If you're looking for the old Stephen King, with lots of horror and gore, you're going to be disappointed. But I hadn't read any King for some time and I knew this was more of a crime/mystery. And surprisingly, I did enjoy this one!

Told from the viewpoint of a young boy/ make that young man - he tells his story about working at an amusement park during his summer break from school. He is determined to find the truth of a long ago murder there and carries us through that, as well as his friendships and his lost love.
The story flows well and holds your interest.

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Joyland is a college-era coming of age story, at a low-tech amusement park on the beach in New England. Along with a bit of supernatural murder mystery thrown in to give some spice to the story.

And I really liked it. You know that first half of a Stephen King book that you really like because the characters are so nifty and the world is so fresh and interesting? Yeah, this book is short enough that that's all there is.

I know Stephen King seems to love to write stories that never end, and reading them really makes you feel like they never end. This is *NOT THE CASE* with Joyland. King sticks to his strength here, and actually comes up with an ending when an ending is needed, rather than wandering off into the weeds and only finishing the book with a unsatisfying conclusion when the advance money runs out.

I'm rambling. *This* is good King. Let's hope he sticks with the shorter works moving forward.

5 of 5 stars.

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This was one of King's better examples of skilled storytelling in my opinion. I loved the characters. It is a tender, sweet story and while there is a ghost or two, it is not a scary story. There is a killer and bit of a mystery but I had the killer pegged early on. It is a fairly quick read and a nicely woven tale. I really enjoyed it.

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This is the newest of Stephen King's books. It took me a little over three hours to devour this. It is the story of Devin, a 21 year old college kid besotted with his first love who has dumped him. He takes a summer job at a local carnival hoping to forget her, and instead stumbles upon a ghost story and a murder mystery. I can't say too much more without spoiling it; suffice it to say that this was a really good book. I've had issues with some of the endings of other Stephen King books seeming somewhat weak or contrived, but this one was spot-on

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This was a good coming of age story, but i thought a little short. It did have good characters, fun plot , some emotional parts.

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There is no doubt that Stephen King is a master storyteller, and has been for many decades now. Joyland is part horror story, part murder mystery, part coming of age tale. It is riveting, frightening and thrilling. No one can put you in a different time and place better than King.It is a quick read. It's too bad that with less than five pages to go, King throws in some of his political idealogy yet again.Not much, but just enough to make you go WTF, Stephen?

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Excellent. I'd never read anything of Stephen King's until recently. The movies with his name attached didn't impress me, and his book titles and plot summaries didn't appeal to me. That's too bad because I realize now that I've missed out. This is some great writing. I was attracted to it by the Carny angle, but it was really an emotional roller coaster ride through a short time in a young man's life. I was briefly a carnival worker myself, for about as long as the protagonist is one in this novel. So, yeah, I was a little surprised at some of the carny terms King put in this, but he explained in the author's note at the end that he made many of them up. I don't think he had to make them up, there's plenty of carny lingo to go around, and he made it clear in the story itself that every carnival/roadshow has some of its own lingo, so it didn't really need explaining.
Anyhoo, I also usually don't go in for murder mysteries, but there have been some writers that really knock it out of the park: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald. And now I put Stephen King in that category. One of the best.
The attention to detail is extraordinary. And King is writing here and now, letting us know that his stories connect to the here and now, and he does it casually, using references to ideas and events all of us are familiar with, both in our childhoods and today. He's not a writer locked away outside of society, unaware of real life. I suppose that will eventually make his stories seem ancient and irrelevant to young readers fifty or a hundred years from now, but hey, I enjoy an old Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel as much as more contemporary novelists, so I don't think all of King's novels will ever be forgotten.
I really enjoyed Joyland. Kept me thinking, wondering, guessing, and loving the characters. Tugs at the heartstrings too, and not because that sells, but because that's life: you take the good with the bad and make the best of life as you can. Clichés, of course, but still good advice.

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Once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. King has a way of drawing you into the lives of the main characters and all of the people in his life. The mystery is solid; good twist keeps the plot moving. It has a little bit of the paranormal -- more of the psychic variety, and not over-the-top like some of his other books; a sweet part of the story.

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