11/22/63 by Stephen King

This is my second attempt to read a Stephen King book. First was The Dark Tower which I stopped reading a few years ago and decided that it's not my genre though I want to give it a second chance! 

11/22/63 is about time travel, love story, mystery, suspense, and conspiracy story on JFK assassination. The protagonist is Jake Epping who is a high school English teacher and is good friends with Al Templeton who owns a diner. Al has found a wormhole in his diner and has gone through a couple of times already. The wormhole goes back to 1958. Al's mission was to stop the JFK assassination that happened on 22nd November of 1963. So he had lived from 1958 through 1962 but could not live one more year to stop the assassination since he got sick with cancer. So he goes back to the present year (2014).

Let's discuss how time travel is in this book. Basically, when Al enters the wormhole and spends 4 years (from 1958 to 1962), and comes back through the wormhole, he is only gone for two minutes. This would reset everything else in the present time. However, any changes that he has made in the past would have an effect in the future.

Jake has met up with Al one evening and was shocked when he learned that Al has cancer. Later on, Al has told his secret that he has been keeping for several years. Now that he is too sick to finish his mission, he had passed this on to Jake.

Jake was skeptical about Al's request to go on an extraordinary journey in the past to prevent the JFK assassination from happening since Al thinks that the world would have been a better place to live in if that had not happened. However, he accepted his mission that would change his life forever,

I may not know much about American history and what social topics were discussed but I think that Stephen King did a lot of research about the late 50s to early 60s with the intent to take the reader back to that era. The references from that time period made me recall how it was like as if I was there.

This book has 4 stars out of 5. It was a great read and definitely something that's unique to the genre. I mean, history references, sci-fi, and romance all in one? That's awesome! One of the major learnings I got from the book is that time is fleeting. Jake has spent five years in the past and even though he is gone for a few minutes in the present time, he becomes five years older. Let's savor all our time now and cherish the moments because time is precious.

The ending of the story made me tear up - it's one of the best stories I have read so far!