A husband and wife make their way to a secluded lakeside holiday cabin. Once there, the husband handcuffs his wife to the bed, eager to act out one of his domination fantasies. Typically, she is more than willing to go along with such games. However, on this particular occasion, she has a change of heart and decides that she no longer wants to participate. Just as she makes this decision, her husband suddenly clutches his chest and succumbs to a heart attack, collapsing lifeless to the floor.

And there she is, still helplessly stuck, handcuffed to the bed. She must now rely on her wits to find a way to escape. But as she looks around, there seems to be no possible means of getting free. To make matters worse, a stray dog then wanders into the room and begins feasting on her dead husband's body, right at her feet. She is left in a state of terror, wondering when it will be her turn.

It is a slow and torturous descent into madness. The woman is completely trapped, alone with her thoughts and the voices that plague her mind. She begins to think that the key to escaping her dire predicament might be hidden within her past. So, she relives painful memories, dredging up a trauma that she has spent most of her life trying to forget. All the while, her body is slowly cramping up, she is starving, and suffering from severe dehydration.

This is a modern horror survival story that is both captivating and disturbing. It is realistic in its portrayal of a woman's desperate struggle for survival, yet it is also dark, brutal, and an emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end. While the story is overall engaging, one might argue that the ending could have been more concise.

People who know me well are aware that I'm not much of a re-reader.

Sure, I've read Harry Potter a few times, but it's not a general practice for me.

When I saw that Gerald's Game was a new Netflix original, I thought I should give it another try.

I assumed my mediocre rating was due to the fact that I read this back when I was a young high schooler and perhaps my delicate psyche wasn't equipped to deal with it.

About halfway through my second go-round, I realized some things.

Things might get spoily from here on, so consider yourself warned.

The story is about Jessie and her husband Gerald. Gerald has big plans to spice up the off-season weekend they are spending at their lake house.

When Jessie decides she's just not into Gerald's latest game, he refuses to take no for an answer.

Jessie takes matters into her own hands – or feet, as the case may be – and Gerald meets an untimely end.

Leaving Jessie handcuffed to a bed with no one for miles around to hear her screams for help.

You'd think that would be bad enough, but since this is Uncle Stevie, readers also get to enjoy a visit from the neighborhood stray, as well as Jessie dealing with the demons of what happened during a summer long since past.

Not to mention potential things that go bump in the night.

Here's the part where I explain how I had the same (but kinda different) “meh” reaction the second time around.

I'm actually going to steal a line from my buddy Dan's Cujo review because it sums things up perfectly.

“Basically, it's a fantastic short story wrapped in a soap opera I couldn't give two shits about.”

The main plot point of Gerald's Game is the perfect form of terror for me.

I don't care how a person is trapped – a burning building, a sinking ship, inside a car with a 200 pound rabid St. Bernard trying to murder them, or handcuffed to a bed – the mere idea of not being able to escape gets my heart beating like a rabbit.

However, there were some things I didn't notice when I read this as a kid that I did this time.

For example, Jessie wasn't trapped all that long. I get the initial panic and whatnot, but she really wasn't going to die if she didn't get that glass of water right away.

Also, was the whole “de-gloving” necessary? Or was any of this feasible?

I can't say I'm curious enough to volunteer to be chained to my bed, but all of the ins and outs of the action seemed pretty far-fetched now that I'm a grown up.

As a kid, I remember the big reveal of the eclipse being sooooo horrible.

Since I've been partaking in viewing/reading the “fake news” for a couple of decades now, I agree with Jessie's sentiment.

“Let's face it, Jessie thought. I got off with barely a scratch compared to what could have happened... what does happen every day... I wasn't the first daughter to ever find a wet spot on the back of her underpants. That's not to say it was right, or even excusable; it's just to say that it's over, and it could have been a lot worse.”

Please don't jump my ass about this because I do realize that every person is different and (thank God) I have nothing personally to compare with Jessie's experience.

But would her mind truly have fractured into as many pieces as it did from this one (disgusting) instance?

And finally, let's talk about this guy.

I know this worked for some and it was “genius” and blahblahblah, but for me it was another case of no one having the balls to tells King to STFU every once in a while and leave something on the cutting room floor.

Good lord, not everything you throw at the wall actually sticks, bro.

If Goodreads had half stars, I'd bump this one to 2.5 because it was totally average.

There's even a positive here with the hat-tip to Delores Claiborne during the eclipse because I realized THAT is a story that probably deserves another read.

