"Jefferson’s portrayal of these complex emotions is breathtaking, his story insightful and moving. You might shed a tear or two, but the end will definitely leave your spirit lifted and hopeful."
There's nothing better than reading a strong review of your book! (Okay, technically there are lots of things better: birth of a child or grandchild, falling in love, winning the lottery --not a scratch off, but the lottery-- even the first bite of a crisp, delicious apple.) Still, it's a great feeling when someone writes something complimentary, especially when the reviewer read the same book you wrote.
One of the worst feelings is when a reviewer heaps praise on your work but they miss what you are doing. That's one of the risks of writing. Every reader, reviewer or not, brings their own experience to your work, along with their reading style (do you read a book cover-to-cover in one sitting, or two pages a day, or do you read the endings of mystery novels first so you don't have any anxiety while you read the story?) their personality and all of their assumptions about the world to your party. If something irritates me early into a novel I'm reading, I begin to do rewrites in my head which takes me totally out of the author's narrative and into my own.
That was not the case with Katie Bloomer, who recently wrote a review of Love for Book Trib.com, a website that "was created as a news source for people who love books, want to find out what’s happening in the book world and love learning about great authors of whom they may not have heard." The review went beyond a simple recounting of the narrative and explored secondary characters and storylines that I always thought gave the novel complexity and weight. You can read the entire review at:
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