Joyland

Joyland
author: Stephen King
released: June 4th 2013
pages: 283
my rating: 3 out 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.

I'm beginning to think that either Stephen Kings books aren't that horrifying or I'm just randomly picking the harmless ones. This was a great book, but I didn't know much about it when I started reading and thought it would be way more scary.
In fact, in a large proportion of this book nothing too horrifying happens at all. I think it began getting suspenseful in the last 50 pages or so. There is a mystery but it wasn't the main focus of this story as I had hoped it would.

That aside, I really enjoyed this book. The way Devin's time at Joyland changed him was great to read about and his character development was perfect. The amusement park itself and the people within it were also really cool. Since the story takes place in 1973 there aren't that many security measures and everyone does everything, which made Devin's work there really interesting. The whole thing had a feel to it that I adored.

It took me some time to get used to the narration, since it's narrated by Devin in the future and he sometimes mentioned things that only happened way later, but after I got over that, I really enjoyed the writing style (I read this book in German though, so I don't know if the translation changed anything). The fact that old Devin narrated the story also took some of the suspense away, since it's pretty obvious that he and some other people he mentions can't really die.

If you wan't to pick this book up because you want to read a suspenseful thriller, I can't really recommend this. But if you want to read a coming of age book with a bit of mystery, this is a great book for you.