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Velocity
A novel exploring the connection between grief and love, this is the story of Ellie Lowell, a college graduate shattered by her mother's sudden death, whose return to the rural North Carolina town of her childhood marks the beginning of an obsessive, destructive love affair.
- GenresFictionContemporary
Hardcover
First published September 12, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 17, 2021
A couple of days ago on Information Morning, I talked about how I wished that I could carve out some time to revisit some of my favourite books. I mentioned three in particular: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Kristin McCloy’s Velocity. All three of these books had a profound impact on me, the first two when I was much younger and McCloy’s book when I first read it as a twenty-something. Of those three, I have actually already re-read Velocity numerous times and I just finished reading it again.
I think I am going to have a difficult time articulating exactly why I continue to find Velocity so compelling, but I do want to honour the book and its place in my personal canon here, especially because I recently had the very good fortune of exchanging a couple emails with the novel’s author, Kristin McCloy. (Insert fangirl squee here.)
When it was first published in 1988, Velocity caused quite a stir and earned copious praise. I am not sure what year I picked up my copy, perhaps 1989, but I definitely purchased it at The Strand in NYC. I devoured the book then for reasons that will surely become apparent a little further on.
So, what’s the book about?
Twenty-five-year-old Ellie Lowell has returned to her backwater North Carolina hometown to scatter her mother’s ashes. Ellie’s an only child and she’s been living in New York City for the past six years, so she’s finding it difficult to connect with her taciturn father, a local cop. They share the family home like two strangers might share a taxi ride to the airport – making small talk, but never really connecting.
Despite the awkwardness, Ellie decides to stay home for the summer, leaving her fledgling career in the film business and her boyfriend, Dec, back in the Big Apple. She gets a job at a local diner and before you can say two eggs over easy, she’s hooked up with Jesse, the half-Cherokee biker who lives down the road. Ellie knows he’s trouble. She says
…it occurs to me, a thousand woman, he’s had a thousand women, and every one of them has fed him everything she had.
Even though Jesse isn’t much for talking, Ellie finds herself pulled into his orbit. The attraction is sexual, of course, and she remarks that his “crazy height and that straight hair down to [his] shoulders, even from the shadows of [his] porch, the way [he] stared at me would’ve burned a hole in a blind woman’s side…”
When she’s with Jesse, she doesn’t think about anything else and that’s a good thing because what Ellie doesn’t want to think about is that her mother is dead. She can’t avoid the knowledge that “Everything crumbles. The walls, the rooftop…every structure will fall. Everything known, all that is so familiar, will vanish. Including myself.” What she can do, however, is push that knowledge away and although she is “aware of [her] grief waiting for [her], patient and thick,…right now it is remote.” Jesse is in its path.
At her age I was doing much the same thing, which is, I suppose, why Velocity struck a chord with me when I first read it all those years ago. I don’t recall what I was running from, but I sure knew what I thought I was running to. My guy, let’s call him S., was crazy tall, mostly silent, beautiful, at least to me, and he’d often disappear for days at a time, throwing me into a frenzy of longing, and then reappearing like an apparition. Like Ellie, I read into the smallest of gestures – a moment of tenderness could sustain me for weeks. S. wasn’t a criminal, but he definitely had his own demons and he was in no position to give me what I so desperately wanted. Our relationship was doomed from the start, but that didn’t prevent me from showing up where I’d know or hope he’d be or using sex as a bargaining chip. Our whole relationship was just fraught. And the weird thing is, 30 years later, I still feel that little electric charge on the rare occasion that I see him around.
When I read this book back in the day it was ALL about Jesse and Ellie’s relationship. I believed that Jesse did, in his own way, care for Ellie. I excused his bad behavior because Ellie excused it. I wasn’t blind to Ellie’s grief, but I hadn’t experienced real grief yet and so, although I could sympathize, I couldn’t personally relate to that part of her story. I knew exactly how she felt with Jesse, though. I knew that “electrical current” and the “pleasure like mercury.”
So, how does the book hold up upon rereading? Um – it’s still freaking fantastic. And here’s why. McCloy is a beautiful writer. That has always mattered to me. From the book’s opening line:
Sometimes in my dreams you rise up as if from a swamp, whole, younger than I remember, dazzling, jagged, and I follow you into smoky rooms, overwhelmed by the sense of being in the presence of an untamed thing, full of light, impossible to control.
