While I’ve enjoyed many a Stephen King movie in the past, including Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Shining, I’ve never read one of his novels before. When I heard he had written a haunted love story that he deemed a combination gothic romance/ghost story, I decided to give it a try. At more than 500 pages, Bag of Bones reads slowly at the beginning, but it’s not bad, and it’s never boring. Is it worth the price and the time it’ll take to read? Yes. . . and no.

Mike Noonan’s beloved wife Joanna died four years ago, and with her passing died the baby he didn’t know she was carrying, and his ability to write the bestselling suspense novels that made him a millionaire five times over. His feelings for Jo were strong – it is a joy to read about love from a man’s perspective actually written by a man as opposed to reading about love from a hero’s perspective written by a female romance novelist.

When Mike is “in the zone,” writing his novels, he loses touch with what’s going on in the world around him, and that apparently included Jo’s world as well. Why hadn’t she told him she was pregnant, and who was that strange man seen with her at Sara Laughs, their summer home in rural Maine on a day she was supposed to be at a community meeting? Did she have a secret life?

After Jo’s death, Mike develops writer’s block. Writing now makes him physically ill. He also begins having bad dreams where Jo is a shrouded figure of death, and their summer home is somehow involved. For good or for bad, Mike decides to spend some time there. Perhaps he can find answers to the questions he has about Jo, perhaps he can resolve his nightmares and his writer’s block. He’s not really living any more; he’s simply exisiting.

After he moves back to Sara Laughs, very peculiar things begin to happen, most of which center around a little girl named Kyra, her young mother Mattie, and Mattie’s father-in-law, the 85-year-old billionaire Max Devore, who wants custody of the child for himself. Mike gets involved in this custody battle and behaves as a knight in shining armor, and this middle section of the book is the best part of Bag of Bones. While there are very strange goings-on, including a psychic connection between Kyra, Mike, and some refrigerator magnets which spell out clues and pleas for help, a terrifying scene where old-man Devore and his “assistant” nearly kill Mike, and another horrific scene where Mike and Kyra travel in time back to the turn of the century, the paranormal aspects are (mostly) played down in this part of the book. They are there, to be sure, but they take a back seat to the unfolding relationships being forged between the little girl, her mother, and Mike.

As a result, the reader is left to enjoy both the strong characterizations and the burgeoning love relationship between Mike and Mattie, as well as his getting over the loss of Jo. King does this very well, with all the sorrow, anger, and guilt associated with loss and the getting on with life. Readers of romance are so very used to the use of emotions to describe emotions – here we get physical feelings instead. It is vivid, intense, violent, sexual, masculine, and very well done.

When, seemingly, the custody issue is resolved, the story turns very bizarre indeed, and all the mysteries and clues and psychic events come together in the last ninety pages of the book. This was where Bag of Bones becomes difficult – it’s like going into a fun-house, with moving floors, distorted images, and such a strong feeling of vertigo the reader will want to find the exit. But the exit is far in the distance, and there are too many obstacles in the way.

This reviewer was simply overwhelmed by the reason for Jo’s death, and the reason why Max, Mattie, and Kyra were destined to be a part of Mike’s life. The violence, the gore, and the connections became very horror-novel-like, indeed, and I disengaged. There’s no doubt Stephen King can spin a yarn, and spin it well. But the direction Bag of Bones takes is like the proverbial shoe dropping. I had expected the horror initially, but was lulled by the lengthy and strong mid-section of the book into believing that maybe it wasn’t going to be as horror-novel-like a novel as it became. If you are a die-hard King fan, you will likely enjoy Bag of Bones. If, like me, you were expecting less of a Carrie and more of a Stand By Me, wait for the paperback.