Reviews for Hold Love Strong

The average rating for Hold Love Strong based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-05-06 00:00:00 Les Dotson Excellent book! Amazing Writing! I loved it! I was captured from the very first sentence. This book speaks to the human spirit and evoked emotion from my heart. I felt I knew these characters, it's as if they were real people. Any book that can make me laugh, cry, get angry & speak out loud to myself is a book I would recommend to the world! This will surely be used for Sociology and Gender Studies courses. I wish I had my Ph.D. so I could teach a course and give this book to my students; it'll wake up the soul and give insight to an existence- which is usually not discussed. There are so many topics that can be dissected and analyzed, talked about & learned; essays will be written about this book. I cannot wait to read another book from Matthew Aaron Goodman, he is now one of my favorite writers!

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-06 00:00:00 Stephen Calabretta This story about a young black man growing up in the projects with a crack-addicted teenage mother and a proud but poor grandmother felt stereotypical and contrived to me. The lyrical way it is narrated oftentimes borders on the melodramatic and creates a disconnect between the topic and the reader. It just didn't feel at all realistic that this boy, even looking back on his childhood, would be describing the setting and the slow paced, highly descriptive events in this lovingly detailed way. It was also incredibly earnest and well-meaning, when a little humor (I'm thinking along the lines of Angela's Ashes) would have gone a long way toward making this tortured narrative more bearable.