[Book Rant] Joyland by Stephen King

 

The Story:

In Joyland by Stephen King, we meet 21-year-old, college student Devin Jones, who's an aspiring writer. (No shocker there! King has a thing for writers as protagonists, I'm starting to see.) Young Devin spends his summer break working at a carnival-slash-amusement park called Joyland. There, he meets an assortment of interesting characters, including two soon-to-be-best-friends, Erin and Tom, and his eventual saviors, Annie and Mike, all while nursing first-love heartbreak and losing his virginity. Oh, and of course it wouldn't be much of a Stephen King novel without a ghost or two, would it? There's a ghost of a young woman who had been murdered on the only dark ride at Joyland. Who dun done it, is the question we're reading to answer. That, and experiencing young Devin's coming-of-age story with a twist.

Thoughts:

As far as King novels go, I haven't read nearly enough to really be familiar with his style, but I didn't enjoy Joyland nearly as much as I did Bag of Bones and The Shining. To be honest, I was a little bored. The story didn't grip me by the collar as tightly as I had expected it to. It lacked much of the suspense and tension I had come to expect from King. Could it be due to the fact that Joyland  is about 300 pages shorter than the previous two King novels I've read? Does King write better when he has more words to work with? Who knows. All I do know is that I found Dev a little dull, the other characters unimportant (didn't care about any of 'em much), the ghost story not very interesting, and the big reveal of the killer anti-climatic and rushed. 

Final Verdict:

Joyland is a run-of-the-mill crime/mystery novel. While not a bad read, it's not terribly exciting either. 

 
Princess Reads A Lot isn't too sure about this book. She didn't like it, but she didn't not like it either. She knows it's one she won't ever re-read and that makes her a little sad.