The 52 Book Club 2022 Challenge Prompt: 43. Author who’s published in more than one genre

Other Possible Prompts: 14. A character with superhuman ability, 15. A five-syllable title, 23. Author with an X, Y, or Z in their name, 25. A wealthy character, 52. Published in 2022

Plenty of prompt options, but I’m going to leave this one in my bonus category for right now! I think I only still need to fill 43 and 52 of those, so I’m just going to leave it off for the time being. 🙂 This review and synopsis won’t make a ton of sense unless you’ve read Gwendy’s Button Box and Gwendy’s Magic Feather, both of which I highly recommend.

This final installment of the the story of the button box takes our heroine all the way to outer space. When Mr. Farris returns one last time and asks Gwendy for the biggest favor at all, she complies, but at a great cost: it’s time to get rid of the button box, but there are people after its power. People who will stop at nothing to take it away from Gwendy…

This story, of course, hits with the same nostalgic, small-towny note as the first two, and I thoroughly enjoyed the vibe and the atmosphere these books created. The button box, and all of its buttons spelling certain doom, remain just as real and horrifying in this book. The Jonestown incident from Gwendy’s Button Box really got me and stuck with me long after reading, but I think the parallels King and Chizmar draw between a post-pandemic world will shake you even more so. It’s such an interesting concept, that makes for a really interesting tale.

Gwendy is wonderful as always, but I felt her narration was even more authentic this time as we live inside her brain with early onset Alzheimer’s. Memory is key to completing her “final task”, but as she slips away, she has to guard the secret that she can’t recall names, codes, or key instructions. We live the narrative the way she’s existing in it, forgetting names or things we just learned moments ago in the novel. It’s very intriguing and definitely makes the story that much more nerve-wracking!

I was duly surprised by the gore and drama of this book. There are some crazy parts encompassing the good ol’ town of Derry, Maine, that disturbed me if only because they were so wildly unexpected. Much of the button box series isn’t terribly violent (I say much of it – there are certainly times), but this one amps it up a bit. I loved the weaving in of King’s other tales, too. Both The Dark Tower and It made minor appearances in our storyline this time (and I’m just now realizing, if “the clown did it” in 2024, does that mean nothing the Losers Club did even worked?? I have questions).

The writing duo that is King and Chizmar is a damn good one. I really enjoyed Chizmar’s writing all on its own in Gwendy’s Magic Feather, but it needed the horror… it needed King back. And I don’t usually say that. King, in turn, is incapable of writing a short and to-the-point novel all on his own, and Chizmar provides that perfect balance. The length and level of detail in Gwendy’s Final Task hits that perfect sweet spot between the two.

While this book is full of twists and turns I wasn’t expecting, I did kind of think we were in for one more big one that just never showed. The book shows its cards a little too quickly for my taste. I was expecting more because there was still so much to go when it got a little hairy, but things play out just about as you expect them to in the last 75-100 pages.

Have you read this series? I’m curious to hear your own thoughts on this ending!

Have an awesome weekend, pals.