I initiated an audio-a-long in December, and Gerald's Game was the March read for 2017. It took me a bit more than a month to listen to this audio. Not because it wasn't excellent, but due to Spring Break and my vacation to visit my family during my birthday. Gerald's Game is the second book I've read by Stephen King where the protagonist is a female. The first being Carrie, his very first novel. In terms of the scare factor, this book earns a 3/5. It's more of a survival story than a boogie man tale, although there is a boogie man element. Overall, my rating is a 4. The story itself is captivating, but it takes a while to reach the climax.

Gerald's Game is about a 30-something wife, Jessie, on a vacation with her lawyer husband, Gerald. It's meant to be a weekend getaway to their lake house. Jessie has plans of escaping the hustle and bustle, quietly cooking, reading, and relaxing. However, Gerald has different ideas.

In the first chapter, we find Jessie handcuffed to a bed all alone. There is no one to assist her in escaping, except the voices inside her head. Gerald's Game is predominantly a survival story, a recovery story, and a story of coming to terms with oneself and one's past. The majority of this story, at least 75% of it, occurs in Jessie's vacation home, a cabin on Kashwakamak Lake. There, we experience her approximately 28-hour ordeal of how to break free from the handcuffs and avoid dying in the process. Some parts are rather gruesome. One chapter had me actually cringing, making disgusted faces, and covering my ears.

While listening to this story, I had to consider if it was also a book about mental illness. Jessie does have several voices that speak to her in her head. They all have names, and Jessie converses with them, and they respond. The voices began when she was around 11 years old, after a traumatic event occurred. Some of the voices are comforting, while others are spiteful and mean. The voices emerge in full force once Jessie is in a situation where she cannot flee from them. They make her reflect on her past and come to terms with the way she has coped as she grew up.

Like all Stephen King books, I adored the backstory of our protagonist. I loved learning about our main character and how she developed as a person during her struggle. I also loved our twisted antagonist. The only thing I desire is that we could have heard Ruth's side of the story. That would have been amazing.

I have a rather complex love and hate relationship with King. On one hand, he truly has some remarkable ideas that can really capture the reader's imagination. I am also a big fan of his unique narration style, which has a certain charm and allure.

However, on the other hand, he often has a tendency to spoil his own books. He drags out the story unnecessarily, adding all sorts of things that don't really contribute to the overall plot. It's as if he can't resist the temptation to go off on tangents and include every little thought that comes to his mind.

The idea behind this particular book is actually quite good. There are certain moments within it that are really powerful and impactful, making the reader sit up and take notice. But unfortunately, King's penchant for overcomplicating things gets in the way. I found myself thinking "man just stop it" on multiple occasions. This book would have been so much better if it had been presented as a short story or a novella. As I've mentioned before, it does have its shining moments, and for that, I do appreciate it. But overall, it could have been so much more.

Der absolute Wahnsinn. Dieser Film bietet einen psychologischen Horror vom aller aller feinsten. Er ist unglaublich anspruchsvoll, wobei die poetischen Bilder und der spannende Plot die Zuschauer in seinen Bann ziehen. Gleichzeitig kann er auch grausam sein, was die Spannung noch steigert. Hier zeigt sich King in Höchstform! Er versteht es, die Emotionen der Zuschauer zu beeinflussen und sie in eine Welt voller Angst und Spannung zu entführen.

Well, I suppose we've all been in a situation where we've faced some sort of困境. Not necessarily being handcuffed to a bedpost with only the corpse of our dead spouse for company, but wondering what we would do if we were trapped and our life was at stake. I know I have.

In this highly detailed story, a woman finds herself alone with the corpse of her husband. As she reflects on the discomforts and traumas of her life, we are privy to her thoughts. Among these thoughts are her plans to obtain a drink of water and ultimately escape.

The story is gruesome in many ways. There is not only the physical suffering she endures as she tries to achieve her goals, but also the mental anguish of suppressed childhood abuse. At times, I found it very uncomfortable. There was one particularly graphic section that seemed lengthy and made me feel queasy. Then again, I had just eaten a large and sickly Cornish cream tea and had a stomach ache at that point. I'm not sure which affected me the most.

As always, Stephen King paints a vivid picture of his character's thoughts and actions. It's evident that there has been a great deal of research behind this story. At least about what it's like to be handcuffed to a bedpost and some medical stuff. There is edge-of-the-seat suspense, psychological horror, as well as blood and stomach-turning horror. There's also a hint of the supernatural, abuse, and mental illness.

The story could have ended at a satisfying place, but King chose to add a third section, which took the tale to an even darker place. He repeated sections in case we thought we could bypass the yucky bits - a very effective literary technique. At no point did I foresee what was about to happen, and that's a positive considering how often I can work out endings these days.

