{Audiobook} Review: Joyland

Joyland
by Stephen King



Genre: Crime mystery; Fantasy
Date Read: 01 February 2014
Reading with my ears
Narrator: Micheal Kelly
Unabridged Length:
07 hours; 31 minutes 

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.

My thoughts:
Stephen King books are a curiosity these days.  You just never know what you are going to get.  I am sure that he has already touched every genre there is (including time travel!) and this time we get a type of cozy crime mystery with tones of fantasy.  

In comparison with some of his epic novels, this one is a shorty (almost a novella) but I am not sure if it packed the punch we were hoping for.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this novel and it kept my attention but it did not have the wow-factor that I was hoping for.  

We meet Devin at a juncture in his life.  He has taken a summer job at a carnival with history in a neighboring town.  Here he comes to know and love this fellow carnies and some of them will stay with him for the rest of his life.  There is a murder mystery connected to one of the rides and it has become a ghostly legend.  The story follows Devin's journey into adulthood while trying to uncover the strangeness of Joyland.  I think this was more about the journey of the characters than a serious murder mystery. 

I cannot really say more because I might give some of the uniqueness away, so let's just say that this is a quietly flowing river that will fill a few lazy hours in your vacation.  If you have nothing against audiobooks, I would recommend that version.  The narrator, Micheal Kelly, has a beautiful raspy voice that complements the story beautifully.  He definitely added to the story.