To call this book extraordinary won’t do it justice! Dugoni has written a coming of age story with some of the best character development I have ever read.

Sam Hill started life different than everyone else. He was born with red pupils and ended up with the nicknames, “Devil boy” or “Sam Hell”. His mother didn’t want him to believe the derogatory things said about him. She told him that God had a plan for his life and to have faith in God’s will. Nothing she said did any good to comfort Sam, but he kept his head high with the help of his mother’s faith, father’s guidance, and his two best friends. Growing up in the time he did, it was hard to have red eyes, but it was even harder to have dark skin, which is what made Sam gravitate towards the new kid in school, Ernie Cantwell. Ernie was the only African American kid in Sam’s class and needed a friend as bad as Sam did. Mickie Kennedy rounded out their group and she was a force to be reckoned with. As Sam grows into adulthood, he questions if everything is by a plan or not. Sam looks back on the life he has lived and takes a journey through the past and around the world to figure his world out for himself. By the time he finishes his journey, his eyes are truly open to what matters most.

Robert Dugoni is by far one of the best authors I know. His writing is one that will transport you into the story and have you walking hand in hand with the characters. His Tracy Crosswhite series is one of my favorite series to date and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is going to be right up there with some of my all time favorites, but for very different reasons. Usually my favorite reads are the suspense thrillers, page-turners that keep you guessing about what is going to happen until the very end. With this book, it was more of an immersion into the characters unlike any other I have ever read. The character development throughout this story is better than any I have ever read. Each character brings the story to life in their own special way. Sam has so many challenges but it is nothing he can’t handle. And having to face those challenges helps mold him into the kind of man he needs to be to help others, a lesson we can all learn from. Dugoni is well known for his suspense thrillers and legal thrillers so I wasn’t sure how this new venture would turn out for him but am pleased to say this will easily make my list of best of the year reads. I recommend this book to all readers, especially those looking for a story with heart and a lesson for all to learn.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Robert Dugoni for the opportunity to read and review his latest novel. Loved it!! I'm a huge fan of Dugoni's Tracy Crosswhite mystery series but this novel is a different genre and it is wonderful.

Sam Hill was born with ocular albinism which presents as red eyes. His very devoutly Catholic mother told him continually that he was extraordinary. However, that did nothing to stop the bullies in all forms once he started at the local Catholic school. Years later, Sam is again faced with one of those same bullies.

This is truly an extraordinary book. I loved all of the Catholic traditions, beliefs and sayings in this book as well as the amazing lessons of faith, family, friendship, love, forgiveness. Told in short chapters alternating between Sam's childhood and adulthood, this was a story that hit all your emotional buttons - even more so when you read the acknowledgements.

Highly, highly recommended - don't miss it!

5 Stars I am sitting in tears right now as I just finished This book was EXTRAORDINARY !!! This book is about true love, hope and faith and I couldn't put it down .. The characters in this book and the relationships built through out this novel will stay with me a long time ..

This book was not what I was expecting, but in the BEST way. I think for some reason I was expecting a murder mystery or something supernatural (I don't know why) but instead I got a plain old contemporary and I LOVED it.

This follows the life of a boy name Sam who is born with occular albinism, which makes his eyes appear red. When he goes to Catholic school, he gets called such names as Devil Boy and Sam Hell. Along his path to adulthood, Sam makes some friends (including the only black boy in school and one particularly troublesome girl) and defeats some bullies. This is a story about being different and embracing your differences and not being ashamed of them. And I adored it.

All the characters were so vivid, I could name basically all the main ones as some of my favorites. Sam, Mickie, Ernie, Sam's mother... I loved them all and they were so unique and clear. I could basically picture this as a movie and I think I'll probably eat those words in a couple years when this is turned into a movie. It was the characters that really drove this book, much more so than the plot but I really didn't mind. I might have liked a bit more plot to really tie this book together (I thought the bully character would be more prominent and perhaps that would have made this book a bit more cohesive.) That's what kept this book from being a 5.