This is an easy-to-read book in terms of diction, but the subject matter is anything but easy. It's an engrossing and tense read. I was surprised to see that it's not one of King's most popular books, but it's an unusual topic and not his typical kind of horror story. It's wonderful dark fiction.

Whilst I have read a number of Stephen King books, mostly as a teenager, I was drawn to Gerald’s Game, due to the recent Netflix adaptation.

Normally, I would prefer to read the novel before the on-screen adaptation. However, in this case, I watched the screen version first. I enjoyed it immensely and, as a result, I was keen to get my hands on the book. I always feel the book provides more depth and goes that one step further than the screen version.

Basically, Gerald’s Game is a one-person narrative. It revolves around a couple, Gerald and Jessie. In an attempt to reconnect and spice up their sex life, they take a trip to their remote holiday cabin and introduce handcuffs to the mix. When Gerald handcuffs Jessie to the bed and begins to act out a fantasy scenario, Jessie gets panicked and this triggers Gerald’s accidental death. What follows is a 28-hour nightmare, as Jessie remains chained to the bed and tries to work out how she can escape and survive this ordeal. With a dead husband, a remote location, and a stray dog with a penchant for human flesh roaming inside the house, Jessie’s nightmare begins. Then the voices start, the voices of her subconscious and her past coming back to haunt her. Can Jessie escape Gerald’s game?

Boy, this was a dark psychological mind twist! Gerald’s Game delivered much more than I expected. It was a deeply confronting character-based study and one unsettling book. King’s skill at building and sustaining tension is high from the moment we step into the book until the close. The atmosphere King portrays in this novel is one of foreboding, despair, and ultimately survival. The situation in which King places his main protagonist Jessie is frighteningly real. The terror in this book comes from the way in which King plonks his reader into the situation at hand. As a result, the reader feels like a bystander in Jessie’s creepy terror room, being handcuffed and physically trapped – with no way out. There is an intense sense of reality that follows Gerald’s Game.

For those who turn to King for the horror and gore factor, Gerald’s Game will more than satisfy. Jessie’s attempts at escape and the mysterious presence of a figure known as the ‘bag of bones’ add a further sense of terror to Jessie’s unfolding nightmare. The key insertion of the stray dog that enjoys a feast or two on Gerald’s body made me avert my eyes from the pages of this novel more than once and recoil in disgust. King’s descriptions ensure that all this plays out very visually in your mind. The horror moments and situations of gore are where King’s writing seems to stand out, it is like he relishes in these aspects of the novel.

The timeline of this book is tight, it covers a 28-hour time period, over which Jessie is trapped. It is a plodding style pace, but this suits the tone of the novel. What also made this book a winner for me was the inclusion of flashbacks. Due to the subject matter, it could be confronting for some, but I appreciated how much depth this provided to Jessie’s character. King does go into detail surrounding Jessie’s past which was marred by an incident of sexual abuse and incest. It is graphic and detailed, but it was in line with the story.

Characterisation is solid in this novel. King successfully embodies the mind of his main protagonist Jessie very well. Throughout the progression of the novel, we get a firm insight into Jessie’s back story from the trauma of her past through King’s lengthy flashbacks and her present psyche. The novel is titled Gerald’s Game but Gerald is not the main character. He is pivotal to the events that occur and he still crops up in Jessie’s handcuff ordeal in the form of a haunting voice. King also spends time developing his non-human characters, such as the stray dog that flits in and out of the story. He also includes the figure of ‘bag of bones’, who for me delivered the book’s true scare factor. Jessie’s family also rounds off the character list and her dad in particular is described in detail. Many of these characters delivered some shock surprises and interesting angles in the book.

King definitely had me pleading to find out if Jessie would survive her ordeal. Gerald’s Game was a real page turner and renewed my appreciation for King’s novels, as his more recent ones haven’t quite hit the mark for me. Some readers have remarked on the ending of Gerald’s Game being quite the anti-climax, but I thought it was perfect Stephen King. Gerald’s Game was an entertaining puzzle-style read and a great psychological study-based novel. Be prepared to be taken to some dark places in this novel if you choose to read it!

*https://mrsbbookreviews.wordpress.com

This wasn't the smile, though. This was the grin - a version of it he seemed to save just for these sessions. She had an idea that to Gerald, who was on the inside of it, the grin felt wolfish. Piratical, maybe. From her angle, however, lying here with her arms raised above her head and nothing on but a pair of bikini panties, it only looked stupid. No... retarded. He was, after all, no devil-may-care adventurer like the ones in the men's magazines over which he had spent the furious ejaculations of his lonely, overweight puberty. He was an attorney with a pink, too-large face spreading below a widow's peak which was narrowing relentlessly toward total baldness. Just an attorney with a hard-on poking the front of his undershorts out of shape. And only moderately out of shape at that.

