Fall on Your Knees

Rating:
Summary: Worst Book I Ever Read
Review: I can't believe I read it all the way to the end. I kept thinking it would redeem itself - big mistake. Never has a book left me so down and depressed - and at a time in my life when I really needed something uplifting. Believe me, each succeeding page was worse than the one before it. There was not a humorous nor happy idea it in.

Rating:
Summary: It's been a while and I still love this book
Review: I read this book about two years ago and can honestly say that I still love it. I hope MacDonald writes more novels, because quite frankly, I'm not into reading plays. She's an amazingly descriptive writer and an incredible story teller. There is nothing artificial or trite about her style or her story. If you're going to spend money on a book that's about a dysfunctional family, please spend it on this book, not the Ya-Yas!

Rating:
Summary: Stunning saga
Review: I rarely read family sagas because I often find it depressing that the characters I fell in love with could actually grow old and die. Don't they know that it is a book and therefore the characters can live forever? But I read this on a friend's recommendation and thought it was superb. It is a very well handled story. MacDonald hints and hints and then whams you with a twist, even when you thought you were expecting it. You never know what will be thrown at you next. So you have to keep reading. It is a real page turner.

Rating:
Summary: gratuitous baby deaths ruin the novel for me
Review: Call me a softie, but I hate to read about the death of a baby or child. I can handle it if it enhances a story in some way, but the baby deaths in this novel seem entirely pointless. In fact, most of what happens in this novel seemed pointless and depressing to me. Don't assume I'm some Christian housewife with 4 kids either. I'm not. I'm educated and I enjoy a good dark novel from time to time, but in my opinion this one is not a good dark novel. It's a mediocre novel that tries to be interesting by creating strange characters and events. It fails because the characters are not believable and they don't invite much empathy. The shape of the plot is interesting, and the style is a little compelling, but all in all I was disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Fall on Your Knees is great!
Review: This book was weird, kind of scary, but FANTASTIC...it kept me turning the pages and kept me interested, which is what it was inteded to do. I strongly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: SO DISAPPPOINTED
Review: I really wanted to like this book; to LOVE it. I knew this book dealt with incest and hoped to give it to help a friend heal. Thank goodness I read it first. This is a DARK book with no redeeming quality that I could find. The only character who was sympathetic was Matteia and the author killed her off. What a waste of Ann-Marie's great talent.

Rating:
Summary: Great story
Review: This was a thoroughly engrossing story, with fascinasting character studies. Nearing the end, it became a real page turner.
This is storytelling at its best.

Rating:
Summary: the worst of family relationships
Review: The writing was descriptive and held my interest, but the story line covered nearly evey perversion a family can enter into. I finished the book totally depressed. It is sad enough that human beings do not respect each other in real life, but tragic to spend your leisure time reading about it. This had to be the most disfunctional family I have read about. Sorry I could not recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Well written but miserable story
Review: Do you like feeling bad about yourself, about your family, and about life in general? Then read this depressing, miserable story. Although well written, the story has absolutely no redeeming characters or value whatsover. If they're good people--they die. If they're bad people--then they die, too, just not soon enough. I'm certainly not going to give it to any of my friends or family to read. We don't need everyone feeling like they've wasted several hours merely to have their good spirits dampened by this soggy and unrealistic story.

Rating:
Summary: Great Title-Downhill from There.
Review: I had great expectatons for this book as it was recommended to me by a good friend. However, it was a testament to the strength of our friendship that I actually forced myself to finish it.

Nice characters are never fully develpoed, and I never felt any connection to them-at least not enough to care what happened. (Which in the end wasn't very much anyway)