Rating: 
Summary: Tucker did it again
Review: Lisa Tucker has done it again. She has created a protagonist that we root for. Patty is honest and brave. We feel for her as she struggles with the memories of the love she had with Rick, dangerous, overprotective Rick who saved her from her mother when she needed saving, and how that past is to balance with the current reality of caring for her son. The portrait of Willie, her son, is the most realistic rendering of a two year old I've ever read. Shout Down the Moon, is, at its center the story of a mother's love for her son. This story is that much more compelling because she learns how to love Willie without a role model.Lisa Tucker tells stories everyone will want to read, stories unencumbered by melodrama, bolstered by unflinching honesty and reality. I can't wait for her next novel.
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Summary: Lisa Tucker proves that The Song Reader was no fluke
Review: Lisa Tucker's debut novel THE SONG READER was an original and engrossing premise coupled with compelling writing. With that one book Tucker cemented herself as a strong new voice, a talented writer to watch for in the future. Now in her sophomore effort, SHOUT DOWN THE MOON, Tucker proves that THE SONG READER was no fluke; she has more stories to tell. The main character in SHOUT DOWN THE MOON is Patty Taylor, a young single mother with a painful past who is trying desperately to live in the now and provide for her two-year-old son Willie. "Providing" means singing for a living as the lead vocalist for a band whose members either despise her for lending her name to their band, or ignore her completely for her perceived ignorance about music, or waste their time wagering if and when they can bed her. It is not a happy existence for Patty, traveling from bar to bar with these guys who barely acknowledge her presence, but she reminds herself repeatedly that it is better than her past. Her past is Rick: her first love and her first reprieve from the abuse she received at the hand of her alcoholic mother. Tucker gives us only glimpses into Patty's childhood after the death of her father, but the peaks are enough to establish the tough times that befell Patty and her mother and the blame that her mother foisted on the young girl. Rick was her knight in shining armor who, at 23, saved her, 15, from her mother's rants about "the sacrifices she had made" and the abuse. He rescued her and gave her safe haven. "All the rumors about him seemed ridiculous to me now," she said. "A bad guy wouldn't look as vulnerable as Rick did lying on the mattress, telling me that he'd dreamed of this moment when he was a kid." In bits and pieces Tucker reveals that Patty's first love was a drug dealer and that Patty, in her innocence, tried to look past his crimes because he seemed so dear to her, so incapable of doing bad when he was doing nothing but good for her. But there were moments, cruel moments, when his rage showed through and was aimed at her. These moments she eventually could not deny, and when finally he was arrested and sent to jail, she said good-bye to him and her past, and tried to move on. His return becomes the true turning point in Patty's life. Up until now Tucker has given us a survivor, but when her security and the security of her son is threatened by an unchanged Rick bent on having her back, Patty becomes a fighter. She recognizes his "love" for the obsession it truly is, and by this time has found a new love of her own. The changes in Patty are subtle and gradual, like the changes in her talent, but powerful and, finally, winning. Tucker's love of music, so strongly displayed in THE SONG READER, is here in SHOUT DOWN THE MOON too. And Patty, an okay front singer for an average pop band, evolves into a true artist as her personal strength grows and she faces her fears. Ultimately, SHOUT DOWN THE MOON is a story of personal growth on the part of someone who didn't even know she had it in her. But once she realizes it, there's no stopping her. Hopefully there's no stopping Tucker, too, and we'll be reading more from her soon. --- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps Even Better Than Her Debut
Review: Lisa Tucker's really outdone herself with this incredibly well written novel about motherhood, music, heartbreak and triumph. She does an amazing job connecting the reader with the protagonist's ex-lover, who embodies such a mixture of loveable and hatable qualities, you find yourself at once sorry for and horrified by him. It's somewhat heavy, so be forewarned, but watching the narrator grow from a tough, wounded girl to a powerful, expressive woman is absolutely worth experiencing her heartache.
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Summary: Another finely crafted page-turner from Lisa Tucker
Review: Lisa Tucker's second novel, Shout Down the Moon, delivers on the promise her first novel, The Song Reader, held out of a powerful new voice on the literary landscape. Tucker's characters are multi-dimensional, and unflinchingly portrayed. As in The Song Reader, the main characters in Shout Down the Moon are working class, contending with the joys and sorrows of life in the best way that they can. It is all too rare to see characters from contemporary rural and smalltown America as lovingly and respectfully portrayed. Not only do the characters draw in the reader, the plot of Shout Down the Moon flows so effortlessly that you cannot help but keep turning the pages to see what happens next. I loved this book!!
