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Summary: Lyrical Magic, Yet Again!!!
Review: I don't know of any other writer who can get inside the head of troubled teens better than Alice Hoffman. You can feel the angst and the uncertainty of being 15 all over again in this excellent story set in a private boarding school on the banks of a river. She has such a unique way of describing the most mundane things that you never look at them the same way again. That's the beauty of her books---she takes you out of yourself!
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Summary: Did Alice Hoffman really write this book???
Review: I felt after a while that I was reading a book by someone trying to imitate her unique style. All the elements of an Alice Hoffman novel are in here, but for some reason this book did not work its usual magic for me. I found it downright tedious at times, and more dark, depressing, and cruel than called for. I just could not warm up to any of the characters (and we have met these characters in Ms. Hoffman's other novels, many times! They have other names and lives, of course, but they are familiar to the steady reader.) Of course, as the old cliche goes, anything by Alice Hoffman is better than nothing. "River King" just seems a little "off" to me, much as I love her other work. There are familiar things, the delightful "magical realism"; the lovely descriptions of weather and birds and bees and fauna and flowers; the angst of passion and romance and secret hurts behind peoples' facades. But there's something missing. I could not get involved in this story, Betsy did not make me feel much of anything, except impatience. The fiance came across as a total zero. The school seemed understaffed and poorly run; in fact as a "character", the school was awfully sketchy, it seemed like just a plot device to get all these people in one place and not like a real school at all. Never having attended a "fancy boarding school",I wonder what kind of place allows students to go tramping through the woods all night! And that poor boy, troubled and wasting away, skipping his classes every day - did no one in that school in any position of authority have the slightest inclination to help him at all? No health care professional, no psychologist did anything? Only one equally pathetic girl friend ? I thought the girl's story was pretty interesting, I like reading about the poor and disadvantaged struggling for success in life. I think there were too many characters, interesting as some of the minor ones were. All those stories clamoring to be told, everyone trying to fit themselves into the big picture. (One final comment: I sense there is a future movie of "River King " in the works, and the part of Betsy just *screams* to be played by - Sandra Bullock!!! Just read that physical description of Betsy, who else could possibly fill the role?)
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Summary: Another Great Hoffman experience
Review: This is a great read. I love Alice Hoffman. She's an incredible story teller. Her description is so vivid that I could smell the roses. This is a must!!
Rating:
Summary: Powerful!
Review: As usual, Alice Hoffman outdid herself! This is possibly her finest book yet. For the first half of the book, I could not wait to keep reading but then towards the middle (as you will see), I became very depressed and thought "Oh no, this cannot be happening." Further on in the book, I then became angry about the actions of some of the people in this small town and at the end I felt just a "sweet sadness." It just goes to show that no matter what a person thinks he might have done better, the outcome would have still been the same! All in all, this was a powerful and emotionally charged book. I had so many mixed feelings while reading this. I love Alice Hoffman's work. How does she know so much about the human race? She is my all-time favorite author!
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing
Review: I am used to reading for pleasure and many of my books don't cause me to do much thinking. This book made me stop and think at different times about what exactly the author was trying to describe, portray, hint to, etc. I found this book so deep and interesting to read, the characters were so real and human and interesting and the story line was addictive. I thought the relationship between Carlin and Gus was so unusual and was glad to see Carlin make the right decisions in the end. I thought the way Able handled the situation with Harry was insufficient, he deserved stronger punishment, and I was happy to see Betsy find her true love.
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Summary: Not her best, though
Review: Alice Hoffman is one of my fav authors. This is not one of her best here. It got very boring at times, and i had to keep reading just because she is one of my favs to finish the bk. She did have success with the descriptions of the locations in this bk. If you are a Hoffman fan, try here on earth or Illumination Night.
Rating:
Summary: Simplistic story, yet satisfying
Review: Good linear storytelling, but a bit heavy-handed at times as far as the symbolism goes. It was compelling at times, but I expected all of the supernatural elements to be tied together a bit more cohesively in the end. Good beach/gym reading, but not great literature.
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Summary: The perfect book for fall.
Review: Leaves begin to change, the days start to shorten, a chill is in the air, and kids start back to school. The kids in Alice Hoffman's new novel are attending the prestigious Hadden School near Hamilton MA. Hoffman manages to wonderfully convey an atmosphere rich with the changes of the seasons. You can almost smell the sent of burning leaves, and wild roses. At the center of the novel are a series of love stories, and here she somewhat reworks her previous themes of star crossed lovers and hopless pining. Woven through this is the kind of light handed mysticism she writes so well about with a death of one of the characters and his reamergance in one of the characters lives. Although I didn't enjoy this book as much as some of her earlier books such as "7th Heaven" or "Second Nature", it's still a charming story to curl up by the fireplace by.
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Summary: Hoffman's latest is muddied by Haddan river water
Review: This was an easy book to read if you like Hoffman's other books. Full of eccentric characters and vivid landscapes that burn themselves into your soul. Trouble is, when the settings become more interesting than the narrative, you know there's a bit of a problem. I love Hoffman's sense of place. She knows New England and lives in my neck of the woods. Small towns really are the way she portrays them. Everyone knows your business (and your name) and nothing escapes a sharp pair of eyes peering from behind lace curtains. Hoffman insists on telling you about everyone and everything, and while she gives you lots of food for thought, it can be a bit distracting.The premise is simple. There are the Haves and there are the Have Nots. Neither side has any love for the other side, but when someone goes and gets himself drowned at the prep school, it's up to the persistence of a local cop to solve the mystery. The River King is an amalgem of different genres: romance, murder mystery, and ghost story. Hoffman's prose is like the roses that inhabit this novel: heavy and rather like the perfume of blooms lingering in an overheated funeral parlor. She also has a bad habit of switching points of view in mid-paragraph. You are reading about one character's thoughts when she dashes inside the head of another character and throws out useless facts about yet another character. If not for this tendency of hers, I would have enjoyed this a lot more. No one is her equal when it comes to scenic descriptions, and some of her characters are genuinely likable, but she needs to pare down her cast of thousands and stick to whatever point she is trying to make instead of meandering through the story like the gentle waters of the Haddan river.
Rating: 
Summary: Old hat
Review: I've read all of Alice Hoffman's books and maybe that's the problem here. So much of this book I've already read about in her previous novels -- the dangerously attractive cop, the incredible flowers, the insects and storms out-of-season. Unfortunately, this is old territory and I found I had trouble getting through this book because I kept getting *bored*! In addition, the overall mood and the plot itself are both rather dark and unrelentingly depressing. Hoffman's previous books (especially the earlier ones) may have had dark elements but the overall tone was one of lightness and magicalness. This one was just cold and depressing. The central "crime" is extraordinarily vicious and the resolution not at all believable. The writing itself is staid and tedious. I couldn't believe I actually read "Carlin exploded into giggles" in a Hoffman book. Finally, Hoffman writes to her own stereotypes of love and men and women in love. I've read about them all before too many times. I also had the lurking suspicion while I was reading that I was acutally reading a movie idea rather than a novel. After so many books in the same genre it may well be time for Hoffman to take a break and try something entirely new (maybe she should read Natalie Goldberg's new book).
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