Duma Key by Stephen King (CBR-V #46)

Cannonball Read V: Book #46/52
Published: 2008
Pages: 700

Genre: Horror/Fantasy

Another brick of a Stephen King book. Some are completely worth wading through 1000 pages (The Stand, Under the Dome...shut up, I liked that one) and some aren't (Insomnia, The Tommyknockers). Duma Key was pretty middle of the road. Good enough to actually finish (can't say the same for those last two I mentioned up there), but not crazy good. 

Edgar decides to move to Florida after he has a bad accident at work and his wife leaves him. He made a pretty good fortune on his business, so he settles down for a nice early retirement on Duma Key. Edgar is lonely and he's still dealing with the divorce and recovering from his accident (he lost an arm and had a pretty bad head injury). He hires a young college-age kid to run his errands for him and he befriends an old lady and her caretaker down the beach. Edgar also finds out that he has a knack for painting. Then, of course, weird stuff starts happening that has to do with some traumatic stuff that happened on the island in the past. 

I liked that there were very few characters in this book. King is amazing at character development, but sometimes it seems like you need a concordance to keep up with everyone. With so few characters, you really got to know each of them. I also really liked the location. Usually King's stories are set in Maine, but I connected a little more with Florida since I lived there for a few years (and I've never been to Maine). 


I debated between 3 and 4 stars for this book (it's probably more like 3.5), but the ending got a little bogged down and stretched out at times. This probably could have been a 500 pages book vs. a 700 page book.