Poor Gerald, unfortunately he is merely a plot device and his moments on center stage are destined to be fleeting. He has recently discovered this new sexual kink that puts the fire back in the dragon. It changes everything and soon it becomes apparent that he can't raise the flag anymore unless he handcuffs his wife Jessie to a bed. He wants and needs her to be absolutely submissive. Jessie is complicit. She feels okay with it; maybe even feels a little excited about that horny glint in Gerald's eye. And it adds to the excitement that they decided to run up to the summer house in the fall when no one is there.
Gerald didn't skimp on the equipment. Oh no, he bought the real McCoy, not toys, but police issue handcuffs. It adds to his pleasure knowing she is completely helpless. Well, not totally helpless. Now maybe there is something extra stimulating for Gerald to lock his wife to a bed knowing that they are in the middle of nowhere, knowing that no one can hear a thing. He has a look in his eye that makes Jessie think that he is prepared to take the GAME too far. She asks to be released. He likes this new twist. A rape fantasy is blooming before his eyes. He isn't going to release her. Jessie kicks him. Her aim is excellent and those legs belong to someone who used to be athletic. She catches him in the gonads and in the stomach. Gerald exits stage left, but though his lines are finished his corpse still has a role to play.
Jessie is in a pickle. "Those are real handcuffs you're wearing, not the cute little bondage numbers with the padding inside the wristlets and a hidden escape-lever you can push if someone gets carried away and starts going a little too far. You're for-real locked up, and you don't happen to be either fakir from the Mysterious East, capable of twisting your body up like a pretzel, or an escape artist like Harry Houdini or David Copperfield. I'm just telling it the way I see it, okay? And the way I see it, you're toast." I don't know if Jessie is technically schizophrenic because sometimes voices in our heads can be good guiding forces and not necessarily debilitating. A traumatic event like being handcuffed to a bed in the middle of nowhere might bring out all kinds of voices in my head. I would hope that Jimmy Stewart's voice would show up. Wouldn't that be great hearing him say 'now just calm down Jeff we are going to get through this.' Jessie's voices, old friends it seems, are sometimes very encouraging and sometimes depressively pragmatic about the situation. Jessie, an old hand at sorting out the voices, vacillates between thinking about how she can live and thinking about exactly how she will die as the voices wage a war in her head.
The keys, yes the keys are way over there on the dresser. She gets a cramp. It was only a matter of time. "A fresh cramp sank long, bitter teeth into her left armpit, and she pulled her cracked lips back in a grimace. It was like having your heart poked with the tines of a barbecue fork. Then the muscles just below her breasts tightened and the bundle of nerves in her solar plexus seemed to ignite like a pile of dry sticks. This pain was new, and it was enormous - far beyond anything she had experienced thus far. It bent her backward like a greenwood stick, her torso twisting from side to side, knees snapping open and shut. Her hair flew in clots and clumps. She tried to scream and couldn't. For a moment she was sure this was it, the end of the line. One final convulsion, as powerful as six sticks of dynamite planted in a granite ledge, and out you go, Jessie; cashier's on your right. But this one passed, too." Does anyone truly understand fear better than Stephen King? Let's ratchet it up a bit. Entered through the pet door stage right is the stray dog formerly known as Prince. He is a demented version of the dog that was once loved and coddled by a girl. He is beyond hungry on the verge of starvation. Yeah it gets a bit gruesome.
Being tied up with death staring you in the face will probably lead most anyone to a few moments of reflection. Jessie thinks about her father and the stain he left on her life. Even as an adult looking back the situations that occurred are baffling. The manipulations and the secrets are still wiggling in her subconscious never to be completely still or properly categorized like a mounted butterfly or a file marked DONE. It is an ongoing evaluation. She sees someone... in the room. Hallucination or real? Something that genetically monstrous can't be real... can it? One of the things I like about Stephen King is he usually gives nods to other writers or artists or musicians reminding me that he is beyond just a pop culture... well... King.

If you want to go to heaven
Let me tell you how to do it,
You gotta grease your feet
With a little mutton suet.
You just slide out of the devil's hand
And ooze on over to the Promised Land;
Take it easy,
Go greasy.

