Customer Reviews

Waiting For Spring

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Plot/Storyline: 4 1/2 Stars

I was pleasantly surprised as I was afraid since the main character was an artist, that the reader would be treated to long, boring passages about colors and scenery. That didn't happen at all throughout the book.

The story line flowed beautifully and horrifically at the same time.

Reading this book brought to mind the old movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Not that the storyline was similar, just that the tone flowed in the same manner.

The sex scenes were a bit long and drawn out. Many of them did not even seem to be essential to the story, at least not in the detail they were delivered.

Character Development: 5 Stars

Every character was real - You could be living next door to any one of them.

The main character reaches out of the pages and squeezes your heart. Her honesty and realism are refreshing.

The mother is evil in ways that only a mother can be; while the father is the only type of man who could be with a woman like her.

You will fall in love with Brian. I promise.

Writing Style: 4 1/2 Stars

As good as the writing was, about 20% of this novel could have been left in the Recycling bin of the author's computer. There were several passages where it just 'rambled on' repetitively, driving home the same points until emotional numbness.

The usage of caps to try to bring attention to certain words was a bit annoying. I think the work would have been better served by using either italics or nothing. Using caps actually detracted a little from the power of the words as I felt like I was being force-fed.

Editing/Formatting: 5 Stars

There were a few errors in the text, but not so many as to overly detract from the reading experience, especially in a book of this length. The Kindle formatting was excellent.

Overall:

This was a soap opera "plot" told in poetic prose. It is an epic work from an author destined for greatness.

Rating: NC-17 for Adult Situations, Language and Graphic Sex

There is much to like and appreciate about Waiting for Spring. Keller is a talented writer who has created a believable world with a cast of well-drawn characters, most notably the protagonist, Tess, and her love interest, Brian.

Some of the ancillary characters are less three-dimensional, particularly the well-to-do, who are almost without exception stereotypically typed as fairly greedy and shallow. In fact, money and Tess's perception of it as evil is an ongoing thread in the novel. This appeared to be presented as a principled stance for Tess, but the 'principle' didn't quite resonate and the reasons for it were not entirely clear to me.

This book has great potential, but the excellent world Keller has created does not shine as brightly as it should, and the occasional poignant turn of phrase gets lost in the muddle. The main problem is that, in my opinion, Waiting for Spring is overwritten, so much so that it was a struggle for me to see it through to the end. I believe a good one-third of this book could be eliminated, perhaps even more. Repetition of thoughts, ideas, and impressions in Tess's internal monologue, along with some repetitive physical descriptions (i.e. "Van Dyke Brown"), give the novel a rambling, unfocused quality at times.

There were a few graphic sex scenes in the book. As I came to know Tess better, I began to understand the reason for Keller's inclusion of them. Sex is, after all, Tess's default fallback coping strategy; and this is Tess's world, seen through her eyes (first-person narration). But like all else in the novel, including the excess use of four-letter words, less trumps more.

The ending was a disappointment. It felt tacked on, like an afterthought, and it seemed out of sync with the flow of the book. I cannot really say more without spoilers.

I can recommend this book for enthusiasts of women's fiction because of its wonderful cast of human, believable characters in an equally believable world. I hesitate to give an unqualified recommendation because I think the overwriting does necessitate a certain amount of patience that some readers may not have.

One of the things I like most about WAITING FOR SPRING is the prose. RJ Keller's wit adds to the story, making Tess more fleshed out and real. Tess is far from perfect, but she is likeable! She's everywoman, a welcome change from Miss Mary Sue who pops in and out of most novels every so often. We can relate to Tess, and all of her trails and tribulations.

The other thing I liked was how two different love stories kind of merged--as Tess' marriage fell apart, she deals with the heartbreak. Then in its wake, she meets Brian the young, handsome guy downstairs. The chemistry between Tess and Brian is brilliant, real, and at times dramatic.

It was a real page turner, and emotional roller-coaster...you feel right along with Tess. All her highs and lows, moments of joy and valleys of pain and shame.
You really root for her, and you want it to all work out in the end for Tess.

I highly recommend Waiting For Spring, as well as anything else by RJ Keller.

Tess Dyer not only waits for spring, she is waiting for much else, in this leisurely novel which explores various aspects of contemporary family and parenthood, love and community. Tess's mood is as bleak, her emotions as frozen as winter in an isolated Maine community, to which she has fled following upon divorce, to try and build something of a new life for herself. There she finds friends - and lovers as well - most of whom have just as many problems as she does. She has not escaped her old life and it's attending demons. She has just replaced all the old problems with new ones, but the novel also focuses on how she grew and came to deal with them, in slightly less self-punishing ways than previously.

