I can't remember if I was as bothered by this book the first few times I read it, but it really got to me, especially the cruelty to the protagonist's pet cat. As an animal lover, I found those passages extremely hard to read. It wasn't the poor cat's fault! 
 As it is so often with King, the horror of this book is not the surface-level monster--in this case, it's the deep suffering and terrible grief of parents who have lost a child. That's the stuff you want to look away from, cringing. It's much more unnerving that his oft-used Scary Monster in the Woods trope. 
 This is one of his most powerful novels, and also one of his darkest, but it's not without its flaws. King does love to beat a metaphor to death, and he does it here with a couple, to comic effect. "A man's heart is stonier..." will be a reoccurring joke in this house for at least a few days.