Paul Merkoski wrote in The Press of Atlantic City that the novel is "written with elegant simplicity", and that Knowles is still a "master of tight writing, and his characters are still drawn with light brush strokes that permeate a carefully structured plot".

[2] In his review for the Greensboro News and Record, William Moore writes that the novel "has a good quick-paced plot, leading to a shocking ending", and that it has "adequate if unbrilliant characterization and a rather obvious, simplistic philosophy of human nature".

[3] Robert Merritt's review in the Richmond Times-Dispatch was critical of the book, saying; it has "absolutely no subtlety", and that the "characterizations are set up with signposts: each character clearly labeled as good, bad or misunderstood".

[5] Pittsburgh Post-Gazettes Marilyn Uricchio didn't like the book at all, she stated that it is a "sparsely-written novel" and it "lacks the freshness of A Separate Peace, so much so that at times it becomes repetitive, almost stale".

She argues that Knowles uses descriptors "of the day, the sky, the air with maddening regularity as transitional devices, and their detailed abundance turns them into lyrical weather reports".