stephen king is a hit and miss artist of truly impeccable form. one book will be masterful and the next absolutely terrible. for me he just isn't consistent. thankfully sometimes this means the book can be utterly brilliant and you wanna read it over or it can be so dull you give up half way. Needful things falls into this latter group. the premise has very little supernatural stuff and relies on the horror of human nature. however when not a single character engages the reader and nothing they do is in the slightest bit interesting it is hard to keep reading. it is yet another small american town gone bad story - sometimes these can be brill - this time it was tired and rehashed - you could replace all the characters with any from the rest of his small town books. it was boring and the bad guy was pointless. there was no evil and no hook. overall, avoid - read one of the truly great king novels - like Green Mile or The Stand. 5/10