Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

11/22/63 by Stephen King

41 reviews

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it's yours.

Dancing is life


5/5⭐

I feel so stupid for thinking Stephen King can't write Romance, based on the few books I've read of him before 11/22/63. It wasn't just Jake Epping who went into the past and fell in love with Sadie, I bet it's everyone who read this book. I can't believe that the idea for this book came to King in the early 70's and I'm glad he finally wrote it, four decades later. One of the most beautiful story I've ever read. I read this book in seven days and almost every one of those days, I kept thinking I'll be able to read the next chapter tomorrow and see what happens next. I don't know how I will feel tomorrow, waking up knowing there aren't any more chapters. Utterly compelling and absurdly entertaining. I read this under comment section of some YouTube video and I didn't understand it back then, but now I can. "one of my life's greatest comfort is knowing that there will always be more Stephen King books to read" I only wish this story never ended, I want to live in the world he created and never come back. I even tried to watch the show that was adapted from this book and it's just not the same.

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mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I enjoyed this book because I found the premise exciting and I wanted to know how the story would play out and be resolved. I did not find the main character himself to be that interesting and felt no investment in his personal relationships, so a good chunk of the last two-thirds of the book dragged, but I really thought it was all leading to something worthwhile. I was very curious to see how the story would be resolved once the main character carried out his mission, but I found the ending to be a bit of a letdown - perhaps due to my lack of emotional connection with the main character's love interest. Overall, I rated this 3.75 because I enjoyed much of the journey, but did not get the emotional "hit" I expected at the close of the book.

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newswoman's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 60%

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. 

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Stephen King is most known for his horror writing and, like many readers, because I don't tend to gravitate to that genre so I have always automaticallg dismissed reading Stephen King. Which I now feel is a mistake because he am incrediblely good author. This was a good introduction for me to Stephen King as this is not a horror story, but more of a speculative fiction/time travel story. I really enjoyed it. I found the time travel mechanic quite confusing as reading it - it gets explained at the end, but maybe that's the point because time travel is theoretically confusing. If you like these types of themes then you may well enjoy this book. I do think it's a bit long and meandering sometimes though,  but never felt particularly like it dragged. I'd definitely consider reading more (non horror) Stephen King. 

I edited my rating to 5* a few months after finishing because I heard someone talk about it and remembered how great this book was, so I feel that is worthy of a 5* rating. Few books can evoke that kind of reaction from me.

Also check the content warnings  - there are a few.

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dark emotional mysterious relaxing slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging emotional reflective 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

Super intriguing, and I really enjoyed the relationship building! I got attached to the characters and was emotional by the end.

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adventurous dark informative mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No

Is it sad that I learned more about this period.of history from a fictional time travel book than my history classes? 
Either way, I enjoyed learning some of the history along the way. For how long it was, it stayed pretty compelling the whole time. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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.

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