Joyland by Stephen King, Narrated by Michael Kelly
Review by Kelsey O.
From the pulp crime novel cover to the creepy tagline, one can tell you are about to step into the mind of Stephen King. King’s narrator is Devin Jones and he takes the reader back in time to when he worked at the amusement park, Joyland. Devin meets a great group of friends that help him past his break up (because in your twenties any break up seems like it is the end of the world). He also discovers the secret of the Horror House ride…it’s haunted.
The story goes that Linda Gray came to the fair with her boyfriend. The boyfriend takes her on the Horror House ride and halfway through, slits her throat and tosses her out. All he leaves behind is a bloodied shirt and a pair of gloves. Now it is believed that Linda Gray haunts the ride waiting for her killer to be found.
This story intrigues Devin and he decides to dig deeper to see if he can discover the identity of the killer. This fascination leads Devin on an interesting adventure that ends up putting him and his new found friends in danger.
King has a way of making two complete different storylines come together flawlessly in the end. At times while you are reading you start to wonder what the importance of a scene is, but as long as you put your trust in King, he won’t let you down. This is definitely not a hard core horror novel as most are used to from King but it isn’t intended to be. This is just a story of love, loss, death and a bit of supernatural. I consider it a nice light mystery to read on a cold rainy day and hopefully will resonate with the younger readers and introduce them to the mastery of Stephen King.
The audio version featured a great narrator, Michael Kelly. His youthful sounding voice was fitting for the age that Devin was.