The reasons behind Tess' unhappiness are revealed at a deliberate pace, and with considerable skill. They are shown, or rather unfolded for the reader to discover, by Tess herself, a gritty, witty and seemingly tough survivor, who cleans homes and offices for a living and lives for art and love. Failing love, she has settled, over and over again, for sex and has enough self-knowledge to know there is something wrong, something unhealthy about that. Tess's voice, and the characters of her friends and family that she sketches for the reader have considerable charm;; otherwise this book might have seemed appropriate fodder for - if not Jerry Springer, than Oprah, at the very least. This book is told in first-person, which gives a very immediate feel to what Tess experiences and feels, but which also limits any exploration of how other characters react to her, save filtered through her own perceptions. Why do other characters in Tess's world love and trust her? That aspect is scanted, but it is more a reflection on the way this story is told than any shortcoming of the authors'.

I've been watching this book and this author for over six months now. I've owned a copy of the book for two months. At 480 pages, I've casually been reading it the whole time. To be honest, I usually frown at 300+ pages so that might have also been a factor in my original rejection. And now that I've finished the book, looking back through it and deciding how I wanted to approach this review, I'm captivated by a few lines on the first two pages where the narrator is seven years old and explaining to her friends why God's love seems most real to her when she opens her box of crayons:

"The reason was actually very simple even if they were too stupid to get it. There wouldn't be colors called Burnt Sienna and Hot Magenta and Aquamarine if God didn't love us. There would just be brown and red and blue."

Waiting for Spring has lots of moments like this when the words just touch you emotionally in a certain way and make you stop and reminisce or ponder them for a while before continuing on. R. J. Keller is a master storyteller when it comes to character development as the story of Tess Dyer unfolds. Tess, a cleaning lady in her mid thirties, is recently divorced with no children (she doesn't want any) and is about to relocate from one small town to another to start over. She starts by moving into a duplex upstairs from sexy 25 year old Brian LaChance. With a name like LaChance, a gorgeous body, and long locks of hair, Brian echoes the male protagonist of a Harlequin romance novel. It's easy to guess where Tess's story line will take her.

Tess is the black sheep of her family and of the whole town which is another reason she chooses to relocate. Tess not only denied her "sports town hero" husband children, but she also cheated on him. With happily married siblings who are conceiving grandchildren and who have successful jobs, the rolling eyes and tense conflicts extend far outside her immediate family.

Keller paints Tess Dyer both with disgust and with sympathy. Depending on your own beliefs of the American family with a happy marriage and 2.5 children, you might roll your eyes at Tess too, but Keller gives equal attention to both sides of the equation. You'll love the bitch in Tess as she commands respect from her family for the choices she's making, and for when she holds her own amongst the new town folk when rumors of her relationship with Brian start to spread. When Tess must face past flings that have shared a bed with Brian, she gives no apologies even if it means getting a beer spilled down her favorite shirt.

And speaking of painting, that's what Tess does for a hobby. She becomes obsessed with an old orchard behind the duplex which serves as a nice metaphor for change as Tess grows eager to see the trees bud in the spring season. She even paints a picture of it which ends up selling in a local gallery. It's a fine accomplishment for her although Tess later wishes she had kept the picture for herself. Unfortunately, the painting storyline gets lost amongst the other drama in Tess's life, and it's one I wish Keller would have explored a bit more.

Part of the "other drama" involves Brian's sister who has started seeing a man who is a heavy drug dealer and ends up pregnant. Brian grows worried since he has to see after his sister because there are no parents in the picture. There's also Tess's ex husband who pops in and out both physically and emotionally in the storyline, and Tess's own parents decide to separate. All of this puts stress on Tess's and Brians relationship and they too struggle to be each others support.

As I said before, I frowned at the size of the book and given the theme and its storyline, I do believe the book is too long and could have been tightened to about 250-300 pages. After Brian and Tess give into their emotional needs, the middle of the book becomes a day by day diary of their time together with no real important events happening that have an effect on the storyline until the drug dealer physically hits Brian's sister.

I also thought some of the arguments between Tess and Brian seemed a bit forced or came too late in the story. The book moves at a very leveled pace and when the crescendos do come in the plot, there's less than 100 pages left which leaves the ending feeling a bit rushed. Throughout the book, Keller also starts each chapter by measuring how many days or months Tess is from a specific event that has happened in the story; this became a bit daunting after a while for me.

