11.22.63 wasn’t really what I expected. Given my familiarity with Stephen King novels tends towards the horror genre (ah, my teen years were as stereotypical as you could get), I kept expecting to read something darker and more unexplainable than a rip in the space-time continuum that allows Jake Epping to leave 2011 and go back to 1958, long before his own birth.

(All that’s in the blurb on the flap, so no spoilers.)

I found some elements quite predictable, but I don’t think anyone could write a ‘What if JFK didn’t die?’ novel without going over ground millions of others have already considered. So that didn’t spoil anything. One thing I’m grateful for is this wasn’t an ‘action’ novel; while there was enough violence and weirdness and running and hiding and so on, it really was Jake’s story, and how his taking on a mission to save JFK completely changed his life.

I would just fall short of pressing the book into your hands and saying, You must read 11.22.63, but that’s because Full Dark, No Stars was such a top read. So Stephen King’ll get his royalties from me, in any case.