Rating: 
Summary: Compulsively Readable.
Review: I enjoyed this book more than any other I've read in recent weeks. To me, the book is about how a person can only 'fake' living a life for so long; the truth will emerge sooner or later -- because it can't be denied. This is truly an engaging and beautifully written novel. Don't miss it! Also recommended: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating: 
Summary: Blue Listener
Review: As a daily commuter, I listen to audio books and have found them a pleasant and enlightening manner in which to spend the time.When I picked up Alice Hoffman's Blue Diary I was expecting the title to have significant meaning as the plot unfolded. I was sorely disappointed. It was no more than the hormonal musings of a teenaged girl that revealed no impact on her untimely demise or on her murderer. Why the reference to no reflection in the mirror if it is never to be followed by an accurate or believable explanation? Perhaps the enchantment with this particular author comes from reading rather than listening to her work but I will not hurry to check out another Hoffman audio book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking work
Review: Imagine that you are happily married to a man for thirteen years. Imagine that you are the mother of his only child. Imagine that your husband is admired by the majority of the small town in which you live for his heroics as a volunteer firefighter, his patience as a Little League coach as well as his work ethic and devotion to his wife and son. Imagine that one day his picture is aired on national t.v. as a suspect in a rape and murder that occurred fifteen years earlier. Imagine that your son's best friend sees the program and calls the authorities and tells them where to find the man they're looking for. Imagine that the police show up on your doorstep and arrest your husband for this heinous crime and your life changes in an instant. If you are Ethan Ford's wife, Jorie, you don't have to imagine...it has become her reality. A reality in which everything she thought was real is being questioned and she never imagined the reality in which she's living. This book was almost impossible to put down right from the beginning. In the first two parts of the book, excitement gains momentum as a stunned circle of family and friends are affected by the past of one man. Some people will stand by him with the claim that he is a repentant man who has been an asset to society for more than a decade, while others will believe that a man's past must be answered to and accounted for. Alice Hoffman's writing suggests that one person's action do not affect only that one person and whomever he acted against but that his actions have an effect on every person whose life he touches from that point on. Blue Diary is more about how Ethan Ford's actions affect his family and a community than how his actions affect himself; and whether or not a person can change so much that he can deny his responsibility in a crime he committed as a different man. In the third part of the book as the characters come to accept the turn of events and how their lives will be changed because of them, we question along with them how well you can ever really know a person, if a person's past should be considered when passing judgment in the present, if you are capable of forgiving the past, if a person's gifts to society in the present can erase the sins of the past or if that person's sin is forever and always a non-negotiable part of who they are today.
Rating: 
Summary: Diary Unrevealed
Review: Just as the title is unjustified, the story itself is rather a waste of time. One could expect the diary to have some insight revealed, but we only find more saccharine drivel. The premise of the book could be interesting; people have horrible skeletons in their closets. Whoops, I married a rapist/murderer! The supporting characters were well developed and likeable. But there were simply too many unbelievable circumstances. First, the all too perfect and still passionate, after 13 years, marriage between two too perfect people. Unlikely, as well; Jorie, the stunned wife of the surprise murderer goes to visit the victim's brother , who gives her the girl's diary. And the husband/murderer (who has miraculously repented and reinvented himself) still has the diary key hanging in the garage. The author's use of "poetic" descriptions becomes extremely contrived and tiresome. I kept reading waiting for some deeper meaning or character revelations, but got only more "blood red lilies" and "painfully azure sky".
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: One of the best books I have ever read. Hoffman is an amazing storyteller with such a talent that she paints pictures with words that stay with you long after you put the book down. I loved this sad story. You start with the perfect couple, Jorie and Ethan, who seem to have everything - a passionate marriage, a happy family and loving home. Until one day it all disappears as Ethan, a pillar of their small community, is arrested on suspicion of a 15 year old rape and murder charge. Jorie is left to pick up the pieces of their former life while dealing with the guilt and distrust that follows as she puts together the pieces of the mystery and wonders if her perfect life and perfect husband were all a lie.
