JOYLAND by Stephen King is not his usual fare, but it is a
very enjoyable
read. The year is 1973 and Devon Jones is heading to
Heaven's Bay,
North Carolina for a summer job at an amusement park called
Joyland. He
is a poor college student who just happens to be nursing a
broken heart.
At Joyland, he meets his new best friends, Mike and Erin
who also work at
the park. There is local folklore about a girl being found
murdered in the
Horror House which they say she now haunts.
While working at Joyland, Devon meets a boy, Mike, in a
wheel chair with
Muscular Dystrophy and his Mom, Annie Ross. At first, when
he walks by
their home every day he waves, but only Mike waves back.
His mom
seems like an ice princess, but over time Devon learns that
she is just
trying to protect Mike. Mike has "the sight" and tries to
help Devon solve
the murder mystery that surrounds Joyland. These two play a
big part in
the story of JOYLAND but I'm not giving anything away. I
fell in love with
Mike while at the same time, my heart broke for him. He
does get out of
the wheel chair in the end, and flies like he always wanted
to, but not in the
way you think.
JOYLAND is just under three hundred pages and nothing at all
like King's
usual door stopper novels. It might be short but the story
packs a punch. I
kept thinking I knew who the killer was all the way up to
the end and once
again, Mr. King played me like a fool. There was no usual
King horror in
JOYLAND. It was more of a mystery. No monsters involved!
This is a great
coming of age story. While I was reading JOYLAND it brought
back so
many of my childhood summer memories spent down at the
Jersey Shore.
I find myself missing all the sites, smells, and tastes of
this time in my life
and JOYLAND brought them all back.
A STUNNING NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF THE BEST-SELLING
AUTHORS OF ALL TIME!
Set in a small-town North
Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of
the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to
work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious
murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will
change his life forever.
"I love crime, I love
mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case
Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my
favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a
kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on
e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be
coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will
have to buy the actual book." – Stephen King
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