Overall though, I would recommend this book to a lot of people. I think there's things in here that everyone can identify with and I think it's so wholesome in it's lessons that I think it'd even be great for high school students.

When I occasionally daydream about writing a book, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is the type of book I dream about writing. A book that creates incredibly memorable characters, that paints a picture of a life lived and a person I would like to get to know.
I probably will never get round to writing such a book but, thankfully, Robert Dugoni – better known to me for his Detective Tracy Crosswhite series – has so I don’t have to worry.
I apologies if I’m waxing a little lyrical here but I just really enjoyed this book. There wasn’t a thing about it I didn’t (meaning you can probably guess the rating if you don’t have time to read the rest of my review).
Sam is a great central character, a boy born with red eyes who his mother believes will be extraordinary, even though Sam doesn’t believe that. He spends his childhood bullied and unsure of himself, and then his adulthood hiding who he really is behind a pair of brown contact lenses. It takes some hard life lessons for him to finally see what his mother was talking about and just how good a man he can be.
I loved following Sam on his journey, which went between the present and the past as he used what had happened to him as a child to understand the type of man he had become and then figure out the type of man he maybe wanted to be. One of the reasons I think he did is that Dugoni seemed to get to the heart of Sam as a person. He felt real, and normal, and reading the book felt very natural. There were twists and turns that kept it interesting but nothing felt forced.
The characters surrounding Sam were well drawn and well written. I especially enjoyed Sam’s mother, who was a force of nature, and I understood her motherly drive to want the best for her son and to never give in pushing for it. I also enjoyed the way Sam returned the ‘favour’ of a good upbringing when his parents needed it. He’s a good person and that is one of the big things that has stayed with me after finishing this book. Not everyone I read about has to be big, bold, brash or unpredictable. Regular people – well, fairly regular people, are just as interesting and make for just as good subjects.
This was the type of read I needed at the moment, one that lifted my spirits and I can thoroughly recommend it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2362660522?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Sam Hell was born with ocular albinism. He was a preemie and was in a doctors office contemplating a vasectomy because his girlfriend, Eva, an Alaskan Airlines pilot didn't want kids. Sam was called Devil Boy by his bully, David Freemon. Ernie and Mickie become his best friends. Sam is picked as a lector for his all school mass because his
classmates want to see him fail.

This was my first book by Mr. Dugoni. i loved all the characters especially, Mickie, Sam, Ernie and many others. i loved this book from the first page. It will certainly not be my last.

Wow.  Can I just leave that one word?  Just wow.

When asked by Little Bird if I would like to review this book, I read the synopsis, said yes and knew it sounded interesting and like a decent book.  What I didn't expect was to cry at the ending and put the book down and say to my husband who was sitting next to me that I just finished my new favorite book of all time.  


The writing was so beautifully done.  The storyline was so beautifully done.  Everything was just so beautifully done.

This was one of those books that the story is going to stay with me long past reading.  My husband, doesn't really read anything that I recommend, kept asking where I put this one becuase he wants to read it now too....and he hasn't been able to put it down either!

Thank you to Little Bird Publicity for sending this book to me to review.

I’ve read several of Robert Dugoni’s novels, and enjoyed all of them, so when I was given the chance to read this novel, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, before it was actually released, I eagerly accepted.

As all the press about this novel is saying, it’s a departure from Dugoni’s usual fare. Rather than a mystery or thriller, this is a very personal coming-of-age novel that deals with friendship and love as well as the way different people experience ‘otherness’ whether it’s because they’re a girl, or have different skin color, or have oddly colored eyes.

As always, Dugoni’s use of language is what really caught me. Like Hemingway, he uses simple language, but it’s well chosen, and delicately crafted. Unlike Hemingway, there’s something really dimensional about the characters Dugoni has created. Sam, the POV character, is obviously the one who is drawn most vividly, but Ernie and Mickie are equally real, their dialogue natural and believable.

