Lynda C. (Readnmachine) reviewed Night Road (Center Point Platinum Fiction) on + 1439 more book reviews
It was a mistake. A misjudgment. A collision between bulletproof teens, first-love, alcohol, and poor choices. And it left a family shattered, with a woman who had made her children the center of her world trying to go forward while still shackled to a flesh-and-blood reminder of what she had lost.
Hannah does a good job here in keeping this out of soap-opera territory with sharp character development, but it's a close shave. Young love is set on what is obviously going to be a collision course with cold, hard reality, and there's buckets of angst to go around. The teens' mom is herself the child of an emotionally absent parent, and she has made it her life's work to nurture and protect her golden twins. She's already dealing with separation anxiety engendered by their upcoming departure for college when her children's attachment to a hard-luck case complicates everything in ways that are pretty well predictable.
There's some nice imagery here involving a garden and, always, that underlying thread of mothers and children and how close is too close, how far is too far, and how can one overcome that which cannot be endured.
Hannah does a good job here in keeping this out of soap-opera territory with sharp character development, but it's a close shave. Young love is set on what is obviously going to be a collision course with cold, hard reality, and there's buckets of angst to go around. The teens' mom is herself the child of an emotionally absent parent, and she has made it her life's work to nurture and protect her golden twins. She's already dealing with separation anxiety engendered by their upcoming departure for college when her children's attachment to a hard-luck case complicates everything in ways that are pretty well predictable.
There's some nice imagery here involving a garden and, always, that underlying thread of mothers and children and how close is too close, how far is too far, and how can one overcome that which cannot be endured.
Laura P. (hemmputnam) reviewed Night Road (Center Point Platinum Fiction) on + 1113 more book reviews
The writing was powerful enought to make me cry, but it felt kind of emotionally manipulative to me. How many stereotypical teen tragedies can she put her characters through? Apparently all of them. Even as it seemed like every bad outcome occurred the ending also felt too pat and happy.
