I guess I should give a disclaimer: I know Alex, he's my goodreads friend, and I knew he was a talented author before I picked up the book.

Someone once told me that a book review is never really about the book, it's usually about the book reviewer. And it's usually about the book reviewer trying to sound smart. Oh, I tried to think of something witty to say about Asbury Park, but when it comes down to it, it’s a really great story.

The book gets a great deal right: the time, place, and people are real and interesting. The main character's simplicity hides complex feelings and impulses.

More than anything, the book is just a really great story about trying to find oneself.

The book is also a page turner. I didn’t finish it in one night. I’m not really that kind of reader (see I’m already talking about myself). But during a time when I didn't plan on reading much, I finished the book within a few days.

A gun, a mystery, the backdrop of the 1960s, the Beatles breaking up, and all the time you have Asbury Park. Place is character, and oh what an interesting character it is.

I tried hard to find one part of the book, one paragraph that summed up what I liked about the book. It was difficult, but I found this one right here.

“If you aren't sure what you're playing, play it louder. One reporter on the local music scene called our sets “uninterrupted hallucinogenic masturbatory screams.” He liked the band. Not that I cared. I didn't play to please anyone. I just played, or maybe was played, hardly knowing at times whether I was a man or a guitar.”

If you read the book, you'll see why this paragraph makes oh so much sense. So stop reading this review. Check out the book ( )

Sam returns from Vietnam determined to start a band and make it big. As with most things in life, all does not go so smoothly, and Sam finds himself involved in a crime ring he cannot seem to break free of. This is a fast-paced story, both tense and immediate. The story is bookended and sprinkled throughout with vivid descriptions of Ashbury Park. Written by LT Author AlexAustin, this was an enjoyable read about the intertwining of place and identity. ( )

When Sam leaves the navy to live with his mother and brother in Asbury Park, he has high aspirations of being in a band to rival the Beatles, one of the more popular rock & roll groups of the day.

While on a train, he meets another musician (unbeknown to him) named Jillian, and they hit it off, until the train hits a horse. And, after losing his way to his mother's new address, he spends the night on the boardwalk, hiding out in a swan boat, and hearing of a man's murder, and the murderers ditching the weapon in a lake. In hiding, he also accidentally cuts his hand, slicing the tendons, and preventing himself from being able to play the guitar. These series of events haunt him and wrap themselves around him as he aspires to be the next big thing. But, everything comes at a cost.

The town of Asbury Park has what are know as blue laws. Basically, on Sunday, everything's closed. No cars are even allowed on the street. Towns with blue laws, you would think, would be puritanical to the nth degree. However, this town of splendor has a dark shadow, a criminal element, and a tangled web that has most, if not all, of Asbury's inhabitants trapped like flies.

In trying to save his hand, Sam takes a series of wrong turns: his mother has no money, his biological father thinks he's a scammer, he doesn't get enough money from unemployment to pay for it, and he can't play guitar to earn money until his hand is fixed. He makes a deal with the devil, figuratively, to get his hand back in working order.

But as he rises to the top, he also sinks lower and lower, until the tangled web of Asbury starts to come undone, dropping friends and enemies alike into the blazing fire below.

While not a book I would normally pick up and read, I found Asbury to be extremely well-written and captivating. If you like books about crime and/or rock & roll, then this book is definitely one you should keep on your radar. ( )

Vivid, gritty rendition of a rock 'n' roll youth amid the borders of the counterculture and the criminal culture in a decaying port town in late-'60s New Jersey. Austin tells a well-paced story about hurt, sad people who are yet-and-still full of wild youthful joy and hatchet-faced ambition, in a milieu that--lest we take "Summer of Love" too literally--is a hell of a lot grimmer and more violent than ours here now. I guess there was a war on,but you forget how ugly shit was--seemingly was, must have been. The casualness of the violence, and not just on the part of the mob guys, but the way all the men were ready to fight all the fucking time. It seems unpleasantly tense. But then, Austin also captures so well the intensity of the life, the loves, the sex--maybe a little violence, a little dabbling in the dark side, has a similar magnetic draw. Maybe people were all a little less mediated back then, not all offices and cafes and internet and shopping. Maybe. Maybe I'm being essentialist. It's interesting how easily Sam slides from greaser to hippie,making you think maybe it was all just counterculture, street life for those who needed such things. Certainly we wouldn't dream of drawing such impermeable subcultural boundaries now, but there is a too-intense-for-this-world romance still around the hippies, yeah? I mean the real old psychedelic bacchanal-spirits with menace-rimmed eyes, not yer modern pothead types. But maybe if I had been born in 1945 I would have just been a greaser and then a hippie and then an English professor and now I'd be getting all up some kid's ass for letting his class go early before the Olympics (let said kid remain nameless, but let it also be known that he's a little pissy about being in trouble over this). Maybe no time is singular--or rather, every time is. ( )

Loved it. Compelling plot, featuring interesting characters, delivered with literary flair. The post-summer of love decay of the Jersey shore is convincingly portrayed. It might be described as a noir coming of age novel, but that wouldn't really do it justice. It ended with a little hope, but not so much that it struck a false note against its very American gritty realism. ( )