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3.21 of 5 stars

Stephen King cranks up the suspense in a different kind of bedtime story. A game of seduction between a husband and wife goes horribly awry when... read full description


reviews

Dec 16, 2009
Jeff rated it: 1 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here
6 comments like (11 people liked it)
Jun 18, 2007
Alissa rated it: 5 of 5 stars
This isn't a ground-breaking book. I can't tell you what about it I loved. It's gory, it's graphic, it's disturbing. It totally appealed to my sense of horror and fear. In fact... now that I think about it, this book may be part of the reason that I developed an OCD where I had to check all the doors and windows every night and was convinced when I'd wake up in the middle of the night that there was someone in the house... But hey, if a book can weave its way into your head like that, it ha More...
1 comment like (10 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2009
Jordan rated it: 5 of 5 stars
I actually stole my copy of this from my grandmother's house (I was pretty sure she'd never get around to reading it). People tend to think Pet Sematary is King's most unsettling story, but actually this is it - a pitch-perfect reverie in the midst of increasing desperation. At the center of the story is one of the most compelling female protagonists in all of fiction, and the novel hits you with not one but two absolutely grotesque endings. I reread this at least once a year.
1 comment like (11 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2009
Morgue rated it: 4 of 5 stars
I'm not easily scared, but parts of this book actually had me check my closet! A creepy recounting of a mythical woman who finds herself handcuffed to a bed in the same room as her dead husband. Amazing tale of survival and the terrifying thoughts that cross our mind in our darkest hours. If you're a fan of Stephen King, then you'll love this one. Deffinitly one of his finer works.
0 comments like (8 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2009
Lindsay rated it: 1 of 5 stars
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2 comments like (4 people liked it)
Dec 16, 2009
Ali rated it: 4 of 5 stars
If you are into handcuffs and sex you'll love and then immediately hate this book. I guarantee that after reading this book you will never willingly use real handcuffs again. Leave it to King to ruin another favorite pasttime.
1 comment like (10 people liked it)
Dec 11, 2008
Jacob added it
Jacob Thielemier
Doctor Baltz
Pre-AP English 10
9 November 2008
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King
In the book Gerald’s Game by Stephen King the setting makes the book. What I mean by this is that if the story would have taken place in a city or more populated place the story could not have happened. But since the setting is in a house on the wrong side of the lake where the house is the only structure in more than 3 miles, it sets up a great place for this novel to take pl More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Nov 07, 2008
Susan rated it: 1 of 5 stars
One of those can I have my time back please novels. The only book by King I absolutely HATED!!!
1 comment like (5 people liked it)
Aug 06, 2008
Jamie rated it: 2 of 5 stars
If you were to take a room full of Stephen King fans, hose them down, and ask them what they consider to be the worst Stephen King novel, many if not most of them would probably pick Gerald's Game. And I can see why, though this book about a woman who is handcuffed to her bed (kinky sex game and all that) when her husband dies of a heart attack has its moments.

