carolesrandomlife

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I liked this one. I really have not read a lot of King's work but this book has been one that I have wanted to pick up for a long time. I decided to go with the audiobook since I had heard great things about the narration and I think I made a really good choice. This was a really entertaining story that kept me listening for hours at a time.

This book is told in alternating timelines. We follow a group of characters in the childhood and again as adults. The timelines worked really well with each other to tell the story of the events occurring in the town of Derry and there are some very strange events happening in that little town in Maine. I found that I liked both timelines equally and was really invested in finding out how things would work out in each. 

I really feel like I got to know all of the characters very well. There is no shortage of character development in this book. If anything, I would say that we are given too much information regarding the backgrounds of some of the characters. I mean this is a really long book and sometimes I felt like I spent hours listening to only learn one character's backstory. On one hand I really liked all the details but on the other hand the book felt too long. I liked that the main characters were all flawed individuals that had things to overcome as kids and new things to overcome as adults. 

I think that this book did a lot of things really well in addition to the characters and use of timelines. I think that it did a great job of painting a truly creepy and menacing portrait of the evil in Derry. I liked the mystery behind Pennywise and his appearances. There were some truly frightening scenes in the book which I really appreciated as well. There were a few scenes that felt so realistic that I found myself cringing as I listened to the book.

There were a few things that I didn't care for in the book. The end of the book felt really weird to me. The ending was surprisingly odd and just didn't seem to completely fit. I was also rather bothered by the sex scenes involving kids. It was just all kinds of wrong and the book would have been a lot stronger without it in my opinion. I did feel that the book was too long. I enjoyed the story but by the time I got closer to the end, I was more than ready to be done with it. 

Steven Weber did an absolutely fantastic job narrating this book. There was a very large cast of characters that he handled very well. I thought that he did an exceptional job with Bill's stutter and keeping all of the voices consistent. He added just enough of a creepy factor to the scenes that needed it. He really did such a wonderful job in bringing this story to life and I often listened to his voice for hours at a time. I would definitely listen to his narration again if given the opportunity.

I would recommend this book to others. It wasn't perfect but it was really good and I am glad that I finally took the time to listen to it. I do recommend the audiobook for anyone considering reading this book because I really do feel that the narration adds a wonderful element to the story. I do hope to read more from Stephen King in the near future.

Initial Thoughts
I liked it. This was my first time reading this book and I think I made a good choice picking up the audio version since Steven Webber does a fanstastic job with it. I did feel that the book is way too long and it really fizzled out at the end for me a bit. There were a few scenes that really made me pretty uncomfortable.