Eighteen-year-old Eric has just been released from juvenile detention for murdering his parents. Now he's looking for tenderness--tenderness he fin...
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Dec 06, 2007
Carter
rated it: 
I haven't read a Robert Cormier book since 1992 or so (I Am the Cheese). It's been a long time. But his writing is still as haunting as ever.
For whatever reason (we're never really told why he does what he does), Eric Poole likes to kill young girls. Tall, slender girls with long dark hair. It's in the moment of their life escaping that he finds the tenderness he desires. Until he meets Lori.
Lori is a runaway, a young blond girl barely woman. She has a fixation for More...
For whatever reason (we're never really told why he does what he does), Eric Poole likes to kill young girls. Tall, slender girls with long dark hair. It's in the moment of their life escaping that he finds the tenderness he desires. Until he meets Lori.
Lori is a runaway, a young blond girl barely woman. She has a fixation for More...
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Nov 26, 2007
Nicole
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A lot of people felt that this book was (and I quote) "creepy and disturbing". It was a bit creepy, you know, that "a glimpse of a serial killers mind" thing. But I think Robert Cormier did a great job portraying eric the eighteen-year old that just got out of juvenile detention for killing his mother and stepfather. He's looking for "tenderness"----that which he finds in caressing and killing beautiful girls. Enter Lori. Lori has run away from home and is also look
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Dec 19, 2011
It was... okay. My BC teacher made it seem a lot better then it was i think. Yes, it was creepy, Yes, I felt bad for both Eric and Lori, and Yes it was very sad. But I feel like it could have been done a lot better. I get why they didn't have it at my library and I had to seek it out else where. Although the book had the plot line of awesomeness and the opportunity to become amazing I just don't think that it really worked. It was interesting though, because although Eric is a serial killer. He
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Sep 28, 2011
Caroline
rated it: 
I enjoyed reading The Chocolate War as a young adolescent in school and was really excited to read another Cormier book. I feel like I should preface what I'm about to say with the fact that I am not a person who is easily offended or shocked by material. That being said, it was only several pages before I began to be seriously disturbed and just simply feeling gross. Keeping an open mind, I pushed forward to see how Cormier would take this plot but was ultimately disappointed. Don't get me
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Sep 13, 2011
Holly
rated it:
Wow. I really loved this book. Tenderness tells the story of two teenagers looking for the same thing: tenderness. The paths of Eric, a psychopath serial killer who targets girls, and Lori, who becomes obsessed with someone at the drop of a hat, collide when Lori becomes "fixated" with this charming and seemingly tender boy.
I think it was really well written and very interesting. I loved how the two main characters interacted and how their obsessions interacted. I was intrigued More...
I think it was really well written and very interesting. I loved how the two main characters interacted and how their obsessions interacted. I was intrigued More...
Sep 07, 2011
Nicole
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jan 10, 2011
John
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Robert Cormier is my favorite author.
Lori Cranston is a teenager, too young for her body, who is looking for real love. Eric Poole is a psycopath, too smart for his own good, who is looking for the perfect intimacy. In a strange twist of fate, their intertwined search for what they each call tenderness brings them to each other. It looks like each could be just what the other needs. But will their relationship bring healing...or destruction?
This is a novel about love, lust, and h More...
Lori Cranston is a teenager, too young for her body, who is looking for real love. Eric Poole is a psycopath, too smart for his own good, who is looking for the perfect intimacy. In a strange twist of fate, their intertwined search for what they each call tenderness brings them to each other. It looks like each could be just what the other needs. But will their relationship bring healing...or destruction?
This is a novel about love, lust, and h More...
Nov 04, 2010
Julie
rated it: 
Cormier is a master at creepiness, that is for certain. I spent quite a bit of time post-read pondering whether or not I would ever recommend this book to a young adult reader. There are some parts that are very intense for young readers, especially one particular scene of sensuality between Lori and a married man, but overall I don't know that I would warn kids away from this book. It would definitely have to be treated as a "read and discuss" book--I would not simply put this book
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Jun 28, 2010
Vivian
rated it:
This book was a complete shock to me. I went into expecting to hate Eric, and probably Lori, too, but still interested in the "mind of a serial killer". I finished it, as many people have said, sympathizing with Eric. However disturbing that might be.
It was extremely disturbing to read from Eric's point of view- he was so cold and calculating, completely inhuman in his plans to kill. He was such a twisted character, yet by the end, I found myself wanting him to get a second chanc More...
It was extremely disturbing to read from Eric's point of view- he was so cold and calculating, completely inhuman in his plans to kill. He was such a twisted character, yet by the end, I found myself wanting him to get a second chanc More...
