Actual rating: 3.75 stars.

My first-ever horror and my first-ever Stephen King novel, and it didn't disappoint. King writes some great prose and excellent haunted house settings. I enjoyed the family saga element of this, and the deep-dive into psychology and what isolation can do to the mind. It's pure magic to conjure this level of fear through words and in certain passages, and I'm sure I'll regret reading this two days before checking in to my hotel on holiday! But, I had some serious problems with the unevenness of sentences, the racial slurs (I get this was written in the 70s, but, c'mon) and deeply misogynistic writing about Wendy (again, sure, this is a dated book, but, do better).