His and Her Reviews: 11/22/63 Audiobook

My hubby and I started listening to this together during a trip back in November 2019. The audio was more than 30 hours long so we did not finish it. Unfortunately, we had to wait on a long waiting list to be able to check it out again. Six months later, we finished it.

Read by Craig Wasson
Duration: 30 hours 40 minutes

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King's heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps listeners back in time to another moment--a real life moment--when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces listeners to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students--a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when his father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane--and insanely impossible--mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jack's life--a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Goodreads

HIS REVIEW: As a big fan of time travel stories, this book just didn't hit for me. The book's setting, which was late 1950's Maine and early 1960's Texas, was bland. The main character (Jake Epping) was only interesting when he was a school teacher. When he placed his investigator's hat on, he felt clumsy and out of place. The plot was muddled and full of characters that didn't serve the main story. Even though the title referenced the day JFK was shot, the first third of the book had nothing to do with the main narrative, and there were too many side stories that distracted our main character. Ultimately, this felt like a short-story that was converted into a novel. For Stephen King fans, there were some nice allusions to his other novels, almost setting up a Stephen King shared universe, but for me it was a bloated piece of fiction. 2 out 5.

HER REVIEW: This was a reread for me. I first read the book when it came out and I absolutely loved it. I was hooked from page one and cried at the end. I even thought that this was Stephen King's best novel. Now, I have a new perspective of the book. I am not sure if it's because I have mentally grown or because this was an audio "re-read," but I was not as blown away as I was before. 

We had Jake who went to the past to change the outcome of JFK. While being in the past, he fell in love. **slight spoilers** Of course things did not turn out the way he was hoping for due to the Butterfly Effect so he had no choice but to set things right. He spent five years in the past, which in the present meant only 2 minutes had passed. Having to reset things meant those five years were nothing more than a memory for only Jake to cherish. This told me that we really need to appreciate the time we have and spend it with the people we love because you don't know if you'll ever get that time back. 

As I mentioned before, I was not as blown away with this second read. Maybe because I knew what was going to happen? Maybe because it was in audio? The book felt too long for me. Too much happened that I found myself losing interest a few times and had me wondering when we were going to focus on the Kennedy assassination. I rate it: 3 stars.