A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: LEADER OF THE PACK BY MATT SWEETWOOD

It was like watching a train wreck.

A phrase used to describe something so compelling and unique you cannot turn away. Believe me, Leader of the Pack by Matt Sweetwood is a train wreck. Not the book, which is indeed more gripping than your most nail-biting thriller, but his incredible, belief-defying challenge of an adult life. Young Mr. Sweetwood, like any poorly developed, naïve youth of the previous century, married what today we call a trophy wife. Like most trophy wives, she concealed a wicked insanity deep inside her core. One destined to surface explosively. Even at this time, one could not call a woman crazy. Just a mother. And before Mr. Mom became a legitimate (or necessary) enterprise, men were considered unfit to raise the family. Matt Sweetwood’s trophy wife browbeat her self-admittedly and submissively flawed husband into creating a brood of five. And then she left.

Leader of the Pack, however, is not a victim’s cry for sympathy or justice by its author. Matt Sweetwood only offers up this train wreck of a backstory to reveal how such an emotionally encumbered man may rebound to his Maker’s glory, and, without the necessity of a woman (okay, maybe two warrior types) become a decent, protective, supportive single parent who instills incredible values in his children and raises the kind of family thought possible only from a mother. In this day of mass emasculation for the male role in our society, Mr. Sweetwood’s book comes as a stark reminder that men too are vital to its success. His story is not eloquently told. He does not take on airs. This a plain-spoken but energetically vivid retelling of an inspiring response to an appalling life, and one feels ecstatically victorious at the end.