Reviews with content warning for Antisemitism - 11/22/63

At the time of release, the descriptor "romantasy" hadn't entered the set of literary genres, but I think it's apt to describe this novel. 11/22/63 is a corny time-travel romantasy with a dense background of historical fiction. And, being Stephen King, it's tonally tense and has moments of explicitly described violence.

Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in Maine, USA, gets summoned to the back room of his favorite diner by Al, a dear friend, who shows him a portal to the past. Literally. A straight line to 1958 and back. Al is dying, and wants Jake to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. But that would require spending 5 years in the past just to get to that point, and still it remains unclear who really shot JFK. Was it truly the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald? Was it the CIA? Soviets? And what will the future behold, if he's successful?

But I've buried the lede. It's a romance novel, I promise.

What I liked:

strong historical research
feasibility of how the characters would have acted
the flow of the storytelling

What I didn't like:

failure to critically assess the downsides of the 50's and 60's
only a peek behind the curtain of the time travel system
the "downstream effects" of altering the past seemed farfetched in a book that was otherwise very reasonable (within its own world, of course)

When the book was written (2011), the willingness to overlook the glaring flaws of the midcentury in order to appreciate "a simpler time" was more okay than it is now, or maybe I just have a lower tolerance for it. Yes, major bad things happened to marginalized people as a part of the plot, but the character didn't seem to mind the "generic racism" that permeates his environment, for example. I prefer Kindred by Octavia Butler for getting that criticism correct.

The ease of systemic oppression is too distracting for me to really love the book. But to give the great Stephen King credit, it's the first book in a long time that I stayed up late to continue reading. Which was dumb, given that I was plagued with nightmares afterwards. But hey, I kept going back, because the book is written so compellingly. The characters are themselves. The time travel system sparks my curiosity, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. And I'll certainly continue to pick up Stephen King novels.

Content Warnings

mariposa517's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Content Warnings

psychnp's review against another edition

Go to review page

reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

To be honest if this wasn't written by Stephen King it would have been one of my rare DNFs.
But I kept going because hos books so often start slow building a base for the action, this was the first of his books I finished still thinking it was boring.

Content Warnings

booksoversecondbreakfast's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I feel so conflicted about this book! On one hand, I loved it overall, but on the other hand, I disliked much of it.

This book has an amazing, well-thought out, invigorating plot, for the most part. It's so interesting, and with the exception of the slower middle half of the book, it was a real page-turner. That middle part was kind of rough though. I'm not kidding when I say this took me a few years to get through. I wanted to persevere through this book because I liked the story, but the middle part just dragged on and on, and I put it down and then picked up several times the past few years. Once I got passed the middle part, however, I was back glued to the book.

I loved that this revolved around the trope of a historian-type figuring uncovering the truth about something that happened in the past, and I liked that it actually used time travel too. Stephen King, as he always does, successfully worked horror into the story as well, and I thought it was very well done in an understated kind of way. I didn't love the ending, but it was okay, and I was just happy to find out how it ended.

This book's romance was lacking, in my opinion. The book used the 'not like other girls' and 'man teaches woman what good sex is', and I really dislike those tropes. I feel like the romance could have written so much better than it was, but it wasn't the main plot that drew me in anyways.

Overall, I enjoyed it, felt 'meh' towards some aspects of the story, and will keep the book around in my personal library. Will I read it again? Not sure, but maybe someday.

Content Warnings

newswoman's review against another edition

Go to review page

from the introduction of the love interest onwards i felt a gradual decline in my enjoyment of the book as i am not a fan of how the romance is written at all. i really liked the beginning a lot but the the main character is very hard to like in my opinion, which gets worse and worse as the story progresses.

Content Warnings

bambicat234's review

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

It wavers between being hard to put down and hard to keep reading often enough to feel like I'm getting whiplash, and the time traveling aspect could have been fleshed out a LOT more. Not his best but not his worst.

Content Warnings

More...