Review: Some good ideas, plot and pacing need work. Significant work.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2014
This is not a book to be set aside lightly. This is a book to be put down and avoided entirely.What I've found aggravating about self published books lately is how, inevitably, they are edited by the author's friends or family members. While I'm sure they're all very nice people, they are not experienced in helping a story achieve cohesion. They also don't want to hurt your feelings.This book suffers from a lack of good, critical feedback. We are hardly introduced to the heroine before she's immediately whisked off into a highly unlikely series of events that she doesn't understand, so how could the reader?Without knowing more about the heroine, why would I care what happens to her?All the supernaturals are the same as they ever were - cold vampires, hot werewolves, ineffectual witches. The author describes four unrelated characters as having flame red hair and emerald eyes. That's a lot of freaking redheads with. Cliched green eyes, which are just not that common.There's an issue with the heroine initially being attracted to virtually every man she meets, so her insta-love with yet another man had little impact.Style wise, the plethora of choppy short sentences beginning with "I" just grated. I did this, I did that. "I walked to the door. He stood at the door. I went through the door. He followed me." Then a giant info-dump. Rinse and repeat. Just jerky and inept - I found myself editing silently for flow and consistency.Some embarrassing mistakes - "ying to her yang" - and equally embarrassing attempts at sarcastic humor, none of which were successful. Instead, heroine did a whole lot of adolescent and pointless whining about herself even when a huge apocalyptic Bad Thing was taking place.This book strikes me as one that would probably get an A as a high school project and impress friends and loved ones, but just isn't at a professional level yet. Couldn't get past the limitations of plot or amateurish writing style enough to finish it, so I returned it for a refund.