…until the final pages, McCloy’s writing is fluid and evocative and painfully honest. But we readers know that beautiful writing only goes so far; we have to care about the characters, too. From this vantage point (on the slippery downward slope), I want to tell Ellie what I’m sure she already knows: he’s not the right guy. But I never wanted to shake her and say “Ellie, you’re acting like an idiot.” Her grief is palpable. I feel it like she feels it “a fist, hard-knuckled and small.”
She is so clearly out of control and there is no one able to ease her pain. Her father is caught in his own. Dec is helpless in New York and when he arrives unexpectedly, his presence just muddies the waters. It’s easy to see why Jesse becomes the center of her universe. He doesn’t ask questions that she can’t answer. He doesn’t ask anything of her at all, he simply “hunted down [his] needs – simple and precise – and in those days, it was me.”
Velocity is a novel about loss. And grief. It just so happens that it also has some incredibly erotic sex scenes; trust me, you’ll feel it in your knees. But here’s something interesting about my reread: this time, for the first time ever, I cried.
Now I understand. Since the last time I read this book – and it’s been a few years – both my parents have passed away, my mom in 2006 and my dad in 2009. I get Ellie’s frantic desire to sublimate her grief. Everything about her journey seemed organic and honest to me. I ached for her. I missed my parents. I also missed, strangely, that feeling of being so crazy in love with someone that you can’t think straight. All those things are lost to me now.
Velocity is a special book. Thanks, Kristin, for writing it.
I think I am going to have a difficult time articulating exactly why I continue to find Velocity so compelling, but I do want to honour the book and its place in my personal canon here, especially because I recently had the very good fortune of exchanging a couple emails with the novel’s author, Kristin McCloy. (Insert fangirl squee here.)
When it was first published in 1988, Velocity caused quite a stir and earned copious praise. I am not sure what year I picked up my copy, perhaps 1989, but I definitely purchased it at The Strand in NYC. I devoured the book then for reasons that will surely become apparent a little further on.
So, what’s the book about?
Twenty-five-year-old Ellie Lowell has returned to her backwater North Carolina hometown to scatter her mother’s ashes. Ellie’s an only child and she’s been living in New York City for the past six years, so she’s finding it difficult to connect with her taciturn father, a local cop. They share the family home like two strangers might share a taxi ride to the airport – making small talk, but never really connecting.
Despite the awkwardness, Ellie decides to stay home for the summer, leaving her fledgling career in the film business and her boyfriend, Dec, back in the Big Apple. She gets a job at a local diner and before you can say two eggs over easy, she’s hooked up with Jesse, the half-Cherokee biker who lives down the road. Ellie knows he’s trouble. She says
…it occurs to me, a thousand woman, he’s had a thousand women, and every one of them has fed him everything she had.
Even though Jesse isn’t much for talking, Ellie finds herself pulled into his orbit. The attraction is sexual, of course, and she remarks that his “crazy height and that straight hair down to [his] shoulders, even from the shadows of [his] porch, the way [he] stared at me would’ve burned a hole in a blind woman’s side…”
When she’s with Jesse, she doesn’t think about anything else and that’s a good thing because what Ellie doesn’t want to think about is that her mother is dead. She can’t avoid the knowledge that “Everything crumbles. The walls, the rooftop…every structure will fall. Everything known, all that is so familiar, will vanish. Including myself.” What she can do, however, is push that knowledge away and although she is “aware of [her] grief waiting for [her], patient and thick,…right now it is remote.” Jesse is in its path.
At her age I was doing much the same thing, which is, I suppose, why Velocity struck a chord with me when I first read it all those years ago. I don’t recall what I was running from, but I sure knew what I thought I was running to. My guy, let’s call him S., was crazy tall, mostly silent, beautiful, at least to me, and he’d often disappear for days at a time, throwing me into a frenzy of longing, and then reappearing like an apparition. Like Ellie, I read into the smallest of gestures – a moment of tenderness could sustain me for weeks. S. wasn’t a criminal, but he definitely had his own demons and he was in no position to give me what I so desperately wanted. Our relationship was doomed from the start, but that didn’t prevent me from showing up where I’d know or hope he’d be or using sex as a bargaining chip. Our whole relationship was just fraught. And the weird thing is, 30 years later, I still feel that little electric charge on the rare occasion that I see him around.