A bit of Woody Guthrie... oh so appropriate... as it turns out to the situation. I was caught up in this book and blew through pages like Speedy Gonzales. By the end I felt that King added too many elements which detracted from the overall believability of the situation for me. True terror comes from me being totally sold on all the twists and turns. Despite those misgivings I still really enjoyed the book and he convinced me most emphatically that I don't need two pair of police issue handcuffs to spice up my love life. *Shudder*

My first King read in about ten years was "Gerald's Game", and I firmly believe it's my favorite of his works. I had seen the movie when it was initially released, but I discovered that the novel was far more terrifying and heart-wrenching.

I love this story for reasons that extend beyond its horror content. Being trapped in a vulnerable, life-or-death situation provides an intense framework within which to confront repressed childhood trauma and internalized misogyny. Ultimately, it's about the process of healing and the power of listening to the wisdom of your inner child.

King's penchant for long-windedness can sometimes be bothersome, but in this case, I didn't mind it much. I was truly amazed by how skillfully he captures the essence of trauma, especially the pain of being a little girl who idolizes her father, eagerly seeking his attention and affection, only to be betrayed. And then being manipulated to transform that pain into guilt and self-hatred.

A detail that I don't recall from the movie but that hits hard in the book is when Jessie is cuffed to the bed, paralyzed by terror as the Moonlight Man stands over her, and she perceives him as her daddy, wearing his "eclipse face." This is the moment when she resigns herself to his hurting her. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

Another aspect that struck me is that the Moonlight Man is somehow more terrifying as a mysterious specter, perhaps imagined, than as a graverobbing, necrophiliac Ed Gein type character. I don't remember the movie delving into as much detail about his nasty backstory, but all these little revelations at the end didn't shock me as much as they disgusted me.

The general consensus seems to be that "Gerald's Game" isn't one of King's strongest books, perhaps due to its slow pace and the fact that a significant portion of the story takes place within Jessie's mind. However, its emotional resonance is top-notch. The escape room premise is interesting, and there are scenes of genuine terror, as well as some grotesque descriptions of gore that made me cringe hard! It may not be a hit for everyone, but for me, it's an intense and captivating combination.

I reviewed the book on Goodreads and The StoryGraph.

"Gerald's Game" by Stephen King might be classified as the scariest book I've read so far at a terrifying level. Here, there are not so many terrifying monsters (although there is one), but rather a strong and purely psychological, constantly escalating horror that manages to escalate with each subsequent page of the book, as the hours filled with doom for the main heroine and her many inner voices are traced.

The story is exciting and there is no shortage of breathtaking moments. The action progresses slowly as Stephen King manages to unfold in terrifying details the situation that Jessie has fallen into. At first glance, it seems like a plot for a medium-sized story, but with remarkable mastery, King has developed it into a full-fledged and engaging book. There are no bright and likeable characters in "Gerald's Game" either. The book is very dark in this regard. The focus here is on the effect of pure and crystallizing horror, especially sharply emphasized when darkness falls...

\\n  Detailed evaluation:\\n

Gerald's Game, by Stephen King
Challenging, dark, emotional, slow-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75 ⭐

Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, and Sexual assault

Once again, my perspective diverges from that of the majority.

I discovered this book to be not only captivating but also unnerving and macabrely menacing.

It has managed to get under my skin in a way that no other book has since the disinterment scene in Pet Sematary.

Make no mistake, this book is not for the faint of heart. However, my heart seems to be built specifically for such literary experiences.

It presents an intriguing confluence of real-world, externalized horror, internally compounding fears, and paranormally tinged terror.

These elements converge in all the right ways for me, creating a reading experience that is both thrilling and deeply engaging.

It's as if the author has masterfully crafted a world that blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural, drawing the reader in and holding them captive until the very last page.

I can't wait to see what other literary treasures this author has in store.

I despised this book upon my initial reading, and my loathing deepened the second time around as I truly grasped the reasons behind my hatred.

It is极其过度渲染且冗长拖沓. Every single second of the main character's arduous struggle is depicted in excruciating detail. Her inability to think coherently, the way she panics over every minuscule thing, and the manner in which her tiniest movements are described in a painful and unrealistic level of detail as she over-analyzes the entire ordeal - all of this renders the book nearly unreadable. It is extremely exasperating to have the character agonize over every decision, second-guess her every thought, and complain about every ache, pain, and worry.

I do not intend to be callous towards her predicament, as being handcuffed to the bed is truly a terrible situation for her, and I understand what King was attempting to achieve. However, this book is a definite failure. Instead of making us experience the tension organically, the book simply tells us that we need to be afraid and anxious, without actually attaining the goal of making us feel that way on our own.

Unless you are an unwavering King fan and desire to be able to claim that you have read all of his works, I would highly recommend skipping this one. It is not worth the time investment, and the payoff at the end does not justify the frustration endured during the reading process.