Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: I *HATE* it when I finish a book and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This book did just that; I've read Alice Hoffman before and while I can't say I'm a huge fan, I've found her other work to be engaging and aside from her annoying use of fantasy and magic, I've usually gotten a good read. Not so in "The River King"... there were a number of distractions that cropped up: she has her faculty meeting in the library -- but no, suddenly it's in the auditorium. Then we're sort of led to think that maybe Annie was a tragic character from long ago, but she evidently was a contemporary of some of the people in the book. That just didn't seem believable. My biggest beef with this book, though, is that the plot (loosely wrought and contrived as it was) just sort of sputtered and petered out. What about that lame excuse for not pursuing the murder investigation? I doubt whether that would happen AT ALL in real life. I don't know where Alice Hoffman wanted to go with this, but it wound up being a big fat disappointment. I had expected so much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to her usual standard
Review: I can't say this book was the best that I have ever read, but I enjoyed it. The suspense had a way of buliding up, but there were things that were so obviously impossible to happen that I almost kicked the characters. And I don't understand the point of the end of the story. Why didn't those kids get in trouble? Once I put it down I just realized that some things are better left unknown and the justice is always a dish served at the wrong time.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I had a hard time getting through this. I will usually give any book a good long time to kick in and hook my interest, but The River King just never did. Worse, it bored me to tears....when it didn't have me squinting at the pages, saying, "What?" To put it succinctly, this was one of the most bizarre and puzzling books I have ever read. The characters practically define the term "one-dimensional"; I never understood or cared about any of them - once I figured out who they were in relation to one another that is. They did not fit, alone or together with one another. As a matter of fact, everything in this book, from the plot (or lack of one) to the setting, from the dialog to the development was jerky, disjointed and malformed. What a waste of time!
Rating:
Summary: Maybe she's a great writer, but...
Review: I'm unfamiliar with Alice Hoffman's other work, but if this book is indicative of her talent, I'm inclined to remain that way. I have a tendency to continue reading books I dislike, just because I don't like to quit things halfway through, so I kept on reading well past the point I had begun to wonder "why am I reading this?". The plot is as worn as an old shoe and the reader must continually endure schmaltzy references to the "mysterious wafting scent of roses" indicating - what? A ghostly indication of the character's victimhood? As if we didn't recognize this on our own? The characters seem to have been ripped straight out of a melodrama, complete with fainting spells and evil sneers. And the ending is just halfhearted. There's sure to be a movie, where at least the only wafting odor will be that of popcorn.
Rating: 
Summary: move over Practical Magic
Review: it is my belief that this is Alice Hoffman's best work, her writing is simply beautiful from beginning to END! this is the first novel of her's that i completely enjoyed, though i loved the movie Practical Magic the novel was severely lacking and her others i cannot seem to get into, but this novel pulled me and wouldn't let go, i loved the character of Able Grey and the whole situation built up around him and his mysterious family history, and how could u not feel sorry for the character of Gus and just want to love that poor teenage boy who couldn't seem to fit in...all and all it is a wonderful and beautiful book! go read it!
Rating:
Summary: Best Yet!
Review: So far I have read Practical Magic, Illumination Night, Seventh Heaven, Blue Diary, Here on Earth, Drowning Season, and The River King. I found that the River King was the best yet. It had true emotions expressed throughout the book that touches you in an unexplainable way. This book was not only moving, but it had a little mystery to it as well. If you read any of her books. Read this one.
Rating:
Summary: On par with Practical Magic
Review: The other reviews of this novel do not give "The River King" justice. It is truly an excellent piece of work. Hoffman's descriptive writing, as usual, is wonderfully melodic, and the characters in this book are some of the most endearing I have encountered. Gus, one of the main characters, is the type of person you just want to hold and protect, and Carlin is equally captivating, though infuriatingly human. Betsy and Abe, the two adults with a romance, are just as captivating. I highly reccommend this book. I have read quite a few of Hoffman's works, and I would say this (along with Practical Magic) is one of her best.
