Gwendy's Button Box

Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar Book 164 pages

From Publisher's Weekly: "It's 1974 when 12-year-old Gwendy Peterson is offered a magic box by a man named Richard Farris, whom she meets at the top of one of the cliffside Suicide Stairs in Castle Rock, Maine. Farris wears a "small neat black hat" and seems to know just who Gwendy is and what she wants. Eight buttons grace the mahogany box he offers to Gwendy, and a lever dispenses silver dollars and intricate chocolates that Farris claims will help Gwendy lose weight and escape being called "Goodyear" by her classmates. Lose weight she does, but that's not all. Wonderful things keep happening in Gwendy's life, and she's happier than she's ever been. But when she decides to press one of the buttons, the consequences are horrendous."

I enjoyed reading this book. However, it did take some adjusting to realize that it wasn't going to be scary despite its authors. It is billed as horror, but I found no horror and also not a lot of suspense. The story reads like a normal life of a young girl who turns into a young woman. The addition of the button box is what makes it slightly different. Of course this is not an original story line, but it was nicely done. The box has some profound effects on Gwendy's life, but I felt sorry for her as the bad circumstances weren't her fault. I did like Gwendy, she was doing the best she could with what she had. As is usually the case with these types of stories, she had to discover a lot of information on her own. Sometimes I find teen characters hard to read, but I applaud King and Chizmar with their writing of the protagonist. After she pressed the red button the first time and blamed herself for a tragedy, I thought that was going to be the theme for this book. I was grateful it wasn't. This was an easy read that keeps the reader engaged. Although there are some holes in the story, I still liked it. The plot of the book suggests that it should have been longer. The black button alone deserved more page time, but that's a novella for you. Throughout the story and at the end, I could not help but wonder what Gwendy's life would have been like if she had never received the button box. I wonder if that was the authors' intent. Hmmm....