by Rea Keech | Feb 28, 2018 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Blending Genres Review by Rea Keech Star Touched is a dystopian novel that takes place after a terrible Cataclysm has destroyed much of the country. It is also a fantasy novel in which some survivors of the Cataclysm have received magical powers. And it is a young...
by Rea Keech | 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 Rea Keech | 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 Tom Keech | 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 Tom Keech | 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 Rea Keech | 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 Tom Keech | 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 Tom Keech | 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 Tom Keech | 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 Rea Keech | 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 Rea Keech | Feb 7, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Clash of Clans Review by Rea Keech Tribal or clan warfare is still a major type of fighting that goes on in the world today. Campbell Ogilvy at the Battle of Arbroath is a historical novel depicting a feudal rivalry between clans in medieval Scotland. By examining the...
by Rea Keech | Jan 31, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Longing for a Lost Faith Review by Rea Keech Mud is a dystopian fantasy apparently inspired by stories of descent into the underworld such as in the Orpheus myths and passages of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, as well as stories of the fall from heaven as in the Old...
by Rea Keech | 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 Rea Keech | Jan 25, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Crime, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
More Puzzle Than Mystery Review by Rea Keech True Death, on the surface, is a police investigation story, but it goes beyond that. The internal struggles and conflicts of the main characters become the focus of a story more about love, grief, compassion, and...
by Rea Keech | Jan 25, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Stories within Stories Review by Rea Keech What would it be like if a novel told the same story simultaneously in two versions with different sets of characters in different settings but with only somewhat different plots? The Planck Factor answers this question—with...
by Rea Keech | 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...
by Rea Keech | Jan 25, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
A Chronicle of Getting By Review by Rea Keech One reviewer aptly characterizes this enjoyable book as a “domestic historical novel.” The author uses diaries and letters to imagine the daily lives of her mother’s family from 1895 to1933 in Washington, D.C. The bulk of...
