She was beautiful in her faded blue jeans and bare feet, I wanted to lift her up and carry her away into an untroubled future, but that's not the world we live in, it's a badly broken universe, full of wars, cruelty and senseless tragedy. (Stephen King)
Sometimes life isn't always a butchers game, sometimes the prizes are real, sometimes there precise. (Stephen King)
Stephen King has way of seizing the readers attention and keeping it till the last word of all his books. The 2013 release of "Joyland" is no exception. King's best novels are behind him, but his character development and story lines always keep you guessing.
"Joyland" is about a fictional soul named Devin Jones whose in his early 60s and is reminiscing about his first and second loves from the early 1970s. In 1973, after Jone's girlfriend broke his heart and left town to attend college, Jones stayed in town and began working at an amusement park in North Carolina, Joyland. Jones was proud to put on his job resume that he sold fun for three months at Heavens Beach, Joyland amusement park.
Years before Jones started working at Joyland, a young woman named Linda Gray was murdered in the horror fun house ride at Joyland. Gray's ghost comes back to haunt and kill, or does it?
By the time I read 20 or so pages, I was thinking, OK, Jones whose developing a crush on Erin, a cute red head garbed in her short green skirt and takes pictures for Joyland customers is going to be murdered by Jones.
Gray, the murdered girl at the park years earlier was killed by her jealous boyfriend because he knew she was going to leave him for another man. While Jones learns this information, he reflects on his own heartache while a Beatles song with the following lyrics rings in his ears;
'I'd rather see you dead little girl, then to be with another man.'
In case you didn't know, King specializes in the horror genre. As I stating earlier, while in the early stages of reading "Joyland," I was thinking that Devin Jones was going to snap and become a serial killer / maybe rapist.
This book was anything but predictable, Devin doesn't get romantically involved with Erin, but the blue jean beauty, Annie Ross seizes his heart, and she loves him back, and the two lovers become one and live a life of eternal youth in the world of Zion which is tens of thousands of light years away from Earth. OK, this paragraph is a lie, except for the part about developing a mental and physical relationship with Ross.
There is murder in "Joyland," but are the murders from a ghost, or Charles Manson minded psychotic evil fools? A mere 283 pages, an afternoon read to find out, three stars for "Joyland."
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