Joyland by Stephen King

Joyland by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life—and what comes after—that would change his world forever.

A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old—and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time—Joyland is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers. With all of the emotional impact of King masterpieces such as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, Joyland is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled reader profoundly moved.

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Joyland is not the best Stephen King book I have read, nor is the worst. It’s a good one, a sweet one with a dark ending. It’s a bit paranormal, not over the top paranormal, only just a hint of it. It’s a crime novel, but the crime isn’t a large part of the story, not until the end. It’s a book about one man’s year, a man that looks back to how a year changed his life. I will say that’s the year that made Devin Jones go from a boy to a man.

Sometimes when I read the book I almost forgot that it was a crime novel, hell it wasn’t even that paranormal, just the psychic kid and the haunted horror house, no biggie. It’s felt more like a story about growing up, with a hint of paranormal/crime. One thing that was good with the book was that I didn’t know how the killer was until the end when it was reviled. It’s always nice to be surprised.