Rating: 
Summary: Life As I Knew It!
Review: Coming of age stories often swell with stereotypes and cliches, but Krach's book is one of those rare works that's both unique and universal. I felt like it really captured the excitement, nervousness, and search for identity that I understood as a young gay man growing up in California. At times sweet, funny and touching, this book isn't simply about reading a "story"; rather, it feels like watching friends as they live out their lives.
Rating: 
Summary: "That's life...isn't it? You never know the half of it"
Review: Half-Life is a pretty astute character study of young, urban school-age gay guys. The novel is packed with great, lively characters that mischievously weave in and out of each other's lives and affect each other in unexpected ways. For a first novel, Half-Life is a major achievement for Aaron Krach - he has a keen understanding of intergenerational gay relationships, providing an extremely perceptive account of modern gay life and the sorts of issues that gay people, particularly younger gay people face today.
Set amongst the highways and byways of Los Angeles, Krach places his characters in the fictional suburb of Angelito - "a stretch of land near downtown L.A. unnoticeable because of its ordinariness." Angelito is a place of strip malls and two and three-bedroom houses "connected by driveways to blackish streets." Adam Westman and his best friend Dart are two local gay boys, who like spending lazy afternoons talking and hanging out at the local 7-Eleven, waiting for school to finish so they can get on with their lives.
The narrative centers on Adam, who is just turning eighteen and is on the verge of manhood. He lives with his disheartened and miserable father, Greg, and his creative younger sister, Sandra. When Greg unexpectedly dies of a drug overdose, the family is fractured and Greg and Sandra are forced to live with their self-obsessed mother Vivian who works in the local movie industry exporting B-grade television shows to Eastern Europe. Along the way, Adam meets Jeff, a 38 year old, masculine, sexy policeman who likes to surf in his spare time. Jeff showers Adam with romance and attention and forces Adam to come to terms, not just with his father's death, but the possibility of having "true love" in his life for the first time.
We follow Adam, Dart, and a rich cast of supporting characters as they live through an unforgettable summer together and find the answer to many of life's challenges. For Adam and Jeff, romance is "forward motion that is guaranteed; but it can take forever to go a mile, and they will probably spend a lot of time standing still. Waiting." I liked the intelligent, sensitive wordplay between Jeff and Adam. Krach takes his time setting up their relationship and lets their romance develop at a leisurely and unhurried pace.
Half-Life combines a coming of age story and a teenage romance with a judicious look at the challenges that young gay people face in life. The challenge for Adam is to overcome his piece of pure sadness - the one he was born with, not the one created by has dad's passing. Sadness joined with melancholy has intersected with self-pity dropping him off at "a fork in the road." With an intelligent use of dialogue and economical, literate style that is also engaging and lyrical, Krach shows us that love can be scary and forbidding, yet also raw, fabulous and sexy. Some readers may find the novel thin on plot and the pacing a little slow, but the wonderfully three-dimensional characters and the fact that Adam, Jeff and Dart are so comfortable within themselves, more than make up for the book's shortcomings. Mike Leonard September 04.
Rating:
Summary: Not what you'd expect
Review: Half-Life is a well-written, concise look at both gay teen and adult life. It's the story of 18-year-old Adam, on the verge of graduation, his best friend, Dart, and how transitions in life can occur suddenly and dramatically--though all can turn out for the best more easily than you might think.
Part of the plot is Adam meeting Jeff, a 38-year-old police officer, and their tentative, even burgeoning, romance. While they carefully explore the possibility of getting together, despite high obstacles, Adam's friend Dart looks for love of his own.
The teenage dialogue is right on the mark and the love scenes sizzle. This isn't a light-fluff gay romance novel, but a meaningful, thoughtful story of lives that intersect.
Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: I agree that Half-Life is one of the most compelling character-driven books to come out recently in gay literature. It is nuanced, complex, and Mr. Krach knows how to make the reader feel close to his characters and to genuinely like them. Even the secondary characters (another gay couple) are well drawn and thoroughly believable.
Mr. Krach has also drawn a dead-accurate picture of the non-glamorous half of LA. As an LA-survivor myself I can picture every sound, smell, and image he creates in our minds, it's dead on.
He had brought to the book both real emotion as well as the humor and irony of real life, without ever getting cheesy or overwrought. I read the book in one lazy Saturday, for it is also a pageturner of the best sort.
