Book Review - Joyland

Joyland by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book seemed so familiar when I was in the first few chapters. I started to wonder if I had read it before - I've done this from time to time, particularly with favourite, more prolific authors. But that wasn't it.

I did a lot of reading of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas last year, and this reads almost like an Odd Thomas book. It may be the first person perspective, or the charmingly clueless "aw, shucks"-ness of the main character, or the fact that he's lovelorn and kind of groundless in the world, or that he's going to save the world - or at least a few people - not necessarily on purpose but because he can't help it. Well, it's probably all those things.

That doesn't make it a bad book, and it's certainly not a rip-off, but it does strongly recollect those books in my mind, while standing on it's own with a curious, interesting mystery and a cold crime that gets solved in a fascinating way.

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