Dugoni excels at plot – a skill he honed with those afore-mentioned mysteries and thrillers – and it really shows here. This novel is perfectly paced, never plodding, never racing too quickly toward a conclusion. Overall, it was a compelling story and a greatly satisfying read.

Goes well with a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a touch of honey, served on organic, multigrain toast.

At his birth, Sam Hill's mother predicts that he will have an extraordinary life due to his extraordinary condition but it doesn't feel that way to Sam when he starts at the local Catholic School and is called "Devil Boy" and nicknamed Sam Hell. Sam has bright red eyes from ocular albinism that cause everyone to stare at him and makes him a target for the school bully. Sam has a protective and loving family who teach him to be resiliant and soon forms friends with Ernie, the only African American boy in school, and later Mickie, a rebellious tomboy, who both help him survive school. Sam's path will later cross again with his old school bully in adult life with serious results that throw him out of his hard won comfort zone and cause him to re-evaluate his life.

This a character driven novel, with Sam's mother Madeline the star, staunchly religious, fearless of authority and fiercely protective of her only child. Sam's friends Ernie and Mickie are both non-conformers who don't fit in and don't see the need to, teaching him not to worry about what others think but to do what is right for him. I found the fairly heavy Christian message of the ending a little overdone and unnecessary as I felt the message of good winning out over evil was already well enough implied. However, others with a more religious leaning may enjoy the ending and apart from that minor point, I did enjoy reading about the extraordinary life of Sam Hell.

Sam Hill has ocular albinoism resulting in red eyes. This is what you think is the main point of the story. However, it is just the introduction to a wonderful story about Sam, his two best friends, dealing with being a child who is "different," family, coming of age, etc, etc, etc. The story is so well presented that the initial issue is forgotten. I thoroughly enjoyed the fierce friendship between Sam and Ernie. I loved the mental picture Mr. Dugoni presented of Mickie. We all knew these kids growing up. Some of us were these kids.

This is a 4 or 5 star book depending on how you feel about Catholicism and religion in your books. I don't mind it and felt a tad nostalgic at times, so that was fine with me. At points I did feel the story almost crossed the line of being preachy (religion/God in general) or a bit too altruistic but it felt well placed. I would recommend this book for anyone unless they are solidly against any type of religion in their literature.

4.5 stars
It was impossible not to care about Sam Hill, his loving parents and his best friends Ernie and Mickie. Impossible not to admire Sam’s strength of character to endure the bullying and ridicule he experienced because of how he looked with his “devil eyes “, red eyes as the result of being born with ocular albinism. Impossible not to love the man he turns out to be. Impossible not to detest the psychotic bully, David Freemon or the mean Sister Beatrice who was unlike any nun I encountered in the 8 years of my grammar school education. Having grown up in a Catholic family and having attended a Catholic grammar school, I am very familiar with the phrase “God’s will” which in my experience was almost always used to justify less than desirable circumstances out of one’s control, as it was with Sam’s mother who uses the phrase frequently. I love the champion that his mother was for him . She’s my favorite character who instills in Sam that his eyes are not rare, but “extraordinary”.

There are other extraordinary characters who embody what unconditional love is, what friendship truly means. It is a story of fate, of faith, of family and of friendship and how all of these things make us who we are, not how we look. These characters are introduced as Sam’s story is told in alternating time frames between the present and the years he was growing up . I was connected the whole way. If I have one criticism, it’s just that the ending was way too much, as if the author felt he had to tie up every loose end. Having said that, this well written story is moving. I felt that it was even more meaningful when I read in the acknowledgements about how parents were when his brother was born with Down syndrome. I was moved that the seed for this story was an article he read about a young boy in Australia who “had been denied admittance to Catholic school because he had been born with ocular albinism and the nuns thought he’d be disruptive to the other students. It turned out that the other students had nicknamed this poor child the devil boy.” I’m glad he read that article and that he gave us Sam Hell because of it.

