NOS4A2 (Joe Hill) - July 1/13

I'm also a little conflicted about this one. There's a lot of stuff here that I absolutely loved, stuff that ranks right up there with Stephen King's work (Hill invites the comparison by including King references like Shawshank and Pennywise), but the narrative is sloppy and overlong. The book itself is just much, much longer than it should be. Certain stretches seem to go on forever, and the climax is, as a result, not as exciting as it probably should've been. The final stretch, though, did get me a little choked up, which I wasn't expecting (all the kids are alive!) So yeah, it's a good book that could've been great had it been edited a little more judiciously. *** out of ****