I just finished reading it 2 days ago, and no matter how hard I try I can't stop thinking about it. The characters are so wonderful that I just can't leave them behind me. Be forwarned, it's a terribly sad book, but it is definitely worth the read! In fact, I hope everyone reads it! I think it's a fantastic book, despite what the other reviewers say.Another reviewer has said that it does not leave you feeling like a piece of yourself has been released-this is true. But I think that the reason you don't feel like you have released a piece of yourself is because it becomes such a part of you that you cannot let it go. It's that good.
Rating:
Summary: A Pleasurable Read
Review: The River King, by Alice Hoffman is a well-rounded book. There is the right amount of sentiment, tragedy, and suspense to balance the plot and the overall experience of the book. While this particular work does not excel in any of these categories, it is a nice combination.
It is set around the late 1990's at a private high school in the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts. The main story follows the lives of an incoming freshman, a new photography teacher, and a local police officer. Everything plays out in a continuous cycle of events that intertwine and include the past and the present.
While The River King may not be the intellectual thriller of Conrad, or have the wildly imaginative characters like in Faulkner, it is good writing for our day and age. The themes are modern and the story is life-like. I would recommend it as a good book to read for pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: A Pleasurable Read
Review: The River King, by Alice Hoffman is a well-rounded book. There is the right amount of sentiment, tragedy, and suspense to balance the plot and the overall experience of the book. While this particular work does not excel in any of these categories, it is a nice combination.
It is set around the late 1990's at a private high school in the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts. The main story follows the lives of an incoming freshman, a new photography teacher, and a local police officer. Everything plays out in a continuous cycle of events that intertwine and include the past and the present.
While The River King may not be the intellectual thriller of Conrad, or have the wildly imaginative characters like in Faulkner, it is good writing for our day and age. The themes are modern and the story is life-like. I would recommend it as a good book to read for pleasure.
Rating: 
Summary: Déja vou
Review: The scent of roses permeates the campus, making weak preppie girls sick and jittery and driving young, unusual and wild photography teacher Betsy Chase into the arms of a local policeman with a complicated family history and piercing blue eyes. The aroma is the calling card of the influence of Betsy's predecessor, Annie Howe, a woman betrayed by the man she wanted to love, driven to self-destruction by his rejection. The setting is different, an unfamiliar (even to a prep schooler born and raised) boarding school, but Alice Hoffman never strays far from her small, close-nit communities, quiet little towns with politics and long memories, whether they be achingly new developments or established Massachusetts tourist villages. You see, before I even picked up this book, I'd already read it, because I'd already read two other books by Alice Hoffman: "Practical Magic" and "Seventh Heaven". "The River King" is simply a clever meshing of the two. The similarities are blatantly noticeable; if she hadn't written the first two books herself I'd accuse her of borderline plauguarization. Every character in River King has a long-lost relative residing in one of the other books, from Annie Howe, the depressed gardener, whose love story mirrors that of the first Owens Witch in "Practical Magic" (as well as lending both a convenient warning story for one character to blatantly miss and an even more convenient long-lost parentage for another), to Betsy, whose attitudes and rocky but fated and inevitable love for reckless and unorthodox small-town cop Abe are quite similar to those of Sally Owens, so fell in love with the southern detective sent to shake her sister down for the murder of a missing boyfriend. Sally's teenage daughter, and to some extent her reckless sister Gillian (whose evil boyfriend's spirit's tendency to drive people crazy with the scent of the lilacs that flourished over his illicit gravesite sounds somehow familiar), both contribute ot the formation of odd, entracingly beautiful, and incredibly stupid Carlin Leander, who, despite all the time and effort Hoffman must have invested to make her a sympathtic character, lost me when she continued to date big murderer on campus Harry McKenna long after we knew he was bad news. So here's my advice: skip "Seventh Heaven", which was boring and provincial, unless of course you love that sort of thing. Hoffman does excell at painting elaborate pictures of small-town society, I'll give her that. If you're the sex-and-magic type of reader, you can still get the small-town stuff (which gets very old the third time around), plus far more exciting fare, in "Practical Magic" (skip the movie though, as it is, like many adaptations, truly inferior.) If you're too lazy to read both books, "The River King" will do, but be advised that it is, like Carlin and Betsy and the ridiculously over-dramatized town of Haddan and its accompanying school, a pale shadow of its predecessors.
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