everywhere. the institute is huuuuge beyond your wildest dreams).
there's a big ol' shoot out. shit load of people die. Luke devises a plan to get back to the institute to save his friends who are mostly all now in the back half.
back half is where they really fuck you over.
but it's still not as bad as the back half of back half where all the "useless" kids are thrown to basically fend for themselves in the most horrible conditions.
before Luke left they tortured him i forgot why in the tank and they intensified his power but he of course did not tell anyone.
they did the same with Avery.
and the same thing happened to him.
so they make it back to the institute.
all the kids in the back half realized that together, in a circle, they can stop their pain and create a bigger, idk. whatever you call it.
they basically combine their superpowers.
and they essentially kill the staff in back half.
to make this short, in order for the remaining gang to escape, Avery needs to sacrifice himself. something 'bout a big phone. Avery was the only one that had that sort of power.
and so yea, the kids get away.
mrs. sigsby gets killed right away before shit even begins to happen and the last 3 remaining institute staff members...i think give up.
i dont really remember.
Tim & Wendy (the other officer when Tim becomes the night knocker...they are now dating), Luke, Nick & Kalisha (and maybe one more), and Orphan Annie (i wont get into her besides she was awesome, aware of the shit and the first to believe Luke) all live in a farm.
One day, The Lisping Man (whenever shit went down at the institute, Mrs. Sigsby called the lisping man on the big phone...hence that shit with Avery and the big phone) shows up to the farm and he's up to his ears in shit because of what Luke did essentially.
not just this institute but all others have gone down.
he explains to them that they were stealing kids to train them to kill "bad" people (i mean, they were bad but i mean, kettle, pot? y'all meet yet?) and that because Luke took everyone down, the world is now going to end.
there's a bit more to that but it basically ends with Luke being all "you's a dumb motherfucker."
Nick & Kalisha (and another if there was a third) eventually get to go home.
Luke is the only one who stays in the farm since he has no other family to go home to. (no siblings and they killed his parents the night they kidnapped him and made it seem like it was done by Luke.)
.....and das it.
i mean, i OBVS left a lot out for reals this time.
pero like, come on man.
This book was so crap and so illogical at every turn that I rated it a 2. It contradicted itself in its plot and had no logical basis in anything. It was a total bummer, like most of this author - he gained fame through film productions. And it's because it's easy to implement facade ideas. The author has an idea and is almost never able to follow it logically, much less intelligently.
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