When I read this book back in the day it was ALL about Jesse and Ellie’s relationship. I believed that Jesse did, in his own way, care for Ellie. I excused his bad behavior because Ellie excused it. I wasn’t blind to Ellie’s grief, but I hadn’t experienced real grief yet and so, although I could sympathize, I couldn’t personally relate to that part of her story. I knew exactly how she felt with Jesse, though. I knew that “electrical current” and the “pleasure like mercury.”
So, how does the book hold up upon rereading? Um – it’s still freaking fantastic. And here’s why. McCloy is a beautiful writer. That has always mattered to me. From the book’s opening line:
Sometimes in my dreams you rise up as if from a swamp, whole, younger than I remember, dazzling, jagged, and I follow you into smoky rooms, overwhelmed by the sense of being in the presence of an untamed thing, full of light, impossible to control.
…until the final pages, McCloy’s writing is fluid and evocative and painfully honest. But we readers know that beautiful writing only goes so far; we have to care about the characters, too. From this vantage point (on the slippery downward slope), I want to tell Ellie what I’m sure she already knows: he’s not the right guy. But I never wanted to shake her and say “Ellie, you’re acting like an idiot.” Her grief is palpable. I feel it like she feels it “a fist, hard-knuckled and small.”
She is so clearly out of control and there is no one able to ease her pain. Her father is caught in his own. Dec is helpless in New York and when he arrives unexpectedly, his presence just muddies the waters. It’s easy to see why Jesse becomes the center of her universe. He doesn’t ask questions that she can’t answer. He doesn’t ask anything of her at all, he simply “hunted down [his] needs – simple and precise – and in those days, it was me.”
Velocity is a novel about loss. And grief. It just so happens that it also has some incredibly erotic sex scenes; trust me, you’ll feel it in your knees. But here’s something interesting about my reread: this time, for the first time ever, I cried.
Now I understand. Since the last time I read this book – and it’s been a few years – both my parents have passed away, my mom in 2006 and my dad in 2009. I get Ellie’s frantic desire to sublimate her grief. Everything about her journey seemed organic and honest to me. I ached for her. I missed my parents. I also missed, strangely, that feeling of being so crazy in love with someone that you can’t think straight. All those things are lost to me now.
Velocity is a special book. Thanks, Kristin, for writing it.
October 7, 2011
I am trying to add some of my older books to my Good Reads account. Books I've had for years. I bought this book in 1988 and I've read it over a dozen times, so yes, I've dated myself here. It's about a young woman who is shattered by her mother's death and plays out her immediate loss with a guy who rides bikes, drinks, plays with women, etc. The real bad boy. Everything about this odd little gem of a story is wonderful, even the sexual encounters. What I learned from this book and later by experience is that we never know what we are capable of, none of us do, when we are faced with isolation, pain, and loss. Not that I met a guy on a bike, but I did do something odd for me when faced with the death of a close friend. In some ways, I wish I had met a Jesse.
August 26, 2011
I'm giving this book three stars because it so well written.
I understand having an obsession but this gal was over the top! I sympathized and was understanding in the beginning; the longer the book went on the more I was getting tired of her obsession. She was definitely her own worse enemy and if she truly thought she was pregnant, she was selfish and irresponsible when she drank and took drugs. I was about through with her at that point; thought she may as well end her life; it was just too much of a mess!
The last sentence saved the book for me.
Lots of sexual content.
Probably would have liked the book more if I had read it in 1990 when I bought it and I was much younger. Going back and reading books I've had for a long time is strange because different books appeal to people at different ages. This would be one of those.
I understand having an obsession but this gal was over the top! I sympathized and was understanding in the beginning; the longer the book went on the more I was getting tired of her obsession. She was definitely her own worse enemy and if she truly thought she was pregnant, she was selfish and irresponsible when she drank and took drugs. I was about through with her at that point; thought she may as well end her life; it was just too much of a mess!
The last sentence saved the book for me.
Lots of sexual content.
Probably would have liked the book more if I had read it in 1990 when I bought it and I was much younger. Going back and reading books I've had for a long time is strange because different books appeal to people at different ages. This would be one of those.
June 19, 2023
Setting: North Carolina, USA.
Following the death of her mother in a car accident, 24-year-old Ellie returns home to North Carolina from her studies in New York to comfort her grieving father, Tom, who is the local sheriff. Deciding to stay for the summer, leaving boyfriend Declan behind in New York, Ellie makes the time pass by waitressing in a local diner. But she also finds herself needing some sort of emotional connection, which she can't get with her father as they both skirt around the subject of her mother's death rather than talking about it. Ellie ends up in a sexual relationship with local 'bad boy' Jesse - a drug-dealing, half-Cherokee Indian, former Hell's Angel. Ellie finds the wild sex and unpredictable nature of their relationship just the distraction she needs - but soon finds herself getting totally obsessed with thoughts of Jesse...
