Jaws discussion

Jaws, one of the most popular books of all time, is a 1974 horror novel by Peter Benchley. I was so excited to finally read this book because it has been sitting on a shelf in my living room for about fifteen years. I also loved the movie, Jaws, even though it really freaked me out as a kid and made me afraid to go in the ocean for a while. The book is pretty similar to its cinematic counterpart. The biggest difference though, is that the book is a lot darker. The book uses gory detail to describe the shark attacks and there are a few twisted subplots that were dropped in the movie. The opening of the novel is by far the best part, as it wastes no time getting into the shark attack action, while being a gripping few pages to read. The ending is a lot less explosive than the movie, as it is actually pretty disappointing and anticlimactic. I liked the book a lot, but it was significantly different from the movie. The characters are not very likeable, and at times I was rooting for the shark to eat certain characters. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the movie, but they should temper their expectations coming in, as the movie clearly took some creative liberty with the source material to make it more enjoyable.