I look forward to his next book!
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of interesting, kind of boring, kind of like my life!
Review: I bought this book based on the raves that were posted on this Amazon site, but more and more often, I'm realizing that folks tend to write reviews only if they love or hate something. I wanted to like this book, but it never grabbed me. I found myself finishing it only because the library was closed due to the holidays and I just wanted something, anything, to read. My main beefs with the book: I found myself wondering why this 38 year-old policeman named Jeff was attracted to this 17 year-old high school student named Adam- this isn't a moral question, but a storytelling point. The author provided no real insight as to why this policeman would pursue (slowly, I might add), a relationship with Adam. He is closeted, and yet he takes Adam to dinner at a restaurant. . . in his police uniform? Because he didn't have time to change? *Spoiler next, don't read this next line if you don't want to learn something that is revealed in the first 70 pages or so anyway, but it was kind of odd that the police in this small town wanted to consider the death of Adam's father as a homicide, since the coroner said he died of a drug overdose from his own medication.* That story point is minor, except that it becomes the foundation for the "will they or won't they get together" romance of Jeff and Adam. I also didn't care for the way the narration shifted so often, sometimes in the space of a paragraph, and Mr. Krach focused on too many peripheral characters that ultimately added nothing to the main story (Adam's mother and stepfather and Jeff's co-worker Sue, for starters). So is this a bad book? Heck no. But it was slow going for this reader. I will say this, though; the highlight for me was the picture of the author on the inside back jacket- he's very cute!
Rating:
Summary: Pure perfection
Review: I found this novel to be one of the best I have ever read. I love how Krach vividly brings to life each character; no matter their importance to the story, you genuinely care for each one. Krach perfectly captures how lives weave or "almost" weave through one another. The character's are witty as well. The end is so unpredictable that you are compelled to continue reading, trying to figure out what will happen. And when the end comes, your quite surprised. The final pages of the book are blank leaving one to only ponder where the story continues where Krach leaves it.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I thought the book was satisfying. I found that overall the characters were relatable, even though i fell in love with Adam the most. The only complaint I have about the book is the writing. Sometimes the symbolism and the points that the author was trying to get across is so obvious that the reader can't help but be cynical about things. But the author touches on really good key points and themes about coming of age. The book didn't make me cry or burst out in tears, but i did find some parts to be really depressing. But a lot of the times, the really depressing parts were over-done by the author and it had a reverse effect. But the book was great and it's something that's helped me learn more about life, and will be something I look back on, since the author hits very strong keys.
Rating: 
Summary: touching, funny, sad, real
Review: Krach has written a delightful tale of two Los Angeles teens on the cusp of adulthood and their circle of family and friends. The plot has been detailed by other reviewers, so I will only say that Krach is at his best when he's zeroing in on a fictional town of Los Angeles and exploring how his characters' lives come together and pull apart.
I also want to mention that Alyson has caught their errors and is supposingly printing a new copy of the book, if they haven't already.
Rating:
Summary: A simple story
Review: My expectations were not high for this book, which was heavily promoted in several gay magazines.As a huge fan of gay literature (and literature, in general), I read the book in 3-4 sittings. Krach's sense of character is terrific; his story-telling sparse. I wish he had cut back on some of the characters in order to have more "quality time" with some of the main characters, but he creates a very surreal feel to a fake town outside of Los Angeles. An anti-OC, for sure. It's good, it's fast -- and it's not going to change your life. Ultimately, I found myself wanting something else to happen. With all of the foreshadowing, one expects something gigantic to happen in Act Three, and, a lot like life, everything just kind of melds together. One nit-picky thing (that has nothing to do with Aaron Krach or his obvious abilities) -- how does Alyson Publications get away with publishing a book FULL of typos, grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes?
Rating:
Summary: Original, powerful read!
Review: Some may consider "Half-Life" a reason for redefining their own beliefs about contemporary life and love, in any shapes, forms, and circumstances it may come.
"Half-Life" deals with real, serious, contemporary issues of our everyday life. Characters are three-dimensional, evolving throughout the story. It is easy for readers to identify with the characters, after all, who hasn't been a teenager, or in love? Who hasn't had questions and unsecurities about a new beginning?
The author's storytelling talent comes through from the first page to the last. That is yet, another reason the read is engaging, excellent!
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