By Dan Marvin on November 26, 2009
I dare you not to like Stubbs and Bernadette by Levi Montgomery. Double dog dare you! This book made me late for work on more than once, its that hard to put down. There is something so compelling and sweet about the way that Montgomery describes Bernadette, you just want to shield her from the world. Bernadette in this case is Bernadette Elsbeth McIntyre and the name is bigger than the girl that wears it. She is described as a waif, an elf, a sixteen-year-old in a twelve-year-old’s body and you’ll be able to immediately picture her. There was always someone in everyone’s High School that resembles her. She is the artsy girl, the one that doesn’t dress just right, the one that never quite fit in.
Posted in Dan Marvin, Mainstream/Nostalgia, Young Adult/Juvenile | Tagged coming-of-age, CreateSpace, Fiction, impulse control, levi montgomery, literary fiction, love story, Stubbs and Bernadette, teenagers, young adult |
By Dan Marvin on October 20, 2009
Cursing the Cougar is two books in one. Which book you like says a lot about you as a reader. The first book is a lushly written coming-of age story that crests and falls on the emotions of the characters. This is the kind of book they don’t write anymore but should, Jane Eyre in blue jeans holding a torque wrench. The second book-within-a-book is a taut psychological thriller complete with deranged bad-guy and brief glimpses into a warped mind. While it would be easy to dismiss Cursing the Cougar as lacking in direction, it’s actually in the intersection of these two tales that we realize that life is LIKE that, sometimes evil visits our slowly simmering lives and turns up the heat.
Posted in Dan Marvin, Mainstream/Nostalgia, Mystery/Suspense | Tagged cursing the cougar, levi montgomery |
