This is my pick for King's worst novel. That opinion is both subjective and objective.

First the subjective part. If you peruse my book list, you will have deducted that I am a big horror fan. But the horror of Cujo is maybe a bit too close to home. At the age of six I had my upper lip partially ripped off by a collie that attacked me for no reason. That would have been enough, but we were in a rural part of the country where it had to be sewn back on immediately by the emergency team...with none to little anesthesia. So, I think you understand why dog attacks, rabid or non-rabid, may not be on my list of horror entertainment and certainly not right up there with vampires and zombies. Werewolves are OK, I guess. Now you know why I'm a cat person.

But even if I didn't have the excess baggage, I would have hated this novel. It came after a string of classic horror novels by King. The author has written that he was trying to break out of supernatural horror with Cujo and it feels like a gigantic misstep. There are no likable characters in this book and all the subplots read like bad soap opera. I'm not really clear why this novel reads so differently than his earlier books but it does. But perhaps the worst thing about it is the ending. I don't want to ruin it for the two or three people in the world who haven't read this book but King should have studied more Hitchcock and taken his advice. For those who have read the novel, (view spoiler)[Hitchcock stated that a director should never build up suspense just to kill a child in a movie. He did that in a early movie and his audience never forgave him. That advice probably rings true for writers too. (hide spoiler)].

I consider myself a major Stephen King fan yet this is the one book I caution people to stay away from.