Thanks to Diane for letting me know while she was reading this that I should probably read it . Without her nudge I may have missed it .

I received an advanced copy of this book from Lake Union Press through NetGalley.

Well written story about faith, friendship and overcoming bullying. How much you like this will depend on how you feel about novels with a strong underlying religious tone. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

This was an accessible, competently written novel. I’m sure Robert Dugoni had the best intentions, obviously informed by his own convictions. I’m convinced that my own secular views are not to blame for my disenchantment with this novel. This reader enjoys reading novels with characters that are more realistic and nuanced and less melodrama.

3.5 Stars

Norma and I started off in the extraordinary inspiring lush coulee reading The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell and it started off strong for us and we both were drawn into this story right away. In the end, we ended up in separate coulees with the way we felt about this story.

There are many extraordinary things explored in this story like a Mother’s love and belief in just how extraordinary her son is and how our main character Sam HIll overcomes the many obstacles throughout his life from a young age. I loved Sam’s compassion and understanding and it was inspiring to read. We see the best and the worst in people and at times this story was heartbreaking and heartwarming with all the themes explored in this story,

Where Norma and I ended up in different coulees was with the way we felt about this one was with the ending. I found it too gushy, sentimental and too forced. I was left in the soggy muddy coulee feeling unsatisfied and Norma was in the lush coulee feeling very satisfied.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Robert Dugoni for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

Published April 24, 2018

Review written and posted on our themed book blog Two Sisters Lost In A Coulee Reading.
https://twosisterslostinacoulee.com
Coulee: a term applied rather loosely to different landforms, all of which refer to a kind of valley.

4+. Okay, I admit it, I am now officially a marshmallow. This book about a young boy, born with red eyes, due to ocular albanism really got to me. First, I could relate greatly to his experiences in Catholic school, been there done that. Some good sisters, some who should never have been let near small children. Sam, is called names, bullied but he does have wonderful, loving parents, and then a black boy enters the school. The two outcasts become fast friends. Then a little later a girl, who is seemingly not afraid of anything, a maverick, outspoken, who becomes the third in their group.

This was such a special read for me, and from an author who usually writes a very good mystery series. We follow these young people as they grow, see the kind of people they turn out to be. How their lives turn out and how the wethered the circumstances of their early lives. Such a touching book, one where you embrace the characters, want only good things for them. There is also humor, sadness, grief and an unbelievable friendship.

The end was a bit overdone, well maybe more than a bit, actually somewhat mushy. I was already sold on the book though, the journey these characters travel to find a fulfilling life. So, the ending didn't derail my opinion of the book, and I was actually a little teary eyed. Like I said, I'm now officially a marshmallow.

ARC from Netgalley.

A moving and thought provoking book, with a really heart warming feel, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is a very enjoyable read. Sam is born with "ocular albinism", an incredibly rare condition that means the irises of his eyes are pinkish red in colour.. Deeply and sometimes fiercely loved by his parents, Sam , like anyone who is different, struggles to find friendship, or even acceptance from his peers, but when he does make friends, they will stick with him through thick and thin.
While the concept of the book really intrigued me, the first couple of chapters had me doubting that I would like the book as much as I ended up doing. The strong religious tones in The early part of the book were something I struggled with, but as the book went on I found myself engaged by the story and really caring about Sam and his friends, and it seemed like the plot was moving away from the religious aspects., though they became prominent again towards the end of the book. The best thing about the book were the characters, Sam, Ernie and Mickie were very well realised, and easy to relate to.

4.5 Extraordinary Stars!

THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF SAM HELL by ROBERT DUGONI is a touching, uplifting, heartwarming and an absolutely wonderful novel that had me totally engrossed and interested throughout this entire book. I was totally captivated and immersed with the voice of Sam and his story as he looks back on his life, making this novel extremely hard for me to put down. Sam totally touched my heart!