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Summary: Exquisite
Review: Once more, Lisa Tucker delights me. With another tale flavored with music and motherhood, Mrs. Tucker peels back the skin of Patty Tucker, young mother and singer with the Patty Tucker Band, a floundering jazz quartet turned pop band. Patty needs this job, this chance. She's not the girl she once was. She has a new voice now, a mother's wail, loud enough, strong enough to shout down the moon.
Don't miss this. Patty Tucker is someone you want to meet. She'll be with me always.
Rating: 
Summary: Shout,, Shout, Shout It All Out!
Review: Patty Taylor has always been beaten down, it seems. First by her alcoholic mother, then by her boyfriend, Rick, and now by the band she works with. She doesn't realize, of course, that she invites this kind of thing by her actions. She is timid and does not speak up, she really isn't worth it, she thinks. However, Patty Taylor has a son, William, and she will not allow anything to happen to him. She will fight to the end!
How Patty Taylor ended up as the lead singer in a band is a good question. She fought her entire young life with her mother. Then she took up with Rick, who turned out to be a drug addled alcoholic, and abuser. He was sent to jail for theft. Patty Taylor needed to find a new life, and then she discovered she was pregnant. She refused her mother's demand to have an abortion. She had her son, alone. She turned her life around. She started anew. This is an old story, young girl gone wrong, but Patty Taylor does catch your heart. She has a message- follow your dreams, overcome your obstacles, and become the person you really think you are.
Rick gets out of jail and all of her dreams start to fall away. However, the friends she has made help her to pull everything back together, but in time? Can she overcome this lost love, the drugs and alcohol she has beat?
This is a book that tends to draw you in, unaware of what is happening. Lisa Tucker has written a book about a young woman who is determined to change her life and actually succeeds. This is a book for all, young and old. prisrob
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Summary: Great Story, Likeable Heroine
Review: Shout Down the Moon is a compellingly readable novel, one which has you rooting for Patty, the charming protagonist and first-person narrator from the very first page. Patty has had a difficult life, her father died young, her abusive mother is an alcholic, her dangerous ex-boyfriend, and father of her child, just got out of prison and she has a difficult job. The boyfriend wants her back, but her co-workers and her mother don't really want her, for various reasons. Patty also struggles with her choice of career, lead singer in a small band doing pop song covers. Most of the other members of the band would rather be playing jazz, but Patty wants whatever puts food on the table, which she thinks is pop and not jazz. For all her difficulties, Patty is a charming narrator--her story keeps you reading. The resolution of the novel is a bit predictable, but that's my only complaint about this engaging novel.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, but not the greatest read!
Review: Shout down the moon is a nice quick summer read. The characters are simple and it doesn't take a lot of brain cells to comprehend the storyline. It lacks depth though! Could I have put it down and forgotten it? Yes, without any problem.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling
Review: SHOUT DOWN THE MOON is not just a fantastic story, it is also fabulously written. Lisa Tucker does an amazing job of narrating Patty Taylor's life while maintaining an appropriate balance of narration and feelings. After reading THE SONG READER I could not wait until Lisa Tucker's next novel was released, and now that I have also read SHOUT DOWN THE MOON I am even more excited for her third novel. Well done!!!
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Summary: My first Lisa Tucker book...definitely not my last!
Review: This book has got to be one of the most awesome books I have read in a long long time. I bought it on a whim, after reading what it was about. I have yet to be so pleased with the purchase of a book as I have been about this one.
It is the story of Patty Taylor, single mother to two-year old Willie. She is a musician struggling on the road to make it bit and to give Willie the life he deserves. She is use to struggle though- coming from an alcoholic mother, homelessness, and working graveyard shifts as a dishwasher for a diner.
On the road, life is tough, never living in anyone place very long. She feels that the band sees her as a meal ticket not as a human and definitely not as a serious singer. Enter Willie's father, on parole from prison for dealing drugs. Rick wants nothing more than to have Patty and Willie in her life. He pleades with Patty to take him back, that prison changed him for the better.
Thus begins Patty's epic journey that will transform her from a girl who can just about take anything life throws at her (or so she thinks) to a woman who can shout down the moon.
Tucker creates a very real character in Patty Taylor. There is depth to Patty and even flaws- like in each of us. Patty Taylor is one of the most real characters I have read in a long long time. She may be a heroine but she is more real than most heroes and heroines that you will read about it. All supporting characters are very true to themselves and the story throughout the novel. I highly recommend this book.
I am now going to go purchase her other book.
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