The buzz is big for this heartwarming, funny, and bittersweet story from Hyde. A quiet, steady masterpiece with an incandescent ending.
-Kirkus Reviews

An ordinary boy engineers a secular miracle in Hyde's winning second novel. Her Capraesque theme--that one person can make a difference-may be sentimental, but for once, that's a virtue.
-Publishers Weekly

An uplifting, tear-jerking, and inspiring modern fable with an extremely appealing young protagonist.
-Library Journal

Hyde makes the unbelievable seem possible in a beautifully written, heartwarming story of one boy's belief in the goodness of humanity.
-Booklist

With a book that promotes such an inherently fascinating idea, it seems almost unnecessary to mention that the book is well-written, that the characters are interesting and complex and flawed and real. You start out rooting for the "good guys" and end up rooting for everyone. Pay It Forward is enjoyable reading, and as a bonus, it will get you thinking outside of its pages, as few books do.
-The South Carolina Herald

Pay It Forward--a book poised to become a phenomenon--is a well-designed confection that author Catherine Ryan Hyde has executed with abundant skill. If you ever had a yen for the utopian, you will have a sweet time with this heartfelt fable.
-San Jose Mercury-News

An extraordinary tale that, like its young protagonist, just might change the world. Big things are expected of this book (there was already a movie deal in the works before its release), and with good reason. Pay It Forward is a delightfully uplifting, moving, and inspiring modern fable that has the power to change the world as we know it-which would be a wonderful phenomenon indeed.
-BookPage

[Hyde's] fable speaks to the hunger so many of us feel for something to believe in that can give us hope.. One hopes this book does become assigned in every high school across America.. If the success of Harry Potter suggests that many of us yearn for magic, Hyde's book delivers an even more profound vision of what it may be: The simple magic of the human heart.
-The San Francisco Chronicle

Following on the heels of her critically acclaimed debut novel, Funerals for Horses (1997), Catherine Ryan Hyde has crafted another affecting tale. It is one sown with promise and the innate goodness of humankind. Hyde's meticulously wrought, restrained prose keeps sentiment at bay while at the same time imbuing Pay It Forward with a transcendent power to move. Pay It Forward shores belief and nourishes hope.
-The Arizona Daily Star

I cried at the end of the book, and I'll cry at the end of the movie, starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.
-Jane Magazine

Simon & Schuster is betting a lot on Pay It Forward and so far the book is living up to expectations. The Book of the Month Club has taken it, and Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment are making the movie for Warner Bros. And you can see why, for this is a powerful narrative with an idealistic idea grounded in familiar characters.
-The Chicago Tribune

The philosophy behind the book is so intriguing, and the optimism so contagious, that the reader is carried along with what turns out to be a book that lingers long after the last page is turned.
-The Denver Post

Hyde has a talent for ferreting out dark crannies in the human soul where insecurity, loneliness and despair dwell, and for ever so gently training the light of redemption and awareness upon them. [Her] emotional compass never wavers.
-Book