by | Mar 21, 2022 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Tom's Reviews
Review by Tom Keech Grace puts on a fine show of a loving relationship with Jack, her rich attorney husband who prosecutes men who abuse their spouses. In actuality, he’s a brilliant psychopath who devotes all his energy making sure she speaks to no one outside of his...
by | Mar 8, 2022 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Tom's Reviews
Review by Tom Keech Oh my, Georgina’s in trouble! She has a history of post-partum depression verging on psychosis. Her husband not only had (or is still having?) an affair with a beautiful ex-schoolmate, but he’s also lying about it. Meanwhile, he’s advising Georgina...
by | Apr 20, 2019 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
And the Beats Go On Review by Rea Keech It’s sad, but I picked up the hardback version of this book from a stack of them in the Dollar Store. No need to write a review. There are plenty. I read it for the endless inventive “beats” in the dialogue:...
by | Jan 5, 2018 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Tom's Reviews
Incest is Not Best Review by Tom Keech Five stars for the intensity of this incestuous love story between a brutal, twisted, gun-obsessed survivalist father and his fourteen-year-old daughter. The daughter, Turtle, shares her father’s belief system but has begun to...
by | Nov 28, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Garrulous Sad Sack Review by Rea Keech Maxwell Sim, the garrulous Sad Sack narrator of this 2010 satirical novel, is unable to connect with other people, even those in his own family. The story traces his pitiful, humiliating attempts to do so. One of my favorite...
by | Nov 8, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Exotic Experiences Review by Rea Keech Lemons’ book is not an autobiography in any traditional sense, but it provides a record of key moments in the interior life of the author. The pieces were written in different places around the world and depicting times ranging...
by | Nov 7, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Transfigurations Review by Rea Keech Set in Delhi from the years following Bush’s invasion of Iraq up to the middle of Obama’s first term as president, this novel depicts the philosophical development of Gora, an Indian university student who lives in times of...
by | Oct 17, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Life Went On Review by Rea KeechAnybody who, like me, might want to know what it was like to live in South Vietnam in the last few months of the Saigon regime will find this novel riveting. Glenn shows what it was like for the Vietnamese and the remaining Americans...
by | Sep 28, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Tom's Reviews
Hipster Nonchalance Carried to Extremes Review by Tom Keech This book reminds me a lot of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, except it’s better. There’s the same young male character who thinks and acts like a girl. The same absence of any apparent emotional connection...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Shaggy Dog Chronicle Review by Rea Keech If everything in this book is not a chronicle of exactly what actually happened to the writer, then it’s hard to say why it was written. The events, whether recalled or occurring in the present, certainly don’t make an...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Touring without a Guide Review by Rea Keech This book, published by Kindle Scout, is written in a simple, unpretentious style that is a pleasure to read. It’s in what I like to think of as the I Traveled to a Foreign Land, Saw All the Tourist Sites, and Set My Story...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Slapstick Morality Play Review by Rea Keech What I like best about this book is the way it made me laugh out loud so often, sometimes at statements made by Ove and sometimes at the author’s descriptions and comments that mimic how Ove would have expressed it. The...
by | Jul 12, 2017 | Popular Novels, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Tom's Reviews
Review by Tom Keech An upper-middle-class Manhattan family vacations with two friends in Mallorca at a turning point in everyone’s domestic life. There is a lot of food shopping, cooking, eating, admiration of island vistas, swimming, sunning, sightseeing, and bad...
by | Jul 4, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
What It Takes to Survive Review by Rea Keech In this unconventional novel, the passages in bold print are the love story that the author is attempting to write. His sense of humor is evident from the start as the girl and boy in love are named Sara and Dara after the...
by | Jun 22, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
More Droll Than Tragic Review by Rea Keech There are already 2,511 reviews of this novel on Amazon and 3,945 on Goodreads, and so I will just explain why I found it such a pleasure to read. It wasn’t for the plot or action (mostly chick concerns) but for the witty,...
