"Rocket Man" by William Elliott Hazelgrove

I’ve got „Rocket Man” as ARC through LibraryThing as well. And as some other people before me – I’m still not sure if I like it or not.

As you may read in many posts – it’s a story of 46 years old Dale, who moved his family out from the city, to the “land of happiness”, where the family would bloom. And it happened the opposite – everything is wrong – wife want to divorce, son hates him, his father is kicked by his wife and is moving to live with Dale, Dale has problems with everyone around him – school, neighbors, police… He is all the time repeating how much he cares about his relatives and their life, but actually is not able to do anything to change his and his family life for better and to solve the problems.


I liked the plot in the meaning of dealing with “American dream” and nowadays life. But I didn’t like half of the characters (mostly the main one) – they were irritating me most of the time ;) I know it could be planned by the author like that, but for me it makes it more difficult to enjoy the book if I’m irritated most of the time ;) The other thing is the ending – for me this situation is a bit too unrealistic, to see this one moment as a crucial change of the life of the family.

The other thing is the cover – it would not invite me for buying this book. I know it’s clearly related with the leading theme of the book, but there is plenty of nicer photos to use. But I’m quite sure the publishers already got the point from other notes about the book and re-considered the cover :)


In general – I liked the book, but without fireworks ;) It’s ok read for a winter evenings :)