My head tells me that it's more like 4.5, but my gut and heart made me put 5.

I'm not going to spend my review talking about the plot or the story or the characters. There are far too many reviews that will do just that and do it far better than I'd be able to. Given that I ate this up like candy (when I had the chance to actually read it), I didn't do much soul searching throughout it. All I can say for those things is that I really loved the ending and I also thought that King did a great job blending together the mystery/thriller that started this series off with his old hat of telekinesis that started his whole career off through [b:Carrie|10592|Carrie|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166254258s/10592.jpg|1552134].

Nor am I going to speculate about the future of Stephen King's career with writing. There's other people who do it far better than I ever will. In fact, I'll point you to Edward Lorn's review that really takes a lot into consideration over the possible future.

In fact, I just really want to spend my review talking about the theme prominent throughout basically this whole series. Suicide. Cheery, right? But, that's what I want to talk about since it played a role of catalyst in the series, and it was the whole focus for this book.

Now, suicide is a major topic these days. There are tons of help lines to call. Help lines for teens, adults, LGBT+ members. On and on the list goes. People know so much about it. Literally, I can count on it being in most of my psych classes for at least a portion of a lecture. The thing is, these days, a suicidal phase is almost expected. Natural. It is normal to feel suicidal for portions of your life. Most teens you talk to -- people in my generation -- will probably say that they've felt that way at least once in their life. I myself have gone through it multiple times. My most serious was the first time I was ever diagnosed with depression (Seasonal Affective Disoder, technically; I just find it utterly ironic that the abbreviation for it is SAD). I felt worthless. I felt like there was no point to me. Rationally, I knew I was wrong with those feelings, but it persisted and I got myself help thanks to my mom picking up on signs and acting.

And, I think it's interesting that Stephen King chose to use this in his books. It literally is what ties this whole series together with the first and the third books. While the second book was good, very good, I can't recall there being any real mention of suicide in it. It was a bit of a stand alone compared to these two, which are majorly connected. The reason Brady reached out to Bill was to make him commit suicide, just for a few laughs. Then, our lovely TK Brady decides to make Bill watch as all those he saved commit suicide.

Most of the victims of suicide in this book were teenagers. The most susceptible are teens. Whether that's because of the natural teen feeling of "You don't understand me!" and the move to isolate yourself from people who do understand, or if it's because of the internet and globalization being able to spread stories of suicides from across the world, or even if it's something genetic in teens, who knows. I think Stephen King, like usual, picked a topic that resonates with the times we live in. He's reminding adults who feel their teenage years were so far away that teens these days go through, I would argue, so much more than they went through because of the internet and never being able to get away from the bullies. And, also, he's reminding teens that you are not alone. Today, these feelings are natural, but if you have them you need to tell someone no matter how ashamed you feel. (Because, trust me, there's a lot of shame involved with those feelings.)

Anyways, all this meditation aside, read this book. It's absolutely absorbing and difficult to put down. It's a perfect ending to the series as a whole, with this ranking first, [b:Mr. Mercedes|18775247|Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403347795s/18775247.jpg|26680281] as second, and, finally, [b:Finders Keepers|22453035|Finders Keepers (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #2)|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1422630044s/22453035.jpg|41884478] as third.