Rating:
Summary: No middle ground
Review: If you've looked at the other reviews from Amazon reviewers, notice how there is no middle ground. They either love it or hate it. Blue Diary is a thoughtful, provocative meditation on morality, love, devotion, and living with one's own conscious. Oh yeah... and the biggie... 'Don't judge a book by it's cover' I believe the reason for such polarized reviews comes down to this. Alice Hoffman writes magical, fairy tale type stories with easily recognized feelings, thoughts, and emotions... just staged in a fictionalized world that's too good to be true. If you like realistic novels, then you should look elsewhere. However, if you like beautifully written, insightful, magical novels that touch your heart and make you think about your own life, your own loves, and what's truly important to you, then you will cherish this book. For what it's worth, every time I read a different Alice Hoffman novel, I feel quite swept away into her world and awash with the sensations within the book. She writes beautifully and the lack of gritty realism does not take away from the experience for me at all.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn... Zzzzzzzzzzz
Review: This is the first book of Alice Hoffman that I read listened to (UNABRIDGED audio tapes), and this will also be my very first bad review. How can you love a man more than life itself... to the core, end all love, stand by you no matter what...? Are you tired of all the rambling? So was I. Jorie, wife of 10 'blissful' years to Eathan LOVES her man (as described already, I won't bore you with it again), and then turns her back completely on him. In Eathan's distant past, he murdered a 15 year old girl. No excuses for him - he was indeed a bad boy. But something changed in him when he met his 'perfect' woman. He did a complete about face and became the man that any married woman would want to be with. I mean, this guy was squeaky clean. When he was recognized and turned in, his 'devoted' wife also did a complete about face and turned as cold as ice. So much for standing by your man. What the heck happened to all that tick or thin... better or worse stuff? It just did not add up. She never even tried to come to terms with it - nor did she ever try to rebuild her life... with this "perfect" man. But the sad thing is - there was no forgiveness at all. Nothing the man had done since he killed that girl seemed to matter. The only thing I got from this book is an education on gardening, flowers and the fragrance of flowers. I wish I could give it no stars. 1 star is too generous. Yawn.
Rating: 
Summary: Beauty in Prose and Wonderful Emotion!
Review: I have been, and always will be an Alice Hoffman fan, from the moment I read "Practical Magic," and then moved on to "Local Girls," and just kept going.
I adored this. One day a truly respected man, Ethan Ford, does not go to work. He is arrested for a fifteen year old murder, and this is the tale of what happens thereafter. It's Hoffman's wonderfully rich descriptive thematic analogies that snare you - when Hoffman describes lillies, they're not lillies, they're pathetic fallacy in motion. The characters were beautiful, with the incredibly interwoven lives that she is known for creating in most of her works. And the use of present tense in her prose always grinds me to a sense of immediacy.
The rare first-person perspective from one character sometimes made me stumble (she was light years ahead of the maturity I've encountered in most adults), but the raw emotions of all the people involved was enough to pick me back up again. The only thing I did hiccough on was Ethan Ford himself - at the start one gets the impression that there will be a bit more to his particular story, but he doesn't really develop much - this is a tale about those he has affected, and how they ricochet off each other once his secret is out. I suppose I was lulled that his acts and past were going to be a moral conundrum, but I found I never gained even a bit of respect for him, nor any empathy for his plight. I merely wanted him to suffer.
Turns out I'm not so forgiving a person after all - but I don't think that detracted from the story in and of itself, which is so very much more about the rest of the characters than Ethan himself.
'Nathan
Rating:
Summary: Nice try but no cigar
Review: Alice Hoffman has hit upon a great idea, but the story lacks the depth and fullness of a well-crafted novel. Its trite attempts at poignancy are contrived, and the character dialogue and thoughts have the luster of a wood block. Some of my favorite novels are "unbelievable" and that's what makes them great (e.g., Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume). Blue Diary, in contrast, is the kind of unbelievable that prevents the reader from getting lost in the story. Instead, I found myself distracted by the preposterous, although intriguing, premise. Perhaps a more creative novelist could have pulled it off.
Rating:
Summary: silly fair tale
Review: I usually love Alice Hoffman and her brand of magical realism. But after 10 pages of adjectives about how perfect Ethan was, I found myself flipping pages and getting more and more annoyed. It was ridiculously obvious why she was setting him up and about 30 pages too inflated. We all know she can write, she doesn't need to hit us over the head with it.
But worst of all, I never believed that Ethan could transform from the [criminal]/murderer to perfect husband/father.
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