Pet Sematary was written by the famous author Stephen King. He has written more than forty books as well as two hundred short stories. He lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, Tabitha King, who is also a novelist. He has won the World Fantasy Award, the O. Henry Award, and many others. He is also the 2003 recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Pet Sematary is a scary, fictional book for adults and teenagers that takes place in Maine in the early 1980’s. The main characters are the Creed family and their next door neighbors, the Crandalls. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, have just moved in with their kids Ellie (age six) and Gage (age two). Louis soon discovers that his neighbor, Jud Crandall, is like a father to him. Louis is a doctor, and works at the clinic at the local university. But the family is unaware that the woods behind their new house hold a dangerous secret.

One day, Jud volunteered to show the family what the path near the Creed house leads to—the Pet Sematary (Sematary being misspelled by the child who made the sign). The thought of people’s pets dying disturbed Ellie, and that night, Louis told her more about death. He didn’t hear much more about the Pet Sematary until one day at work when he was left alone with a dying college student by the name of Victor Pascow. Louis was shocked when the boy started talking about the Pet Sematary and how it wasn’t “the real cemetery, Louis.” Louis had no idea what he was talking about or how Pascow knew his name. A while later, Louis discovers that Ellie’s cat, Winston Churchill (Church for short) has been struck by a truck on the road while the rest of his family is away for Thanksgiving. Jud tells Louis to follow him immediately with the dead cat, leading him to the Pet Sematary…except they didn’t stop there. Jud takes him beyond the Sematary to a place called the Micmac burying grounds, where he instructs Louis to bury Church. The next morning, Church returns to Louis’s house smelling like dirt with pieces of the trash bag he was in in his whiskers. Louis realizes that the Micmac burying grounds have brought the cat back to life in an eerie, undead form. As the story goes on, Louis comes to terms with the place’s magic when Gage dies the same way Church did. Will Louis be sane enough by then to ignore the thought of the Pet Sematary? Will the woods’ secret destroy the entire family?

The theme of Pet Sematary is that sometimes dead is better. Everyone dies eventually, so it is better to accept the thought of death than to deny it. Stephen King shows us this through the “magical” burying grounds. The tone of the story was dark and graphic. The emotion of most characters was tense and worried.

The Pet Sematary had a deep power that worked in terrifying ways. If strange things happen when a pet comes back to life, what will happen when a human is buried there? What was really the cause of Gage’s death? What will happen after that? How will it affect the Creeds and the Crandalls?

Pet Sematary is a thrilling and interesting book with many twists and turns. It is detailed, and causes you to really think about life and death. The use of the normal family makes the characters easier to understand. I really enjoyed reading this intriguing page-turner. I’d definitely recommend it for people who love scary stories!