Jessie Burlingame, the book's ensnared heroine, spends almost the whole time handcuffed to a bed. Geralyn says she once tried More...
0 comments like (3 people liked it)
Jun 07, 2008
Trudy rated it: 4 of 5 stars
OK - so I am not a huge Stephen King reader... I have enjoyed a couple of TV mini-series and movies in the past, but his brand of horror is not generally my thing. I don't even remember HOW I got this book as the copy I have doesn't even contain a synopsis so I wouldn't have picked it up myself, but somehow it found its way to my book shelf and I read it. Even though, based on the other reviews, it seems like Stephen King fans weren't particularly impressed with this book - I really liked it. More...
0 comments like (2 people liked it)
Nov 30, 2008
Stephanie rated it: 1 of 5 stars
I hated this book the first time I read it, and hated it more the second time because I actually understood why I hated it.
It is SO overwrought and drawn out. Every second of the main character's struggle is described in extreme detail; her inability to think clearly, the way she freaks out about every single little thing, the way her tiniest little motions are described in aching, unrealistic detail as she over-thinks the whole ordeal... this makes the book nigh unreadable. It's extremely More...
0 comments like (3 people liked it)
May 29, 2008
Rebecca rated it: 3 of 5 stars
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Aug 05, 2008
Jenny rated it: 5 of 5 stars
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Jul 22, 2007
oriana rated it: 1 of 5 stars
Oh I hated, hated, hated this stupid book. See, I figured, he's such a heavyweight, I really ought to give him a try, right? So I asked my then-roommate, who loved him, to give me something that wouldn't make me piss myself in terror (having seen like six seconds of the movie Pet Semetary as a child and nearly losing my mind from nightmares). I think she thought that this would be a good one since it doesn't have ghosts or possessed people or whatever. But good grief, normal-scary is sooooo muc More...
4 comments like (2 people liked it)
Apr 03, 2009
Natalie rated it: 1 of 5 stars
Having forgotten the book I was actually reading when I went to work one day a couple of weeks ago, my co-worker tossed this one at me. I made it through maybe 150 pages before tossing it aside in disgust and boredom. For one thing, the book begins with a pretty awful scene of near-rape (I can take any amount of gore one tosses at me, but I don't do rape scenes well) and then hints at other instances of molestation and rape in the main character Jessie's past. It just seemed a little voyeuris More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Nov 16, 2011
Reemawi rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Don't read this if you like your sleep. I stopped just before it could completely rob me of it, and believe me when I say it could, for the sole reason that the horror is, unfortunately, too realistic for comfort.

I'm not a fan of horror. I've tried to read other Stephen King books, and never quite made it through, because I found his graphic descriptions of horrific stuff, well, too graphic and horrific.

I stopped just a couple of chapters before the end of this. I stopped More...
Nov 15, 2011
Phillip added it
This isn't a ground-breaking book. I can't tell you what about it I loved. It's gory, it's graphic, it's disturbing. It totally appealed to my sense of horror and fear. In fact... now that I think about it, this book may be part of the reason that I developed an OCD where I had to check all the doors and windows every night and was convinced when I'd wake up in the middle of the night that there was someone in the house... But hey, if a book can weave its way into your head like that, it ha...mo More...
Oct 24, 2011
Alexa marked it as to-read
I have a vague memory of having access to this book when I was young, probably pre-pubescent. It was either sitting on one of my parents' bookshelves at home, or perhaps at one of the places my dad used to work. He would have to take my brother and I with him during the summer, during which we used to occupy ourselves with playing with the copy machine and me pretending to write a book on an old type writer.

Anyway, I remember desperately wanting to read this and it somehow always go More...
May 09, 2011
Carsten rated it: 4 of 5 stars
Written 19 (a magical number in King's canon of work) years ago the basic premise had never appealed to me: Gerald handcuffs his wife Jess to bed for sexual adventure and she accidentally kills him by kicking him and inducing a heart attack. She has to get out of this predicament and deal with flashbacks from her past (her incestuous father), a wild dog who enters the house and a monster(?) who visits in the night.

Despite my previous hesitancy, it turned out to be very compulsive re More...
Apr 18, 2011
Jenn rated it: 5 of 5 stars
The story is one of King's most compelling: Jessie Burlingame's husband Gerald enjoys kinky sex games with his wife. Actually, he probably depends on them. When the Burlingames try out their handcuff game down in the house by deserted Kashwakamack Lake, Jessie decides she's had enough. She experiences a flash from her childhood (another game she didn't like), and kicks out, rebelling both against her husband and her past. Gerald suffers a fatal heart attack, falling to the floor. And Jessie is s More...
0 comments like (1 person liked it)
Jan 23, 2011
Anthony rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Personally, I feel that Gerald's Game is not one of Stephen King's best novels, since it does not have many aspects of a book of fantasy fiction. It's more like a book of exaggerated fiction. Even though this does not seem to be his best genre, Stephen King makes due.
The book Gerald's Game is about a woman named Jesse Burlingame whose husband, Gerald, handcuffed her to the bed to act out a sexual game. When Jesse started to get cold feet halfway through the game, and tells Gerald to More...
Jan 11, 2011
Alexander rated it: 3 of 5 stars
This book is down right creepy, not in the normal way King's books are creepy but just because of one plot point that I won’t give away. The story is basically a couple Gerald and Jesse are having a bout of kinky (for lack of a better term) sex involving handcuffs. He keels over and she is left handcuffed to the bed. Hilarity ensues.