Told totally from the viewpoint of Ellie, this was only an okay read for me. Her self-obsession got quite annoying at times and her decision-making poor throughout - probably pretty typical for someone developing the type of obsession she did. Hints that her mother may not have been the paragon of virtue which Ellie believed her to be could have been developed more and the ending also appeared a bit rushed. So, overall, 7/10 for me.
Following the death of her mother in a car accident, 24-year-old Ellie returns home to North Carolina from her studies in New York to comfort her grieving father, Tom, who is the local sheriff. Deciding to stay for the summer, leaving boyfriend Declan behind in New York, Ellie makes the time pass by waitressing in a local diner. But she also finds herself needing some sort of emotional connection, which she can't get with her father as they both skirt around the subject of her mother's death rather than talking about it. Ellie ends up in a sexual relationship with local 'bad boy' Jesse - a drug-dealing, half-Cherokee Indian, former Hell's Angel. Ellie finds the wild sex and unpredictable nature of their relationship just the distraction she needs - but soon finds herself getting totally obsessed with thoughts of Jesse...
Told totally from the viewpoint of Ellie, this was only an okay read for me. Her self-obsession got quite annoying at times and her decision-making poor throughout - probably pretty typical for someone developing the type of obsession she did. Hints that her mother may not have been the paragon of virtue which Ellie believed her to be could have been developed more and the ending also appeared a bit rushed. So, overall, 7/10 for me.
March 5, 2014
Another one I recently re-read---Velocity is about twenty-something Ellie's return to her hometown after her mother's sudden death. Ellie can't seem to connect with her grieving cop father, but she does end up having a passionate affair with a dangerous drug dealer. Sounds pulpy but the writer and her characters are well-conceived.
July 8, 2008
It's been years since I read this but I loved it at the time!
August 15, 2016
Velocity (noun) - quickness of motion
"Honey, I have to flirt like sharks have to swim."
"... and for a second a small window opens in my heart, and relief shines down, a shaft of clear light."
"Honey, I have to flirt like sharks have to swim."
"... and for a second a small window opens in my heart, and relief shines down, a shaft of clear light."
Read
January 13, 20196/13/06
June 24, 2025
My book sensei recommended this as her favourite book of all time. As someone who has constantly given me delightful reads throughout my life, I couldn't wait to read it. I got home to Boston on Sunday, and after a week of not being able to read because of 24/7 hanging out, I sat down yesterday and read the whole thing cover-to-cover.
This is a story about grief, the drowning feeling that swallows you, and how something that looks like a life preserver might not be the savior you thought it was. Ellie's grief is swallowed by her desire for Jesse, an all-consuming passion that allows her to escape the quiet house filled with dead plants and a lonely father that serves as a constant reminder for what she's lost.
The part where she returns to her hometown and attends a party with people she knew in high school was painful. The whole world is crowding in on her and she no longer knows what she's doing with her life. Everything is uncertain- the future, her life in New York- except her desire for Jesse that wraps itself around her until she can't breathe anymore.
Talking with Christie, I can certainly see how this is a novel that could bring you something new when reading it at the different stages of your life. Right now, I thought Jesse was a douchebag trapped in a bad situation, but Ellie doesn't really understand that because she doesn't really understand him. He gives her purpose, but their connection rarely goes beyond the physical. He doesn't know her and she doesn't know him, really. She has her own life and he has his. It is this disconnect that leads to everything falling apart. They come from different worlds that they couldn't make come together.
The writing was great, Sandra was dropping wisdom all over the place, and you really felt for Ellie and her father in the wake of their loss. I really don't understand why this book isn't more popular than it is. The cover is certainly a horrific failing on whatever publisher decided that was a good idea. It was an amazing read, and I thank Kristin for writing it and Christie for recommending and gifting me a copy. Books are incredibly personal things, especially the ones we love the most. They make us into who we are. When someone reads our favourite books, they get a glimpse into our very soul. We now have a shelf in our apartment of books that Christie has gifted or recommended to me, because, like my favourite books, she's helped make me into who I am. I can never thank her enough.
"I want to say life is good and full of strange surprises, I want to tell him know this-but of course I don't. His wife is dead and that is all he knows."
