Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

I'll be reading this book for week 5 - A book with a title beginning with the 1st letter of your name. I have 844 books on my TBR at this point - only FIVE start with "J". Luckily Stephen King books are favorites of mine and this one happens to be sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.

I've abandoned this book twice. It's definitely one of Stephen King's "non-horror" books and is more focused on the love story than the ghost story (at least by the point that I've made it).

Hopefully you like it, though! I'm looking forward to your thoughts :)

At least it's one of his shorter books!!

Well this was a disappointment. At least it was a short disappointment.

The idea behind this book is intriguing. I love the setting and the time frame (1970s) complements the carnival theme perfectly. I like how King set his book in North Carolina (outside of New England for once...). In addition, I enjoyed King's typical writing style.

But the plot, the horror, the mystery - everything was LACKING. They didn't even get to addressing the meat of the plot (the murder/mystery that happened at Joyland) until half way through the book. As this book is only 280 pages, that doesn't leave a lot of time for the good stuff. I was expecting so much more from King. He should have taken another 300 pages with this book to give it the horror/mystery it deserved. Wouldn't recommend ☹

I am currently reading this one for my Stephen King Challenge. I'm not very far into it, but I am really liking it so far. I've just got to the part where he has heard the story of the rumored murder in the horror house ride. I can't wait to get home from work tonight and continue reading on.

I was really disappointed by this one. When I started this one I saw the writing on the wall - this is not going to be a typical King novel. I chose to ignore it and focused on the ghost story. Unfortunately King and I had different focuses. I was really annoyed by Devin's constant "Wendy rants". I think this could have been much much better had Wendy's story been more of a footnote and less of the driving story.

I still gave it a decent rating because overall it is well written and the story is solid. I think I set myself up for more failure than King wrote a bad novel - if that makes any sense. Overall, it was adequate.

3/5

Had such promise, but fell rather flat. As stated prior the plot was intriguing.

@Manda - I had the opposite experience. I had given up on King after Tommyknockers when this was selected to be read in a club I'm in. I decided to give him another chance.

Am I glad I did! This was a fun tribute to the noir mystery. It was because of this experience that I have gone back to King. I have since really enjoyed Revival as well as starting The Dark Tower series.