by | Jun 22, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Ipatia’s Choice Review by Rea Keech Lipsi’s Daughter gives us a picture of what life in Greece was like at the end of the 20th century for a girl raised in a family with conservative values. Ipatia conforms to the expectations of society without rebellion—except...
by | Jun 15, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Tom's Reviews
Chick Lit 101 by Tom Keech Barefoot Beach takes place in a small beach town on the Atlantic coast of Maryland. The beach and the ocean, together with the town itself, with its homey little businesses like dance studios and ice-cream shops, are the real centers of...
by | Jun 13, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Distanced, Ironic View By Rea Keech Perrotta’s novel has a witty, ironic, detached tone. The author seems to be above it all, looking with amusement at the world around him. Here are some phrases and sentences that typify this attitude. Sometimes it’s a character...
by | Jun 13, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Detached Amusement By Rea Keech This novel is an example of writing with a distinct authorial or main-character voice. Kelman’s first-person narrator, Janet, looks at the world around her with what might be called a detached amusement. This is evident in her...
by | May 11, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Montaigne Trapped in His Tower with Nothing to Say Review by Rea Keech Having taken an accustomed seat in my worn leather chair, its polished surface as always conjuring up wistful memories of the familial heritage which was its origin, I set out to indulge myself...
by | May 4, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Boys’ Weeklies Style? Review by Rea Keech This is an enjoyable story about a young man born and raised in Butte, Montana, whose Egyptian-born father abandoned him and his mother when he was three. He leaves Butte in his twenties and goes to Cairo in search of...
by | May 3, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
The Parenthetical Style Review by Rea Keech In an interview, Perrotta says that structure comes easy to him. He says, “I generally try to write brisk narratives and keep pushing forward all the time, and stop at strategic moments to give a glimpse into a character’s...
by | Apr 23, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Tom's Reviews
High-School Janitor or Brilliant Scientist: You/I/We Decide Review by Tom Keech A young woman who is thinking about committing suicide takes a car trip with her new boyfriend to visit his parents in their farm out in the country. She tries not to encourage him too...
by | Apr 12, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Tom's Reviews
Forty Million Readers Can’t Be Wrong Review by Tom Keech Cordelia wants to get rid of her crush on Aiden, a man she’s known since they were young children and who is the brother of one of her best friends. When her father suddenly dies, she discovers the real...
by | Mar 6, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Tom's Reviews
Failure to Jell Review by Tom Keech All of the ingredients are here – murder, rough sex, blackmail, compromised law enforcement officials, long-buried family secrets, betrayals, even Maryland local color – but to me it did not seem to jell into a credible...
by | Mar 4, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Tom's Reviews
They Aren’t All Just Gymnasts, You Know Review by Tom Keech This novel’s elegant prose beautifully mirrors Miri’s artistic eye for the colors and shapes of the natural world she sees in in her small-town life in war-torn, Holocaust-haunted and poverty-stricken...
by | Mar 2, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Tom's Reviews
College of Contrition Review by Tom Keech Fourteen stories about people, mostly academics, seemingly searching for love. In the title story, a man gets the chance to relive two scenes with his third wife in backwards order: first as their marriage is wearing out and...
by | Feb 28, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Immersed in Two Cultures Review by Rea Keech The story is set in England and Greece about five years after the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Helena’s Greek mother is dead, and she has been raised as a proper English girl by her English father. But...
by | Jan 27, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Passing Review by Rea Keech The cruelty and absurdity of racism in the American South haunts the lives of characters in Sawyer’s novel, which traces a family from the late 19th century through 1970. Hank, whose family lives on the “back side of town,” feels this...
by | Jan 25, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
A Story Told at Arm’s Length Review by Rea Keech The story of House Divided is carefully constructed. Recent terror attacks in the U.S. have led the President to call Leonard Robbins, a retired CIA operative, back into action. After an introduction to Robbins’s...
