“A USA Today Bestseller.”

— USA Today

“Daniel Roberts writes with a sense of confidence rarely found in a debut work. Be it his masterful use of imagery or the dark, satirical tinge coating nearly every line of dialogue, there’s a consistent and undeniable level of quality on display from cover to cover. Sure, there are some aspects of Charlie’s personality (namely, his brash attitude and nihilistic streak) that bear a passing resemblance to Holden Caulfield, but Bar Maid is hardly a transplanted retread.”

—- James Weiskittle for Indie Reader

“What starts as an amusing if slightly adolescent romp grows into a deeply felt coming-of-age story in the style of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys or even a great John Hughes movie. And like Pretty in Pink or Some Kind of Wonderful, this poignant romance is set in the cynical and selfish 1980s, throwing the genuine sweetness of the characters into high relief. Bar Maid drinks its way through the angsty end of adolescence, lighting signal fires in the darkness with laugh-out-loud moments and unabashed sincerity.”

— Melissa Dalley for The US Review of Books

“In this compelling coming-of-age story, Charlie Green has to overcome stifling privilege that threatens to stunt his capacity to feel. You may start out wanting to dislike him (too much money and booze), but you won’t be able to if you read past the first few pages. And you won’t be able to put this book down. Charlie Green is perceptive, laugh-out-loud funny, and endowed with a rare, honest tenderness. The author grants every one of his characters, great and small, their full humanity, but it’s the vivid, intelligent women who almost steal the book. Bar Maid is a vigorous assault on the current plague of cynicism, an unsentimental adventure that will surprise you and leave you feeling a little better about being human.”

— Janet Capron, author of Blue Money

“If you're a fan of coming-of-age stories such as J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, you're going to love Bar Maid. Author Daniel Roberts tells a hilarious tale of a privileged young man finding himself having to grow up before his time as circumstances put him in a situation he could've never foreseen. Full of wit, charm, humor, and heart, the narrative feels like a breeze to go through. The characters are vibrant and full of life. They have layers to their personalities with complex motives and agency to their actions that make them utterly compelling to read. Bar Maid is an absolute blast from start to finish. I gobbed it up in one sitting. Recommended to readers who enjoy coming-of-age tales.”

— Pikasho Deka for Readers’ Favorite

“Bar Maid is astonishingly laced with raging hormones but in a fluent and confident way. The point is not about losing one’s virginity but in the flow and rhythm of the yearnings that Charlie’s life represents. I think of this story as a cross between The Catcher in the Rye and Superbad. Daniel Roberts has created a protagonist that may well go down in literary history as a representation of the angst that accompanies coming of age. Charlie Green may be privileged and jaded, but he is also hopeful. He has his own weaknesses and superficiality and tries to find meaning in the wrong ways. This will make you either hate or love him, but in the end, there is something relatable about him as he tries to fill a sort of void that all of us have felt at some point in our lives. In its depiction of sex as a rite of passage, I can say that Bar Maid is a great read for its style of raunchiness that is surreal and biting at the same time.”

— Vincent Dublado for Readers’ Favorite

“Bar Maid by Daniel Roberts is a story that is simplistic, dreamy, thought-provoking, and intense all at the same time. It is not just a wonderful love story, but it celebrates the arduous task that is finding oneself no matter how different one is. You will laugh, be bewildered, cry, and be delighted.”

— The Online Book Club

"Never have I read a book such as Daniel Roberts’ Bar Maid that rang with such an expanse of total authenticity. The characters, the atmospheric structure of the storyline, and the ethereal essence can only emerge from a book such as Bar Maid. These find a way to provide the human spirit with a spark to live more, do more…experience more. This novel shows the kind of prowess that Daniel Roberts has with words, the way in which he uses them to charm, and elicit a full range of emotions that most authors can’t. There is a beautiful strangeness throughout Daniel Roberts’ Bar Maid that makes you feel like you’re reading a book for the first time because nothing can prepare you for the stark, sincere beauty that it holds.”

— Erin Nicole Cochran for Readers’ Favorite

“Set in the late 1980s, Daniel Roberts’ BAR MAID is an unashamedly male-centred coming-of-age story that has obvious literary antecedents in The Great Gatsby and The Catcher In The Rye....Charlie is of a type that is increasingly scarce in contemporary literature and harks back to the literary “Brat Pack” novels of Brett Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz, whose early books were being published at the time BAR MAID is set and whose narratives featured similarly disaffected, unapologetically wealthy protagonists. In a way, this is period fiction of the most precise/authentic kind. Roberts revisits the world of the 80s without any retrospective irony and without filtering the motives or language of his characters through current contemporary values or the more progressive mind set of the 2020s and is an accurate facsimile of a novel from the period. And this is not only down to the referencing of time specific pop culture such as Billy Joel or Rubik’s Cubes (though all such cultural references are unerringly accurate) but extends to the way Roberts’ characters talk and think.”

— Kent Lane for Indie Reader