Author: Lenore H. Dovrkin

Grade: 70/100

The premise is this: Elizabeth Nye who has led a fairly conservative life, becomes engaged in a torrid affair while separated from her fiancé. This affair leads her into a tangle of lies and interesting situations. Without giving much away I will just tell you that the book is about relationships and infidelity, sibling rivalries, familial tensions, and the concept of generational dysfunction.

Dvorkin, a teacher in Colorado, takes on these topics in this fictional novel and writes with the confidence and clarity of someone who has lived these stories. Her characters, especially Elizabeth, felt real, her personality jumping off the page. Her dialogue comes across naturally, which not all writers, even the most famous of them, do with such ease. Even more impressive is the way is the poetic descriptive narrative that she dresses this story in. She uses the perfect amount of descriptive narrative to help the reader paint a picture in their head, but refrains from going overboard and lulling the reader to sleep with poetic prose like so many artists do; getting caught up in their own egos, unwilling to stop typing and let the story just tell itself. Dvorkin does not suffer this problem.

Pg.246 He sat back down on the couch with his feet up and tucked the afghan around them. The tea was very hot. He sipped it slowly, taking little bites of the toast in between. He wanted to draw this out, to give himself time to think.

Here, as with most of the novel, Dvorkin tells us just enough to picture this in our head. And given where we are at this point in the story, we understand perfectly why he (Brian) wanted to draw out the process, why he was lost in thought.

The only negative of this novel is that the plot was disjointed in places and it ran a little long in spots. However, the bright spots far outweigh the negatives. I’d definitely recommend this as a read for anyone who enjoys love stories and coming of age stories. I wouldn’t put this novel into any specific genre, because it did a good job of avoiding clichés, but people like comparatives when making decisions on a purchase. Thus, I’ve put it in those categories for you.

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Author: Seth Greenland

BUY NOW: Shining City

Grade:  74/100

By J. Matthew Nespoli

Marcus Ripps, middle class husband and model father, has hit a rut.  He’s lost his job, his wife won’t sleep with him, and he can’t afford his son’s approaching bar mitzvah.  Then, an unexpected stroke of fortune; his estranged brother Julian passes, and leaves his dry cleaning business to Marcus… but of course, there is a catch… it isn’t a dry cleaning business, it’s a shell corporation to protect an escort service.

Marcus, a model citizen whose recent job loss has put him in a desperate position, first decides that he has to close the business- it’s the right thing to do, but then, on that first day, two of his “employees” show up and hand him a wad of cash, and now Marcus has a moral dilemma.  Events unfold and Marcus ends up keeping the business, and then, on one of his first days, when one of his girls “exercises” a client to death, Marcus must dispose of the body, and to do so he evokes his wife.  Soon, the entire family is in on the business and things begin to spiral out of control.

Though Seth (author) presents the situations in a light that is both too flowery and unrealistic, it is a great story, and thoroughly and exhaustively entertaining.  It also presents the reader with a good example of how quickly life can spiral out of control and what a slippery slope life can be.  A man puts himself in one situation and as new life situations unfold, he amazes even himself of how far he is willing to go, and how many of his ethics he is willing to compromise, to stay above water.

The characters are all painted very richly, and have very distinct voices.  From conservative Marcus, to the pot smoking pole dancing mother in law, to his wife’s best friend and business partner, turned dominatrix, we are given a plethora of normal middle class Americans that we can relate too, and watching their situations move from ordinary to extraordinary makes us feel that this could easily happen to us.  Another lesson the reader may take from this novel is that most corporate wealth comes from a place of greed, and that greed may be a much underrated violation of human ethics in this world when stacked up next to simple things we frown upon, like the sale of sex.

I enjoyed this novel and recommend it for anyone for a nice light, yet educational summer read.

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By Charlie Carillo

BUY NOW: Raising Jake

Grade: 72 out of 100%

Raising Jake is a must read for all single dads. Sammy Sullivan works a job he hates, for a boss whose diapers he used to change; he lives alone, has a girlfriend whom he doesn’t like, and barely knows his son.

His son, Jake, is enrolled in a stuffy upper-class boarding school that, despite his great grades, he knows he doesn’t belong in. He has all the potential in the world, but he’s unhappy; he doesn’t know his father and knows virtually nothing about his ancestry. Then, in just a few hours, everything changes for the Sullivan men. Sammy receives a call to report immediately to the headmaster of Jake’s school. Jake’s mother is out of town, so whatever the emergency is; it falls on the shoulder of Sammy. When Sammy tries to leave, his boss threatens to fire him from the job he’s been working since his boss was in diapers. Sammy leaves. His boss fires him. When he gets to the school he discovers that the big emergency was a paper that Jake had written that exposes the school and the entire education system for what it is: a fraud. In his paper, Jake states that life is all about belonging to the right clubs; getting into the right nursery school, so that you can get to the right grammar school, on to the right boarding school, to the right college, grad school, to land the right job with the right fortune 500 company. It’s all a giant scam. The headmaster demands an apology from Jake, Jake won’t give it, and Jake gets expelled. Sammy and Jake begin a long weekend together diving into Sammy’s childhood and Jake’s ancestry. This journey includes trips to break up with their respective girlfriends, and discussions on how they each lost their virginity to older women- this leads to a visit with the now broken down old lady who took Sammy’s virginity. As their weekend continues, they romp around the neighborhoods of Sammy’s childhood with all events leading up to the main event- the discussion of Sammy’s mother and her death. The characters are rich and vivid. Sammy is a sad and broken down middle aged man whom doesn’t like people and doesn’t know how to love. Jake is a maturing young boy whom is too smart for society and craving for some family history and roots. As the story carries on, though our characters are growing together, learning from one another, and healing, you get the feeling that it is Sammy who needs Jake more than Jake needs Sammy. The prose is clever but not arrogant. It’s humorous and beautiful, intelligent and moving. I wouldn’t say that I couldn’t put it down, but I definitely enjoyed it thoroughly and part of me wished that I’d come up with the story. Anyone who is a father will certainly shed a few tears. It was simple and read that way, but this isn’t a bad thing; it was effective. I’d liken it to a really great romantic comedy. It is what it is. A romantic comedy is never going to blow you away with brilliance, but if it’s done correctly there’s nothing negative you can say about it, and you will walk away from it having been entertained and feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside. That’s what this book did to me.

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