Stephen King’s “If It Bleeds” is my nineteenth read of the year.

“If It Bleeds” is a collection of four short stories—King’s most recent collection. And, to get right to the point, I loved it. Of course, with short story collections, there’s always the tendency for the stories to end up hit or miss. But there’s not a single miss in “If It Bleeds”; every piece fires on all cylinders. I’ve not read a short story collection this strong since King’s own “Full Dark, No Stars”.

“Mr Harrigan’s Phone” (now a movie?), “The Life of Chuck” and “Rat” are fantastic short stories. But the book hits its stride with the titular “If It Bleeds”. It’s clear why King chose this to be the collection’s namesake. The story follows Holly Gibney. Holly has starred in “Mr Mercedes”, “The Outsider”, “Finders Keepers”, and “End of Watch”. I have yet to read the last two novels, but I’ll get around to them soon. I aim to do so before Holly’s solo book “Holly” comes out in September.

Without spoiling too much, “If It Bleeds” follows similar lines to “Mr Mercedes” and “The Outsider”. Reading this before I read “Finders Keepers” and “End of Watch” worked fine. Although, it did spoil one thing about those two novels, with which I’m completely okay. It has King’s classic multithread approach, culminating in a thrilling finale. So I’ll summarise it with a single word: brilliant.

If you like King, you’ll like “If It Bleeds”.

And if, like me, you love the man, you’ll feel the same way I do about this short story collection.