"I reach for a book but when I try to read it, my eyes hurt. Me too I'm getting older. Everything leaves you eventually. Everything goes."
"My mother is gone and I realize that save for the love that binds us, my father and I are strangers to each other; she was the bridge between us. Without her, we are mute."
"She told me one day she woke up and she realize she didn't want to live a single day without you. She said, Ellie, when you find a man you feel like that about, that's the man you marry."
This is a story about grief, the drowning feeling that swallows you, and how something that looks like a life preserver might not be the savior you thought it was. Ellie's grief is swallowed by her desire for Jesse, an all-consuming passion that allows her to escape the quiet house filled with dead plants and a lonely father that serves as a constant reminder for what she's lost.
The part where she returns to her hometown and attends a party with people she knew in high school was painful. The whole world is crowding in on her and she no longer knows what she's doing with her life. Everything is uncertain- the future, her life in New York- except her desire for Jesse that wraps itself around her until she can't breathe anymore.
Talking with Christie, I can certainly see how this is a novel that could bring you something new when reading it at the different stages of your life. Right now, I thought Jesse was a douchebag trapped in a bad situation, but Ellie doesn't really understand that because she doesn't really understand him. He gives her purpose, but their connection rarely goes beyond the physical. He doesn't know her and she doesn't know him, really. She has her own life and he has his. It is this disconnect that leads to everything falling apart. They come from different worlds that they couldn't make come together.
The writing was great, Sandra was dropping wisdom all over the place, and you really felt for Ellie and her father in the wake of their loss. I really don't understand why this book isn't more popular than it is. The cover is certainly a horrific failing on whatever publisher decided that was a good idea. It was an amazing read, and I thank Kristin for writing it and Christie for recommending and gifting me a copy. Books are incredibly personal things, especially the ones we love the most. They make us into who we are. When someone reads our favourite books, they get a glimpse into our very soul. We now have a shelf in our apartment of books that Christie has gifted or recommended to me, because, like my favourite books, she's helped make me into who I am. I can never thank her enough.
"I want to say life is good and full of strange surprises, I want to tell him know this-but of course I don't. His wife is dead and that is all he knows."
"I reach for a book but when I try to read it, my eyes hurt. Me too I'm getting older. Everything leaves you eventually. Everything goes."
"My mother is gone and I realize that save for the love that binds us, my father and I are strangers to each other; she was the bridge between us. Without her, we are mute."
"She told me one day she woke up and she realize she didn't want to live a single day without you. She said, Ellie, when you find a man you feel like that about, that's the man you marry."
June 19, 2024
Note: Spoilers are included in this review.
This is the third time I have read Velocity by Kristin McCloy. I was so moved by her writing and the characters, that I had to reread the book to remember Ellie's journey.
Meet Ellie, an unforgettable protagonist who narrates a story of loss and love. The book starts when Ellie is visiting her father, a cop, in a small North Carolina town where she grew up. Ellie is visiting her father from New York and they are spreading her ashes at the beginning of the story.
Ellie finds no solace in staying at her childhood home. She describes an airless summer, dead plants, and a grieving father who is quickly developing a drinking problem due to his grief and the loss of his wife.
The book heats up quickly once Ellie meets Jesse, a biker and ex-Hell's Angel who is sexy, unavailable, and addicted to drugs.
Once Velocity has you in its clutches, it moves into your mind and heart in ways that are unspeakable and forbidden. You are quickly pulled into Ellie's life and there will be no stopping it. You will feel everything Ellie feels and you'll long to have the sex that Jesse and Ellie share during stolen moments together.
Ellie soon becomes obsessed with Jesse, even to the destruction of her once solid relationship with Dec, the guy she has dated in NY for so many years. As you read the book and recognize how out of control Ellie has become, you don't care because you want her and Jesse to be together. You realize that her once measured risks are now full-out courageous if not desperate measures to be with Jesse at all costs.
I won't share the ending, but it will leave you gutted. It will take you on a compelling journey with Ellie where she will confront love, grief, loss, and a reality about her mother that would shock any reader's heart.
This book is a literary tour de force. It has every element you want in a book, making it virtually impossible to put down: the setting, believable characters, a summer romance, and coming of age. Every imaginable theme converges in the end.
One of McCloy's greatest strengths is her characters' development. She weaves such believable characters that they will remind you of people in some part of your life; past or present. I promise you, Velocity will change you.
