Stephen King | THE INSTITUTE

Plot (via Goodreads):

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

Review:

The summer that I turned thirteen, I was visiting my grandmother in California and was completely immersed in CARRIE by Stephen King. It was the first and only book I had read by him until now. The paranormal aspect was riveting and effective and the characters really stood out in this story. Well, let's just say almost twenty years later and to no surprise - Stephen King has still got it. 

The Institute was spellbinding and isolating. From the first chapter, I found myself stunned and addicted. With a haunting prose and his way of being able to tell a story, it's no secret nor is it any surprise that Stephen King is the master of storytelling. I'm not one to really dive into supernatural or stories that contain some of the elements that this one has, but venturing off into something that you're not used to can be such a rewarding and exciting experience. King has this natural ability to take the supernatural and make it not only believable, but emotionally charged and at times harrowing. For a story to feature children in this capacity and some of the horrible experiences they had, I was devastated at times to read what was happening, but at the same time I couldn't put this story down. The characters were sensational and each one served such a great purpose to go along wonderfully with the story. The children, the police, the villains - everyone was written exceptionally well and it was hard to chose favorites. For a story with so many characters, no one was wasted and no one was lost in the background. 

I had an initial idea as to what this story was about before beginning, but I felt like with an author like Stephen King, it's best to go in as blind as possible and within the first few parts, I was wondering how the story would progress and was ridiculously curious as to how everything was connected. I couldn't stop gobbling up the pages and found myself hooked on putting the pieces together and savoring every part of this poignant and riveting thriller. Although I was rarely finding myself bored and didn't feel like many pages were wasted, I think this one could've been a little shorter in length only because with how saddening it was at times, I felt by the time I reached the ending and was burnt out with emotional exhaustion. I found the ending to be satisfying, hopeful, and harrowing. I definitely do not possess any sixth sense, but I do foresee a lot more Stephen King on my blog in  the future.

Special thanks to Scribner for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4/5