Stephen King

Rose Madder

Rose Daniels saw the single drop of blood on the bed sheet--and knew she must escape from her macabre marriage before it was too late.

But escape was not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, lucking out with a new man. Her husband, Norman, was a cop, with a cop's training, a cop's technology, a cop's bloodhound instincts. And even worse, Norman was--well, Norman. Rose knew she had been married to a savage brute. Now she realized she was being tracked down by a terrifying monster--but the only place she found to hide could be the most dangerous one.
--back cover

Eva Ströberg

Stephen King - Rose Madder
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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I might be biased since I love King novels so much, and this one is no exception although the story is hard to go through, but the book is always easy to read. No matter how many pages King wrote, I always pulled through with such speed since I wanted to know what happened next.
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Rose is married to Norman Daniels, a cop, a succesful detective, but what people don’t know is how he abused her. He hit her, raped her, tortured her for 14 years, until Rose decided one day she got up and leave carrying his ATM card and her handbag.
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Norman, who is used to hunt people in his job, couldn’t believe that his wife dare to leave him. He went on to find her and kill her once he found her.
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It’s a novel with many graphical details of domestic violences, it’s “hard” to read in that sense but as I said, King is a master storyteller
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#stephenking #rosemadder #americanauthors #booksbooksbooks #currentlyreading #2024reads #2024readingchallenge #bookstagram

C Fernando Maciel 

I love Stephen King. 

Very few books that I'd read from him I didn't like. The vast majority are great novels, full of mysteries, and really catches the reader's attention.

Rose Madder is no different!

lily

Celeste Richardson

Actual rating: 4.5 stars, rounded up.

This is one of those King books I honestly didn’t expect much from. It’s not one commonly listed as a favorite, or even mentioned that frequently from among his works. I can’t say I would’ve thought to pick it up had I not been so invested in the extended reading list for the Dark Tower. But it was next on that list, so I found myself a copy. Now I’m incredibly glad I picked it up. Though not perfect, Rose Madder is now one of my favorite King novels outside of The Stand and the main Dark Tower series. Talk about a protagonist you can root for.
“It ain't the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.” 
Rose Daniels has had enough. After 14 years of extreme spousal abuse at the hands of her policeman husband, one drop of blood on a bed sheet is her catalyst for leaving this horrible half-life she’s been living and starting over somewhere new. Now Rosie is finally embarking on a life of her own, for the first time in her adult life. And it’s absolutely wonderful. But Norman Daniels refuses to let his wife go. He’s going to track her down. And when he finds her, he’s going to talk to her. Talk to her right up close. And he plans on it being the last conversation Rose ever has. However, there are odd powers at work here, and Norman is going to find this plan much more difficult to carry out than he ever imagined.
“The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.”
Norman might just be the most despicable fictional character in the history of fiction.  He’s one of the most disturbed, chauvinistic, narcissistic, deranged excuse for a human being in whose head I’ve ever had the displeasure of being. I found him appalling. But Rose, on the other hand, is possibly the best female character King has ever created. She feels incredibly real, and both her hopes and her terrible fears rang very true. The way she grows over the course of the novel made me want to cheer. Her resilience and optimism is inspiring.
“It's best to be ruthless with the past.” 
While I developed some deep feelings regarding both protagonist and antagonist, what really sold me on this book was the horror element. I’ve read a lot of King by this point, including most of his horror classics like The Shining and IT and ‘Salem’s Lot and Pet Sematary. There are portions of Rose Madder that I truly believe are just as freaky and disturbing as the aforementioned books. And the horror here felt different and original in ways that resonated with me. I won’t soon be forgetting the source of the novel’s title, or why there’s a bull skull on the cover.
“That’s really all art is about, I think, and not just pictures—it’s the same with books and stories and sculpture and even castles in the sand. Some things call to us, that’s all. It’s as if the people who made them were speaking inside our heads.”
I could never call King or his work underrated. But I do think Rose Madder deserves more attention than it gets. I loved seeing the ways in which it’s going to tie into the Tower, but even outside of those connections I found it a fantastic book. The only reason it’s a 4.5 star read for me instead of a full 5 is because Norman’s head was such a vile place to be, even though, thankfully, his perspective chapters were fewer and shorter than Rosie’s. Rose Madder is a great horror-laced thriller that will be in my head for a long time to come.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

Michelle Marlow

This was recommended by a friend. And YES! Be warned it can be very triggering. But I LOVED IT.

Barış Yarsel

A. D. Knapp

Mackenzie Mossop

Beth Seaton

Sarah Olson 

Rhiannon Mansfield

Lacy Clagg

Alistair James

Tina Rawls

Tim Pennington-Russell

From the Flap:

Roused by a single drop of blood on the bedsheet, Rosie Daniels wakes from fourteen years of a nightmare marriage and suddenly takes flight. She uses her husband's ATM card to buy a bus ticket, determined to lose herself in a place where Norman won't find her. She'll worry about all the rest later.

Alone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things start to happen. Meeting Bill Steiner is one; and finding a junk-shop painting is another. It may be bad art but it's perfect for her new apartment-and somehow, it seems to want her as much as she wants it.

Still, it's hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Her husband is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He's very good at finding people. The fact that he's losing his mind might even be an advantage.

Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, for her to have a chance in her brave new world, she must enter her own myth--a world that lies beyond the surface of a work of art-and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder.

Rose Madder

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