It

Stephen King

Jan 2016 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

It: Chapter Two—now a major motion picture!

Stephen King’s terrifying, classic #1 New York Times bestseller, “a landmark in American literature” (Chicago Sun-Times)—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It.

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.

“Stephen King’s most mature work” (St. Petersburg Times), “It will overwhelm you…to be read in a well-lit room only” (Los Angeles Times).

Ratings and reviews

I want to start by saying that I read this book completely because the movie version from my childhood haunted me well into young adulthood and I felt the need to face my fears. Now that I've read it, I'm so very glad I did. King does the amazing job of telling a story about the childhood fear that we've all felt, but turned up to the nth degree. It's turned up so much that he damn near broke the knob clean off (beep beep). When you're a kid adults tend to nod a lot, smile and wave you off assuring that your problems are trivial. In any normal town this might be true. You might have an overdue library book or perhaps a bully knocked your books out of your hands in the hall. In Derry, Maine the problems are much more severe. Children go missing, people are murdered, a mad man might chase you in broad daylight, but the adults of Derry are content to just fold up their newspapers, walk in from the front porch and close the door. In this bleak and scary small town, that is also so quaint and inviting, there is an evil laying underneath that feeds off of this horrible apathy and the children that are so easily lost track of. However, after a lifetime of doing as it pleased a very special group of outcasts has found themselves set on a direct collision course with IT. This is my first time reading Stephen King and I found this book to favor a general feeling of Lovecraftian styled horror with George R.R. Martin character development and pacing. All in all a really good read that pretty much overtook all my spare time for about 2 weeks.

I started this book right after I saw the new movie and I have always wanted to read it ever since I saw the IT miniseries. I started the book in October and now just finished on December 23rd at 12:14 A.M. IT was my first book I have ever read and finished by Stephen King. And by god I can say it was worth it. Even though it took me 2 months to finish(which if I added the amount of time to finish the book it really only took about 2 weeks). I loved the characters and I could easily connect with them. IT flowed very well and had a lot of detail and almost nothing was missed. You could feel the emotions, see what they saw, smell and even taste what they tasted. When I read this I was able to form a very clear picture in my head of what exactly was going on (with the help from the movies of course). Sadly, even though I loved this book it certainly had some downfalls to it. While you could visualize just about everything in this book. King put way to much detail into everything which made some parts of the book slow and drag on. I kid you not some parts felt like a High School writing an essay that required over 1000 words. What I mean by that is the students would reiterate sentences where they all meant to say the same thing but each one had greater detail then the last. Others may see that as a good thing, I saw it as a bad thing. You had the juicy bit and you wanted to keep going with it but you had to keep cutting the fat off the juicy bit till you were able to get past it. Luckily, even with all the detail and the insane amount of pages (1165 in this version) it was still worth the read. I felt that no time was wasted on reading this book. Plus after reading this it makes you love the movies even more even though they don't follow the books in any way. In all, this book should be in everybody's book collection regardless if you have read it or not because it is that good. This is just my opinion though so you decide on whether or not you want to read this amazing book. Next up: Ready Player One and then the Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones)

'It' was 1st published in September 1986. The book was last published in January 2016. Don't be misled into thinking this is a new book or publication by Stephen King. If you want to know when his or any other book being sold by the Play Store was published, I advise you to "Google" the title and author for up-to-date facts. Being I'm 67 y.o., I recognize a multitude of the titles being sold as being from when I was in my 20's. This is relevant when it comes to the self-help books becomes the information contained within those pages are pertinent to the problems of those eras that too often no longer exist. So check the publication dates for the more recent books, especially those that reference mental/health care advice. Also, history, since new information comes out quite often that challenges and/or changes those days and facts.

About the author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.