I usually only read one Stephen King book per year, on account of the fact that one day there won't be any more Stephen King books and I don't want to run out too soon. So the fact that I've read more than one this year is noteworthy. I even plan to read more. Maybe as I'm getting older my own mortality is sinking in, along with the mortality of favorite authors, and I realize that even though I might one day run out of their books, I will also surely run out of life?

Morbid turn, but appropriate for this book, which deals a lot with being young and also with impending mortality. It's about a college kid who gets a summer job at an amusement park and decides to extend his employment after his girlfriend breaks his heart. It fits into the Hard Case Crime imprint barely, in that there is a serial killer and an attempted murder, but it's tame in comparison to other King.

I mainly liked this one for King's voice, the atmosphere of the thing, but it's not his best. I wasn't keen on Dev and spent a lot of my time thinking that the female characters were more interesting and not getting what they deserved, thanks to narrator Dev who mainly sees them as potential love interests whose good-heartedness might or might not be as important as the length of their legs. Dev is not good at imagining women as complexly human, or as existing not in relation to himself, which is a shame, because I think King is capable of imagining them in those ways.

The fun parts are fun, though, if you like Stephen King. Long digressions to set things up? Check. Cultural references to things King likes? Check. Precocious kid who is both tragic and psychic? Check. Maybe he's working off of a bingo card based on his greatest hits, but there are worse things you could read on a late-summer day.