Upon reading this book for the third time, I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't cry this time. I was wrong. Velocity is the quintessential summer read, romance, and unforgettable plot. This novel will stay with me for years to come. I read this book years ago and just reread the Kindle version so that I will have it forever.
I forced myself to read Velocity slowly this time so I could savor it. I should have known better. Once I started reading the novel, it was a runaway train. I had to stay up to finish the book despite what time it was.
Velocity will leave a mark on your heart.
This is the third time I have read Velocity by Kristin McCloy. I was so moved by her writing and the characters, that I had to reread the book to remember Ellie's journey.
Meet Ellie, an unforgettable protagonist who narrates a story of loss and love. The book starts when Ellie is visiting her father, a cop, in a small North Carolina town where she grew up. Ellie is visiting her father from New York and they are spreading her ashes at the beginning of the story.
Ellie finds no solace in staying at her childhood home. She describes an airless summer, dead plants, and a grieving father who is quickly developing a drinking problem due to his grief and the loss of his wife.
The book heats up quickly once Ellie meets Jesse, a biker and ex-Hell's Angel who is sexy, unavailable, and addicted to drugs.
Once Velocity has you in its clutches, it moves into your mind and heart in ways that are unspeakable and forbidden. You are quickly pulled into Ellie's life and there will be no stopping it. You will feel everything Ellie feels and you'll long to have the sex that Jesse and Ellie share during stolen moments together.
Ellie soon becomes obsessed with Jesse, even to the destruction of her once solid relationship with Dec, the guy she has dated in NY for so many years. As you read the book and recognize how out of control Ellie has become, you don't care because you want her and Jesse to be together. You realize that her once measured risks are now full-out courageous if not desperate measures to be with Jesse at all costs.
I won't share the ending, but it will leave you gutted. It will take you on a compelling journey with Ellie where she will confront love, grief, loss, and a reality about her mother that would shock any reader's heart.
This book is a literary tour de force. It has every element you want in a book, making it virtually impossible to put down: the setting, believable characters, a summer romance, and coming of age. Every imaginable theme converges in the end.
One of McCloy's greatest strengths is her characters' development. She weaves such believable characters that they will remind you of people in some part of your life; past or present. I promise you, Velocity will change you.
Upon reading this book for the third time, I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't cry this time. I was wrong. Velocity is the quintessential summer read, romance, and unforgettable plot. This novel will stay with me for years to come. I read this book years ago and just reread the Kindle version so that I will have it forever.
I forced myself to read Velocity slowly this time so I could savor it. I should have known better. Once I started reading the novel, it was a runaway train. I had to stay up to finish the book despite what time it was.
Velocity will leave a mark on your heart.
June 5, 2024
I’m not really sure how to feel about this book. If I retold it to someone I feel like the retelling would be better than the actual book. I kept finding spelling & grammar mistakes which really threw me off surprisingly & when the main character starts having sex with Jesse it is SO random. Like she walks by & sees him & literally is then obsessed with him from then on to the point of considering un-aliving herself?? Idk & she was 25. I mean I would kinda see “the vision” if it was from a younger girl’s perspective, but overall just gave weird vibes.
August 21, 2017
Absolutely abysmal entry into the Brat Pack "And then they fucked..." genre. Ellie's mother's ashes are barely scattered when her daughter all-but-assaults a local Hell's Angels hanger-on. She spends the next 200 or so pages obsessively copulating with bike boy and compulsively bitching at everyone else. See what you made me do, Mommy?
August 31, 2015
I love that so many of the reviews of this book on here are from people similar to me, having read and loved this book decades ago! I first read this over half my life ago, and wanted to see if it still had the same impact on me. It was a quick vacation read and yes, it's still quite a story...definitely a bit over the top, but captivating and hard to put down.
September 15, 2016
I loved this book and the way Kristin wrote it. I've read it several times and it never gets old to me, the story is so unique and the emotion is so raw and honest. I once heard that Madonna wanted to option it to make a movie but obviously it never happened. One of my favorite books for sure.
August 24, 2017
A good Americana read
Kristin McCloy delivers her classic novel in Velocity. The story is engaging, the characters interesting and the entire book captivating. Its a great, smooth read. Can't wait for more.
Kristin McCloy delivers her classic novel in Velocity. The story is engaging, the characters interesting and the entire book captivating. Its a great, smooth read. Can't wait for more.
February 26, 2009
Kind of trashy but fun. The sex scenes are well written and the despair of the main character is well conveyed.
January 31, 2023
Fantastic book, the heat sears through the pages.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews