Rating: 
Summary: 4 People locked in grief after a hit-and-run death
Review: This book is absolutely heart-wrenching. It's about four people locked in grief after the hit-and-run death of a 10-year old boy. . . the boy's parents, his sister, and the driver. Schwartz makes you care for them all -- including the driver -- and makes you feel their struggles to recapture their shattered lives. This book is also about families. How family members forget to care, care too much, take each other for granted, feel each other's pain, push each other apart. And it's about anger. And about the pain caused by one moment of failed control. Finally, it's about a glorious moment of redemption.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very touching story
Review: This book moved me for several reasons. It used three characters to narrate the story, and the changes are neither jarring nor contrived. Ethan, Grace, and Dwight are all emotionally scarred people, and this is their story, a sad song of a tribute to a loss that they cannot explain or accept. John Burnham Schwartz writes with a clarity that cannot be matched by anyone I have read. He writes this story has a minor thriller, but it really is a trasgedy of beauty and understated elegance.
Rating: 
Summary: Completely unrealistic ending
Review: This book was well plotted until the ending. No grieving father who had seen his family practically destroyed by a hit and run driver, who had helped search for the killer, who had been furious at the police for putting the case on the back burner is going to let the guy off just because he has a little boy of his own. Where is the criminal case? Where is the civil case for wrongful death? Is he going to keep quiet about this for the rest of his life? What explanation is he going to give to his wife? I felt a good book had really let me down in the end by crafting a resolution that would never happen in any real person's universe.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising, character centered
Review: This book went smoothly, it read easily. The story is in fact believable, as loss and anger have tormented many families over unanswered questions of fate. The thing I believe to be brilliant was that even though both of these men's' perceptions were told through first person, the woman part was told by third person. Because of this, you do not see as many dynamics of her character as much as the men. This is actually a good point to the book as we center mainly on the psychologically disturbed men. The woman remains the strongest, the men most influenced by everyone else. Only one drawback: The men, even though I understood their pains, spent entirely too much of the book in mourning.
Rating: 
Summary: Reservation Road - Poor ending
Review: This is a book about grief - plain and simple. Particularly the grief of losing a child. Reservation Road did start out really promising. The prose was good and the use of multiple perspectives, though confusing at first, did help the narrative along. However, nothing could be more of a let-down than its anti-climatic finish. Be prepared for an ending that will leave you confused and make you want to read the last paragraph over again in case you missed something. Other than that - this book is a quick read, but it can be a drag if you don't have the patience.
Rating:
Summary: Grief, despair and redemption after the loss of a child
Review: This is a book of unmitagated brillance leaving the reader drained of emotion; yet, with an elation over having experienced Mr. Schwartz's "Reservation Road." Told in altering narrative voices of Ethan, the father, Grace, the wife, and Dwight, the man resposible for the death of Josh - Ethan and Grace's son. "Reservation Road" takes on a emotional journey of a family coping with their child's death and the man who accidently killed him in a hit-and-run accident. Dwight is never erased of guilt; yet, he never confesses. He flees the accident - his son sleeping in the back seat - and eventually emotionally disappears as his guilt empowers his being. Grace and Ethan emotionally disappear as they go through the stages of grief trying to recover. Thee result is a novel steeped with moral insight and filled with emotional complexities. A thriller to some degree - will Dwight ever be found out? - but a treatise as well on a family's eventual road to redemption. Mr. Schwartz is a novelist with extreme knowledge in the human psyche and should be applauded for his use of language, emotion and talent in this book about a crises which should have never happened.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Subtle and Powerful
Review: This is a good, good book. It is also very rare in that it deals with a very traumatic sitation in as anti-Hollywood of a way as possible, that is, REALISTICALLY. The character development and the plot are loyal to one another and the book manages to use the emotions of sadness and futility to a high degree. If you like books (or movies) like Remains of the Day, you will like this.
Rating:
Summary: Good,but not great.
Review: This was a good, but not a great, book. It started out strong, but the ending seemed weak and contrived, and let me unsatisfied. I like the device of telling the story from the three perspectives, but why tell the mother's in the third person. I still can't figure that out. This book had a very strong beginning that the author did a good job of sustaining....for a time. It just ran out of gas for me in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read but the ending was somewhat disappointing
Review: This was an exceptionally well written, entertaining book but I was somewhat disappointed with the ending. I was basically page turning for the entire book ,and when I turned to the next page there was no more book!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, tragic and moving
Review: We read Reservation Road in my reading group, and every single one of us loved it.
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