11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011, Hardcover, Original)

Like the Bridges of Madison County was to the 90s, this is one of the more overrated books of the decade.

It's not about the JFK assassination. That event is loosely used as a vehicle to tell a rather ho-hum story of a love affair. The main character travels back in time to 1958 to prevent the assassination with no real motivation to do so, and the plot is basically that he has five years to kill time in a small town until the event in question. The middle 500 or so pages of the book are devoted to small town social life, a dumb romance, and trying to singlehandedly save the world one individual at a time. All purposelessly written with tie-ins to the author's previous works, meeting characters from other earlier novels that do nothing to advance the sluggish plot in this one. Lots of nonsensical causal relationships where 'rips in the fabric of time' (or whatever) cause everything from traffic accidents to flat tires to earthquakes, all because the past apparently "doesn't want to be changed".

The ending is worse than the middle. Roll your eyes and groan with the absurdity of the scenario that the school book depository is a scary place because it 'looks evil', and the hero (literally) sneaks in the back door at the last minute to attempt to prevent the assassination. You may groan like I did when you read who gets killed instead. The 'what if JFK had lived' scenario is equally as unbelievable. Also awful and executed in a silly way: the newspaper headlines, and the phone calls from the president and first lady. If all that weren't bad enough, the very end is not much better than the 'it was all a dream' variety.

The time-travel parts at the very beginning are a great read, classic Stephen King, but before page 50 or so, the book goes down hill hard and fast and never recovers. Not only is the plot boring, implausible and way too long, it lacks the visual imagery present in his earlier works like Dead Zone, Christine, It and others. The "deep research" apparently refers to the parts about Oswald's movements in the months prior, the Bay of Pigs, etc, but these events (at least in my opinion) are not successfully woven in to what's here. Like reading two non-related books at the same time.

I sold my copy of this book on ebay within 6 days of receiving it and so was able to get almost all of my money back. I disliked it that much.

Best story I have ever read from Stephen King, and maybe best book I have ever read ever.(between this and a man in full)
Just fleshed out superbly, story happens to you ! You can empathize so perfectly with the hero. Kind excels in making the entirely impossible(time travel) seem so matter of fact and possible.
Characters are lovable, no horror in this book, could almost be non fiction !
but exciting.
I wish I could read it again, like I read it the first time.

I won't say it's best work ever, but I'm partial to The Dark Tower, and even if it were his worst (if such a book exists), it's Stephen King, and therefor good in it's own right.

About a man who travels back in time to attempt to stop the Kennedy assassination, then return to his time. No matter how long he's gone, only two minutes pass in his current time. That's the basics, read yourself to find out the details. Excellent book!

It's been a long time since I've read a Stephen King novel this good! Probably the best time travel novel I've ever read. The main character travels back in time to prevent the assasination of President Kennedy, but along the way discovers other events that he has to "take care of." He even falls in love! If you like Stephen King, you will love this book. It's long, but it's a fast read. I recommend this for anyone.

I love this book. It brings back lots of memories of the 50's and 60's and Stephen Kings is a great author.