The River is written as a fictional account of a boy from childhood and into adulthood.  The flow of the story was smooth, but there was one glaring irritant which hurt the story.  Specifically, every other sentence was “The River” and not only the words, but the fact that it was capitalized was a distraction.  It felt as though the author wanted to ensure the reader would not miss the glaringly obvious correlation between his story and the place of deity in a person’s life. 

Michael Neale, the author of The River, demonstrates talent as an author and one who could craft a good story.  However, this particular novel fell a bit short of its potential.  Neale certainly has a way with descriptive words and can weave a picture in the reader’s mind.  Were there a method to subdivide a rating into four for talent as a writer and two and a half for everything else, that would be the ratings seen here.

Those considering this novel should really consider it more of a religious allegory thinly disguised as a novel.  The story had a great deal of ponderable material, but again, it seemed a bit too much of telling the reader everything and not enough self-discovery.  However, the underlying messages were positive and uplifting.
This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Thomas Nelson

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  None

Violence/Gore:  Character dies in an accident, details are not graphic; animal kills another animal, brief mention of blood.

Sex/Nudity:  Character was the result of one night of passion, not described; non-married characters kiss, hold hands and embrace.

Mature Subject Matter:

Death of a parent, terminal illness.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

Character goes to bed because he had “a few too many”; character reported to have had too much Ripple; character smokes a pipe.