May 12, 2010
kyliemm
rated it:
This realist young adult fiction novel was about an eighteen-year-old serial killer/rapist and the fifteen-year-old girl who falls in love with him. Eric has just been released from prison, and Lori has just run away from home (again) because her mother’s boyfriend has been feeling her up. Lori gets what she calls random “fixations” with different men; she sees them and feels an incredible urge to find them and kiss them, and then her fixation ends. Lori is pretty and is thus constantly being
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Feb 03, 2010
Maria
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Lori was 12 years old when she met eric. Lori was alone on the railroad tracks and saw eric with a young girl. When eric come back he was all alone. Eric had saved lori when bikers had come to take her he defended her, she was happy and wanted to see the next day if he was there but he was already gone and she had left that town. When lori gets older she gets fixated on people which means she needs to kiss someone but a real like french kissing. Lori likes to help out eric becuase he just
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Dec 10, 2009
Brittany
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This story is told from split perspectives; from Eric Poole's, in third- person, and Lori Cranston's, hers being a first-person narrative. The novel is about these two people and how they come together, and despite their disfunctions, they complete each other. Lori is a girl with a dubious past who uses her body to get what she wants. Her fixations drive her, and she becomes fixated on Eric Poole. Eric is a serial killer, recently released from jail. He has killed more girls than he was tried fo
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Nov 24, 2009
BarkLessWagMore
rated it: 
Hmmm, what to say about this book? It is a young adult novel about a young serial killer who has been imprisoned for the past 3 years for the murder of his parents. He was a suspect in the murder of several young girls but his guilt was never proven. He's due to be released very soon and the officer who knows he's guilty of much more than killing his parents is determined to make sure he doesn't hurt another girl.
The other character is a young runaway with a disturbing habit of using h More...
The other character is a young runaway with a disturbing habit of using h More...
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Dec 08, 2010
Josiah
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I've never finished a Robert Cormier book without experiencing a deeply reverberating sense of "Wow". The dark corners of the human heart that Robert Cormier explores with the breathtaking skill of a master artisan are enough to give chills to anyone. Revealing the potential horrors of a fiercely tortured soul has a way of affecting people that way.
Beneath and within the text of every page of Tenderness is the unmistakable pulse of real evil; sometimes clear, but mostly More...
Beneath and within the text of every page of Tenderness is the unmistakable pulse of real evil; sometimes clear, but mostly More...
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Mar 27, 2011
Becky
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Disturbing. Tenderness is the story of two emotionally stilted young adults: Lori, a fifteen-year-old runaway with an unhealthy fixation with finding what she calls "tenderness" and Eric, an eighteen-year-old who has just been released from a "facility" he was in for three years for murdering his mother and stepfather. Lori, whose body matured far faster than her emotions, has left home temporarily because her mother's most recent live-in boyfriend has gotten a little too c
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Feb 21, 2011
Tami
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I really didn't like this book, primarily because it scared me! Tenderness is a multi character book, the main charcters being: Lori, a young teen who's only way of living is achieving strange ficsations with men, she often lets strange men touch her, she feels this is tenderness. Eric Poole a 19 year old boy who's about to be let out of a delinquent facility after three years for killing his mom and step dad. Eric has also killed three girls, hoping for more. Eric meets Lori years earlier, Lori
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Dec 07, 2010
Emily
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Nov 04, 2009
Stephanie
rated it:
Bleak/ Thriller
Lori is fifteen years old, and has run away from home because of her mother's new boyfriend. Meanwhile, Eric is 18 and has just been released from prison where he has been for the last three years, convicted of murdering his mother and step-father. What the authorities don't know is that he has also killed three young girls. Both teenagers are looking for tenderness and end up on a road trip together. Lori thinks she has found this tenderness in Eric, but he seems disint More...
Lori is fifteen years old, and has run away from home because of her mother's new boyfriend. Meanwhile, Eric is 18 and has just been released from prison where he has been for the last three years, convicted of murdering his mother and step-father. What the authorities don't know is that he has also killed three young girls. Both teenagers are looking for tenderness and end up on a road trip together. Lori thinks she has found this tenderness in Eric, but he seems disint More...
Nov 13, 2010
Michelle
rated it:
I've read what others have to say about this book, and for that reason, Tenderness is quite difficult to explain. I absolutely wanted to hate the story line because it was creepy and almost perverted. Two teens seeking two different types of needs. Lori just wants to be loved for herself and not her body, while Eric, just released from prison, finds pleasure in planning the deaths of his next victims. You expect to hate Eric because he has murdered three girls, his mother, and his step father.
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Jun 14, 2010
Whitney
rated it:
Tenderness is the story of two teens, Lori, and Eric. Lori is a young girl with a mature body that gets fixated on different men, and must meet them before her fixation will end. Eric on the other hand is a convicted teenage serial killer who gets out of jail because he has turned 18 and the Juvenile Jail can no longer hold him. When Eric is released and Lori sees him on TV she becomes fixated and must find him. The police have set up a trap for Eric and Lori ends up right in the middle of it.
