"a kind of hard-core Catcher in the Rye"...Review Of Colin Preston Rocked And Rolled by Dan's Papers (Long Island, New York)

"With Colin Preston Rocked and Rolled (Davanna), first-time novelist Bert Murray manages a feat that seems to have escaped many writers, mainly women, who try for a Young Adult readership but wind up delivering predictable, generic, forgettable adolescent chick lit. Murray, who delivers here a kind of hard-core Catcher in the Rye, has a good ear for the lingo and speech rhythms of bright 19-year-olds, particularly young men who, despite their vulnerability looking for love, obsess about scoring. The story, set in 1985 at a leafy, upscale college in the Northeast, is full of references to rock that serve as mood markers, especially for the protagonist, Colin Preston, for whom The Beatles are almost substitute friends. An intelligent, likeable guy but (and who isn't at this age) troubled by a first serious love and ambivalent about his parents and career, undergoes "an education in the geography of the human heart." The story has engaging authenticity, though the unfortunate title may be off putting. For sure, though, the depiction of the extent to which sex, drugs and drinking consume many college students should be sobering, considering the continuing rise of the cost of going to college. One sympathetic teacher, who befriends Colin, cannot compensate for what older adults might well see as the questionable value of higher education."
—Joan Baum, Dan's Papers