"Impeccably drawn...In prose at once word perfect and wildly imagined, Ward moves between the '50s and the '90s, laying out in vivid scenes how Caril Ann and Charlie built their twisted bond on desperate lust and deadly boredom...Astonishingly poetic yet palpable prose." --Lisa Shea, Elle
"The myth of Starkweather is writ large on the American psyche...but Ward's connection to the material transcends the headlines: her grandparents were slain by Starkweather. It's not surprising, then, that her focus is on the grim and mundane reality of those left in the wake of such violence... Outside Valentine has a slowly tightening noose of a plot, following two sets of lovers, each in a state of arrested adolescence and emotional paralysis." --Elissa Schappell, The New York Times Book Review
"Making a bold literary entrance, Ward skillfully weaves three first-person narratives...with remarkable poise and insight....Rather than lionizing the victims or romanticizing the criminals, Ward instead uses the Starkweather case as a springboard to examine how the legacy of violence reverberates within families." --Tatiana Siegel, USA Today
“In this riveting literary suspense novel, first-timer Ward presents in lean, luminous prose a precarious world where true love can ravage as well as redeem, exploring a series of murders in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the 1950s from the perspective of three narrators...An already chilling novel drops a few more degrees at the unsettling admission that it’s based in truth." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Revisiting the l950s murder spree of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, romanticized in the classic l973 movie Badlands, Ward, in her first novel, places her sympathies clearly with the victims...this is a sad, angry book full of raw emotions, elegantly phrased." --Kirkus Reviews
"Liza Ward runs a tight, thrumming line through her narrative, punching up scenes with a sharp practiced touch and bringing wise compassion to bear on the tragic events that unfold with such dark inevitability." --Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies and My Sky Blue Trades, a memoir
"Ward...[gives] us an eerie sense of the way horrible events reverberate down the generations." --Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times Book Review
