Stand By Me is one of my all time favorite movies. I've long been fearful of reading the book, worried that it wouldn't hold up or would be too different and it would retroactively destroy my respect for Rob Reiner's coming-of-age masterpiece. Thankfully, it did just the opposite. This story is just so beautiful. This was my first Stephen King read, and I was impressed at finding his writing to be nuanced and lovely and visceral - quite the opposite of what I've been led to believe all these years. There's a way that King depicts adolescent friendship here that is so true, and when narrator Gordy says, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I did when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?", I know my answer is no. There are moments when it's almost overwrought, melodramatic, even - but then, isn't childhood?