‘This is J.K. Rowling at her best’: Stephen King’s latest endorsement got him ‘through a difficult time,’ but you can guess what happened next

Having spent the last few weeks recuperating from hip replacement surgery, Stephen King has understandably been maintaining a low profile on social media, but his latest recommendation has ruffled more than a few feathers for obvious reasons.

Merely invoking the name of J.K. Rowling under any context these days is guaranteed to generate a reaction given the Harry Potter author’s often-controversial and contentious stance on several hot-button societal issues, but the master of horror hasn’t been dipping back into the Wizarding World to keep himself occupied during his recovery.

Instead, Rowling’s latest hard-boiled mystery thriller The Running Grave – the latest installment in the Cormoran Strike series penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith – has come heartily endorsed by King. Even though he makes a point of noting that the book “got me through a difficult time,” a widely-beloved figure such as himself praising someone as polarizing as Rowling went exactly how you’d expect in the comments and replies.

Of course, King isn’t passing judgement on Rowling’s belief or even the author as a person, he’s merely separating the artist from the art to share how he forged a personal connection with the story on the page that kept him captivated during a personal tribulation.

That’s not how the internet tends to work, though, and if you tell somebody that you enjoyed eating an apple and deem it to be the most delicious of all the fruits, a dozen more will pop up in short order to ask why you’re engaging in the erasure of oranges.