I found this book to be interesting and as stated earlier creepy, but I will say that it is not one of his better works. It feels like two short stories we More...
Jan 08, 2011
*Laura* rated it: 1 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here
Aug 20, 2010
Juushika rated it: 4 of 5 stars
After her husband dies of a heart attack in the middle of a sex game, Jessie is left handcuffed to their bed, abandoned in an off-season summer home, with only his corpse for company. Without hope of rescue, she must free herself to survive—an effort which takes her back through her traumatic childhood memories. Gerald's Game is in many ways a deviation from King's usual novels. There's no sprawling, here: the bulk of the story is the events of a single character in a single location over a sing More...
Jul 19, 2010
Sue rated it: 5 of 5 stars
When I read this book I didn't consider myself a writer, not seriously. But even so I was curious to find out if King could sustain my interest throughout an entire book in which the main character, or rather the only present character, is handcuffed to the bed. He succeeded, and how. I have often been disappointed in King's work in the way he contrives his endings. They are too pat and he nearly always trots out the obligatory "monster" at the end to explain the fear and tension and w More...
May 16, 2010
Thebookeater rated it: 4 of 5 stars
I've mentioned that I would like to try out horror books, and where better else to start than with Stephen King?

After looking for King’s books in the internet, I was intrigued by Gerald’s Game’s premise: a woman handcuffed half naked in a bed and due to some unforeseen circumstances, she was left all alone . . . or was she?

Two weeks of reading (for some reason, this came to be a long read for me), and I found myself blown by this world presented to me by King. I would like to More...
Feb 16, 2010
Ellen rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Ewww!

Okay, so I just got a nook for Valentine's Day. <3 Which means reading is no longer quite so hard on the wrists. WOOT!!!

I've been busting my tail-feathers prepping for my final novel revision, and just wanted a quick read, which Stephen King can generally assure. So this was the first purchased book on my nook. (I did download a bunch of free content first, though.)

Well, it was a quick read (except for the end, which dragged on a bit). And I was supe More...
Aug 14, 2009
Phoebe rated it: 5 of 5 stars
Stephen King plays does well with claustrophobic situations; in Misery he presented the story of a writer physically confined to a house; in Dolores Claiborne, the story of a woman confined to an awful marriage. Gerald's Game plays similarly with both physical and emotional confinement, though in terms of both intensity and craft I'd say it is the strongest of the three.

Gerald's Game has a fairly simplistic set-up. Jessie and her husband Gerald have been playing bondage games for sev More...
1 comment like (2 people liked it)
Jul 10, 2009
Daniele rated it: 3 of 5 stars
Horror thriller psicologico vecchia maniera parte da un'ottima idea e la sviluppa abbastanza bene degenerando verso la fine. Veramente divertente la divisione psicologica della protagonista, la quale per rara sfortuna si ritrova con entrambe le mani separatamente ammanettate al letto e nessuno nei paraggi che puo' sentirla gridare aiuto. Come iniziano le primi crisi di panico ed isteria ecco che nascono dialoghi tra la protagonista e una serie di 'voci' esistenti solo nella sua testa ma ognuna p More...
Mar 26, 2008
Aurora rated it: 1 of 5 stars
Wow. This book really isn't so bad right up until the very end. It has the usual stuff Stephen King does well: trapped stream-of-consciousness, suspenseful descriptions of minute actions, tense and terrifying situations. Maybe its overly dark, has indistinct characters, and occasional moments of borderline misogyny, but it isn't so very bad. But, alas! The end manages to go so over-the-top in all those directions, and be so dumb, that it completely undercuts everything that came before.
0 comments like (2 people liked it)