Waiting For Spring MP3 CD – Unabridged, September 15, 2015

Great book. I could not put this book down. I love books written about the average person surviving everyday life. I definitely could believe that there was a Tess out there living this life. I think the author covers a lot of issues that happen to many people. She doesn't preach in her book about solving the problems or presenting the easy solutions. She lets the characters deal with the problems in their own way even though it may be in a destructive way. Many people live their lives and never face head on their problems. The story had an easy flow that really hooks you in and makes you want to find out what will happen.I would give it a five star except that I think the book could use some editing and cuting. One major complaint is the constant use of capitalization for "meaningful" words like Hope and Focus. It is really annoying and distracting. The author is a skillful enough writer that the meaning is clear and makes an impact without the jarring capital letters. The capitalization actually takes away from the story and I kept thinking "Why is she shouting at me about Focus or Hope or whatever the word is? .. I don't need to be clobbered over the head that this is an important thought."The sex is graphic and overwritten. These passages would make more of an impact if tightened up and allowing a little to the imagination. The point of them should have been to depict the underlying emotions and not to the mechanics of wild sex. Sometimes, I thought they were in there just to show that the author could write sex scenes or to sell the book (much like a sexually explicit romance book). It really wasn't needed to carry the plot all the time. The best written sex passage was about the teenaged Tess and her mother's boss. That hit all the emotional points needed to explain Tess's sense of worthlessness and her hatred of her mother without indulging in overly explicit description.Should you read this book? Yes, it is worth your time. Will the author write more? I definitely hope so. I am curious to see where her writing will take her. If she keeps writing like this, she definitely will become a best selling author (after getting an experienced editor).

It's one of those things you do as an independent writer. You offer to read other people's self-published books and write a review because you need to support each other. Added to that, the author is a friend of a friend of a friend and you kind of virtually know each other, so you want to do the right thing.So, groaning inside, I offered to read a virtual friend's eBook. The cover art looked dull and not promising and then I remember, my cover art isn't so hot either. Good cover art is difficult to come by when you're an Indie. The story didn't seem to be my normal reading...not that I have narrow tastes but this didn't seem to be a fit.But I'd made a promise. So I started reading.Waiting for Spring is indeed outside my usual genres but Keller's characters got their claws into me. They slipped off the page and burrowed into my brain as people I knew and cared about. The story itself is gritty and raw and so real I swear that Keller followed me around and implanted a recording device in my head, capturing my own thoughts and experiences as I dealt with my ex-husband and my own childhood issues.I kept thinking, how much longer can this story go on, because it's so real? What else could possibly happen? And it was obvious. Nothing good could happen. So, one day I avoided the book, because I didn't want to know what bad things would happen to Tess. She had become more than a two-dimensional character. She was me. She was my best-friend in high school, the one who popped a bunch of niacin to get the crank out of her system before the impending drug test she faced. But at the end of the day Tess called to me and I had to know what happened to her. It was a story I couldn't stay away from.Waiting for Spring made me laugh. It made me angry. More than once it made me blush and then concede, "Yea, that's how it is." And more than once I cried, though I tried desperately not to. As soon as it was over I wondered what the second book would bring and nearly decided not to read it whenever it comes out because I don't want to know when anything else bad happens to Tess.But I will buy it because I know Tess, she is so strikingly solid, as are all of Keller's characters, that she cannot be ignored.Keller's powers of observation and her ability to communicate that to the written page are stunning and unsettling. If you have lived a life of any kind of hardship you will feel as though Keller was there, hiding in the bushes, taking notes. I told my husband, "What Gabaldon does with minute, physical detail Keller does with emotional detail. And sometimes it feels a little too personal, as though she's airing my own dirty laundry."But dirt and grit and all, you can't help but love Tess.

I actually really enjoyed this book, despite the frequent use of the 'f' word, copious amounts of sex, (fortunately not too graphic), a lack of attention by the proof-reader and my personal hate, the annoying American habit of shortening mathematics to math instead of maths. Every time it cropped up, I found myself hissing - mathssss - it just drives me crazy, sorry.Those few niggles aside, the story really gripped me, although it wasn't difficult to follow. I really felt for Tess and hoped that somehow, ultimately, she would work her way through all the trauma in her life and find happiness, because it was obvious to me and I hope it will be to everyone that reads her story, that beneath the brash and vulgar exterior, she is a tender, caring and lovely individual who just wants and needs to love and be loved. She seems well aware of where she's gone wrong and you have to be in her corner when she tries so hard to stop those she loves following the same path.This is a multi-faceted story, shaped around relationships on all levels but particularly those of our earliest years involving parents and siblings and how they can influence but not necessarily dictate our future, good or bad. It's hard-hitting, gritty and sometimes violent but also has moments of true tenderness where love and friendship win through. Not exactly a feel-good read but I found it well worthy of the time spent on it.

This is a good satisfying novel, especially as I found the heroine infuriating at times but still likeable. This made her more three-dimensional to me. Enjoyed the book even though parts of it were harrowing. Knew it had me hooked when I found myself thinking about the story when I wasn't reading it. I really wanted justice and happiness for the main characters but the author did not settle for easy solutions and I was very happy with this ultimately. I will probably re-read at some point because there was more to it than 'just' the story. I recommend this if you want a story that will set you thinking at the same time as being a cracking good read!

This book has an interesting story line but it is spoiled by several things: excessive and completely unnecessary use of the 'f' word both in dialogue and in the prose; overlong rambling descriptions of emotions; inappropriate detail of sex scenes. The book dragged and what could have been a punchy story needed up dreary. Skipped paragraphs en bloc at times. Ending was inevitable.

It's to crude for me.....A young woman who seem to think that being crude and sleeping around gives her something back of what life has wrongly dealt her way. the story and characters are,written well, except for the volgor and crude way she speaks; as if she wants to shock but only hurts herself.

A very good story but why the 'F' word so frequently used? I was always told people who used it all the time didn't have any better vocabulary but that can't be the case with an author. I don't mind the word in context but constant - no. Rather spoilt the book for me.