ROBERT DUGONI delivers an inspirational and beautifully written story here with wonderful characters and short chapters to make this a quick and easy read. The relationships, love and support that Sam had here with his family and friends is what makes this novel so special. Sam was truly extraordinary and through his journey we really seen the struggles he faced as he was figuring out his purpose of life. I thoroughly enjoyed following along with Sam, his family and friends and all the wisdom, love, and themes shared within the pages of this book made this a powerful and memorable read!

To sum it all up it was an interesting, insightful, unforgettable, emotional, and an enjoyable read with a satisfying ending. Would highly recommend!

Publishing Date: April 24, 2018

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing, and Robert Dugoni for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

Thank you NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for this advanced eGalley of The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell.

Sam Hell was born with a rare eye condition: ocular albinism. Red eyes.

As a young boy, growing up in the late 60’s, attending a Catholic school (where his eyes invoke both fear and unwanted attention), he faces a number of challenges: bullying, ignorance, exclusion, and an overall sense that he is, somehow, completely unacceptable to the world in which he abides.

While he has the unwavering strength and advocacy of his mother to guide him through, he still encounters a lifetime of emotional and psychological pain.

He never truly feels at peace, nor is he confident that he’ll ever be loved in the way he wishes to be loved.

“The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” takes us through the ups and downs of Sam’s life, over the course of several decades. The chapters intermittently alternate between the then and now.

We get a firsthand look at Sam as he goes from bullied first grader to barely accepted high schooler.

By the time he’s a grown man, he’s endured a lot of heartache, but he’s forced to endure even more as a man.

Honestly, even I started to wonder how much more hell he’d be forced to endure.

I enjoyed the presence of his mother. Maddy Hill was perfection from the start.

She consistently advocated for her son, and never allowed him to succumb to the self-doubt he continually faced along the way.

Her strength, more than anything, played a huge role in Sam’s growth.

The love story between him and Mickie was also adorable. It isn’t at the forefront of the story, but you always sense her presence in Sam’s life.

Overall, it’s a story about faith, and having belief in a power beyond yourself. It falls short of being “religious”, but only by a hair.

Sam’s belief in “God’s Will” is as much a plot-driver as his red eyes.

That said, I don’t think it’ll turn off non-believers or agnostics because it’s simply a good story. And who
doesn’t love a good story?

5 most touching extraordinary stars!

At times you walk away from a book with feelings and emotions and then an hour, a day, a week later, you have forgotten all that you have read. However, there are some book that when you finish them, you know in your heart that they will never leave you. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell was just so a book.

We meet a wonderful cast of characters, characters we would like to know, characters we would love to have as parents, friends, and neighbors, characters that we could love. From Sam, the boy born with red eyes suffering from a rare disease, ocular albinism, nicknamed the devil boy, to his amazing and loving parents we learn as Sam grows the emotional love and concern they share for each other. Sam's friends Ernie and Miki, themselves outcasts, join forces to provide Sam with support and love that he is desperately seeking. Sam is shunned in his Catholic school environment but it is through his mother's strong faith in both Sam and her Catholic faith coupled with his father's wonderful wisdom that Sam grows into adulthood. His road is never easy as he comes against prejudice and hate. He is tormented by his nonacceptance into a world where he is taught that things are God's will. He is belittled, held back, and faced with obstacles that try to defeat the spirit that his parents try so hard to engender in him for they believe that their son is extraordinary and he deserves his extraordinary life. His two lifelong friends bring to Sam love, compassion, and a strong bond that provides him a place to go when his life becomes onerous.

This book transported this reader into a world where one can find that which seems to be escaping from our world today, that of human kindness, forgiveness, and love. I can not recommend this book more highly as it brings one a world of peacefulness, tears, love, and the telling of a story that moves one's heart and soul.

Thank you to Robert Dugoni for writing such a extraordinary book and to Lake Union and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this novel.