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Horror
Warm Bodies
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If you come to Joyland expecting the King of It or Pet Sematary, adjust your expectations before you press play, this is King in a much quieter register, closer to The Body, the novella that became Stand By Me, than to anything overtly terrifying. Set in a small North Carolina amusement park in 1973, it follows college student Devin Jones through a single summer working as a carny, a summer that gets tangled up with a decades-old unsolved murder, a dying boy in a wheelchair, and the boy's protective, complicated mother.
The scoring:
Michael Kelly, a narrator who was relatively new to audiobooks at the time of this recording, turned in a performance AudioFile magazine specifically praised for its touch of innocence, and that phrase is exactly right. Devin Jones is an earnest, slightly lost twenty-one-year-old, and Kelly's voice for him carries that mix of confidence and confusion without ever slipping into either extreme. His Southern-inflected supporting cast, particularly the carny crew who teach Devin the trade's private slang, feels lived-in and specific rather than broadly regional. Multiple listener reviews single Kelly out as an unusually strong match for the material, several noting they hoped to hear more from him after this recording specifically.
Who this is for: Stephen King readers who want something more melancholic and character-driven than his typical horror output, and listeners who enjoy coming-of-age stories layered with an unresolved mystery.
Who this is not for: listeners looking for pure horror or a fast-paced thriller. Joyland is a slower, more reflective book, closer to memoir-adjacent fiction than a scare-a-minute read.
Not really. It has ghost story and murder mystery elements, but the overall tone is closer to nostalgic coming-of-age fiction than King's more overtly horror-focused novels like It or Pet Sematary.
No, Joyland is a standalone novel, published as part of the Hard Case Crime imprint alongside two other King titles.
It runs about seven and a half hours, making it one of King's shorter audiobook listens and a reasonably approachable entry point into his catalog.
Written by Stephen King. Narrated by Michael Kelly. Browse more Horror audiobooks and ebooks.
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