Buckeye: A Novel — Book Review

Ohio, the sixties bleeding into the seventies, a mother and a son, and a house full of things nobody says out loud. That's Buckeye. It was a Read with Jenna pick, which usually signals warm and readable, and it is both, but there are more teeth here than that label lets on.

Ryan's strength is dialogue. People talk the way people actually talk, around things, past each other, and the mother-son relationship at the core dodges every easy version of itself. She's no saint, he's not just a wounded kid, and Ryan lets both of them be difficult.

The middle gets dense, sentences stacking until the momentum thins out. But the thing underneath, a kid wanting to be seen by parents too busy failing to notice, lands regardless of the decade. Not flashy. Good in a low-key way, and it sticks.