Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Book: 50/100

Rating: 5/5

Read this one if you like: epic stories and incredible world building.

Summary: The story begins with Jake Epping, a 35 year old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away - a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago where Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer.

Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life - like Harry's, like American's in 1963 - turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession - to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake's life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there's Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore.

Thoughts: How do you review Stephen King? How do you review a perfect book?

I received this book as a birthday gift a LONG time ago. I stopped and started it a million times because I was intimidated by its size (840 pages!!). I started a buddy read of it October of last year, and got about halfway through it then stopped. I finally picked it up the other day because a friend was reading it, and ended up finishing the 400 or so pages within 24 hours! It was so gripping. I really could have sat and read it in a week if I really wanted to, but I get so distracted with other books.

I really loved the concept: heading back in time to stop JFK's assassination, and Al's absolute conviction that stopping the assassination will make the world a better place. Is it really that simple? Of course not! Jake Epping/George Amberson was an incredible protagonist and so fun to follow. I found that for the bulk of the book, where he's living his life in the late 50s/early 60s, I was far more interested in him pursuing normalcy rather than spying on Lee Oswald.

Extremely well researched uniquely done historical fiction, this was an epic story and right after finishing it I wanted to read it again (always a good sign)! I think I'll re-read this one later this year and do my best to read it in one shot instead of over the course of a few months.

Also, I enjoyed the few Easter Eggs I picked up on while reading 11/22/63, can't imagine how fun of a read it would be for regular readers of Stephen King!

Buy it/loan it/skip it? You will want to buy this one so you can take your time reading it and loan it out to friends and family.