All of my own minor opinions aside, R. J. Keller is an artist at female character development and the entire book itself proves that. Keller knows Tess inside and out. There's an old saying that says "write what you know" and I have to wonder what personal pain, if any, this book came from. Tess's emotions and feelings go far beyond the page and there is something here every reader will connect with when it comes to your own hopes and experiences whether male or female. Like that bottle of fine wine I mentioned earlier, Waiting for Spring is a nice Chardonnay with a rich body that should be sipped slowly and enjoyed with great satisfaction...even if all you can afford to drink from is a plastic cup.

Waiting For Spring
By
R.J. Keller

This book was one of Amazon's Encore books...it just did not get noticed enough and that is quite sad. It told a really great story and the author did it in a spellbinding intense riveting sort of way.

It is the story of Tess. She is a huge disappointment to her parents...and feels that her mother really intensely dislikes her. She has been unfaithful to her husband of 11 ½ years because his belief about having a family suddenly differs from hers. She does something unspeakable and her marriage is destroyed. She sets out on her own to a town in Maine that is even smaller than the town she already lives in. She is an artist who supports herself by cleaning houses, offices, whatever she can find. She refuses money from her ex husband and her father. She seems to shrink from owning anything more than she needs. We discover throughout the course of the book that this is the way she feels she needs to live her life.

This was a reasonably long book and we follow Tess as she lives her life in this small town in a small apartment with her new neighbor...Brian...who soon becomes an integral part of her life. There are some weird unsettling things going on in this small town...issues with drugs and Brian's sister and a final sort of show down with her mother. Tess tries to deal with everything that comes her way...ultimately having a final break up with her mother, a life and death ordeal with Brian's sister and Tess's own discovery of what she really wants from her life.

I rather liked reading this book. I love stories set in Maine and this was where this took place. I liked Tess but did not like some of the things she did. I would not want to be her. I didn't admire her in the beginning but I respected her at the end.

I really wasn't ready for this book. I thought it was just going to be another book about finding yourself blah blah blah. I was NOT ready for the emotional roller coaster on which it took me! I read it in one sitting, couldn't put it down even though I was crying, laughing, lusting, angered ... I was drained by the time I was done! I saw the ending coming way before I got to it but I wasn't ready for the final sentence. I feel like the whole book came together in that one sentence.

I think I got this for free or on a bargain price but I would pay full price for this. I might even get the print version as a gift for a friend. I read it on my Kindle. The formatting was fine and I didn't find any misspellings or formatting errors.

Get it!!

While this book doesn't fall into my normal reading genres, I'm very happy I went outside my comfort zone and read this book. I found the characters well developed, even the ones I didn't like. The story kept me engaged and I even engaged the text to speech feature (which I don't really like) so that I could "read" in the car. I was very moved by this book, both positively and negatively. I found myself saddened by some of the trials of the characters and filled with hope by others. Thank you RJ for your story. It was very enjoyable.

You can't get anymore real then love, loss, and figuring out your place in the world. This book was written beautifully, it wasn't all complete sentences, many times it was just thought fragments, but this style of writing added to the rawness of the story. I found myself carrying the emotions the characters were feeling into my daily life (which probably wasn't a good thing considering the emotions they were having), but this is a true sign of a good book for me. There was some swearing and adult situations, but I felt they added to the realness of the story, and did not find them to be overtly vulgar. This book is a substantial read at about 6000 Kindle locations. R.J. Keller is officially on my "will read all books" list!

This novel is set in struggling central Maine, once the province of Maine shoe, textile and lumber mills but a different view than Mr. Russo's "Empire Falls." While you might recognize some of the same blue collar types from Empire Falls-the coach running the only restaurant in town, the waitress behind the counter and the warm hearted bartender of the only bar-the author puts a female spin on it and delivers the same meaty, engaging characters that Mr. Russo gave us.

The protagonist is Tess Dyer, a now-divorced, mid-thirties woman who restarts her life in the Maine town of Brookfield, only 31 miles from where she grew up. The local cleaning lady was killed by teens looking for drug money and Tess uses the opportunity to set up her own cleaning service for the Brookfield businesses and rich out-of-towners with their seasonal lake-front homes. She moves into a duplex with her scant possessions and gradually makes friends-starting with the hunky, slightly-younger construction business owner Brian who lives downstairs in the duplex.

Tess gradually integrates into the new small town and has to confront her own self-destructive behaviors when she makes some bad judgement calls that affect Brian and his younger sister Rachel. Struggling for money to pay the bills, buying your clothes at Walmart, rejoicing in the birth of a nephew, the deep sorrow of losing a friend or capturing the essence of a scene witnessed in nature with your own self-taught skills-these all ring true and flesh out what could have been two-dimensional characters. You grow to love all these flawed lovely people.

A wonderful, insightful work of contemporary life in any small town.