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Oct 01, 2010
Miguel
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jul 05, 2010
Nancy
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Lori is a sexually abused fifteen-year old girl who has learned to manipulate people to get what she wants. Looking for sincere tenderness, she leaves home to regain contact with a boy who treated her kindly in a brief encounter when she was 12 years old. The boy’s name is Eric, he is eighteen years old, and he is a psychopath who killed his parents and two other girls. As he was a juvenile when he killed his parents and the police did not have enough evidence to convict him of killing the girls
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Oct 05, 2009
Charlotte
rated it:
bleak literature/psychological thriller(ish)
I'd bump it up to three and a half stars. This book follows the collision of the worlds of two dysfunctional teenagers, one of whom is a serial killer just released from juvenile detention for killing his parents, the other a seriously insecure runaway girl. The concepts in this book were so alien to me—I mean, not many people can (thankfully) relate to the psychopathology of a serial killer—and it was that exploration of Eric's mentality t More...
I'd bump it up to three and a half stars. This book follows the collision of the worlds of two dysfunctional teenagers, one of whom is a serial killer just released from juvenile detention for killing his parents, the other a seriously insecure runaway girl. The concepts in this book were so alien to me—I mean, not many people can (thankfully) relate to the psychopathology of a serial killer—and it was that exploration of Eric's mentality t More...
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Apr 26, 2010
Sarah
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Wow. So, um, this book kinda freaked me out. And for that reason, teens will like it. The YA novels follows two characters--Eric and Lori. Lori is a runaway who has an adult body and knows how to use it. She runs away a lot from her mother who isn't a good mother and her mom's boyfriends who are a little too friendly. Lori's always on the lookout for tenderness--and it's always in the arms of a man. Messed up, eh?
Eric is worse. He looks for tenderness and happiness in the animals and More...
Eric is worse. He looks for tenderness and happiness in the animals and More...
Nov 05, 2010
Jenny
rated it:
I read this some years back for a YA lit class at BYU. We were able to choose which book of Cormier's we wanted to read...and I chose this one. Why? Because we were told the content was a little...hmm...harsh...and no one else was really picking it. I appreciated Dr. Crowe warning us about the book. I suppose that's why only I, and 2 others, choose the book. If I remember correctly, it was disturbing and parts of it were creepy, a book I wouldn't recommend to the general population. Howev
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Nov 01, 2011
Alexsis
rated it:
Robert Cormier opened up a new aspect to, not only adults but young adults as well. His written work is brilliant. I love how he synthesizes love in deep way. Instead of writing about a resembling romantic couple Robert makes the two main characters romantic with a hint of irony and gruesome. Cormier’s description and imagery draws the book together so well. He didn’t seem to have a problem making each character stand out, no matter if it was from Lori Cranston, Eric Poole, Lieutenant Jake Proct
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Aug 01, 2010
Ashley
rated it:
This book was originally reviewed on my blog, Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing.
Have you ever found yourself rooting for the bad guy? Knowing that the character deserves every bad thing coming his way, but hoping that, somehow, things will work out better in the end? I don't know that I had ever truly experienced that before reading this book. I generally prefer (ahem-totally love) reading books where the bad guy totally gets his comeuppance. I'm all about hard-core justice for m More...
Have you ever found yourself rooting for the bad guy? Knowing that the character deserves every bad thing coming his way, but hoping that, somehow, things will work out better in the end? I don't know that I had ever truly experienced that before reading this book. I generally prefer (ahem-totally love) reading books where the bad guy totally gets his comeuppance. I'm all about hard-core justice for m More...
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Mar 18, 2009
Tracy
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Robert Cormier wrote "Tenderness" later in his career, and its breathtaking brutality and beauty confirms his mastery of craft. Cormier introduces the reader to murderer Eric Poole and young runaway Lori Cranston from different perspectives, one of his hallmark approaches. Lori's first-person narrative reveals her desperation and surprising blend of innocence and sophistication. Eric's narrative is told in close third-person -- too close for comfort: the reader sees the world through h
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Mar 14, 2011
Jessica
rated it:
I feel like this book was a huge let down the beginning stated out boreding just talking about how once Lori saw a guy she had to kiss em or something and how she was in love with random\creepy people. Eric is just a freakin nut-job that likes to kill girls and for like the first half of the book all it says is how he is werid and creey and talkeds about how hes in jail and why. so basicly these kids are both wack jobs and Lori sorta stalkd Eric so she can say how they were ment to be and they
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Oct 04, 2010
John
rated it:
This book transcends the borders of what one what usually dub "creepy". "Tenderness", by Robert Cormier, is nothing short of grossly disturbing. As of where I currently am in the book, there are two main points of view: Eric,a boy who takes pleasure in asphyxiating young girls to death before sexually harassing them, and Lori, an apparently beautiful girl, who feels the desperate need to feel Eric's "tenderness", which, in Cormier slang, is death at the hands of Eri
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