Review: Just OK
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2014
This book is OK. And I don't mean that in any particularly derogatory way. It's just a very simple story without a heck of a lot of challenges and almost no tension.Country music star runs away, after a concert in Salt Lake City, because he can't deal with 11 straight years of non-stop pressure and the lack of a personal life. On his sneaks out through the kitchen,  the arena's young, hot, head chef hides him and gives him his chef's uniform so that he can get away, incognito.He ends up staying with the young chef and, well, need I say more? The only obstacle is that they have to be separated while the singer tours and they spend endless pages trying to figure out how to be together. It's a Romance novel, so you know, from the very first page, that they will.Which means that, in this highly unrealistic, idealized story of the Country Music industry, things like coming out at the CMA , before a live audience of millions, is no big deal. It's no problem with the band, either, or with both sets of parents. In fact, there simply are no problems throughout the book, which leads to the desperate hope that something will finally happen - but it doesn't. Nothing much happens, which lends a kind of easy blandness to the book.What's good about the book is that Ms. Leya is adept at inventing distinct and interesting characters, and spends most of her time spinning the detail of a growing relationship.What's bad about the book is the editing. Although I see it all the time, I am still stunned that so many authors appear (correctly or not) to be functionally illiterate. The basics of grammar and spelling seem to elude them - or is it just in the Gay Romance genre? And some of the errors in this particular book were so obvious, that even a cursory edit (and spellcheck) would have surfaced most of them:"I've sang [sic "sung"] ballads before." (Incorrect verb conjugation was very common throughout the book!)."it won't matter by then. I will have got [sic "gotten"] my...""I'd ran [sic "run"] out the door the other night."Ms. Leya seems to dislike apostrophes and commas:"Your hairs [sic "hair's"] growing out.""It reminded me of my parent's [sic "parents' "] place" Only works if you have just one one parent, but then you'd say "mother's or father's" place."No I won't but the thoughts [sic, so are apostrophes] nice" ."Nope was a smooth ride." [sic both a comma after "nope" and a subject, like "it", would have been nice].And sometimes, she just gets the word entirely wrong:"the yard was a little unkept [sic "unkempt] (Even my browser's spell-check flagged that one as I wrote it here}."But perhaps I miss-read [sic "misread"] his intentions"Not to mention some absolutely baffling constructions:"I'd just like to know they like my songs, not just the appearance singing them" ???"Will be a late dinner." ???And then, my favorite: "Crowds of people filled every seat" How do they get crowds to share each and every seat? Must be uncomfortable.The dreadful editing, by itself, would be enough to put me off - I find the failure to edit to be a major sign of disrespect for the reader. But then there is the writing style. At first, I wondered whether I was reading a book designed for young readers. The sentences were so clipped, short and stilted, so totally lacking in any kind of subtlety or evocation, the dialog so unrealistic, that I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. Then I realized. Ms. Leya doesn't seem to like contractions. It's always "We are going to the store", rather than "We're going to the store". The characters seem to speak in some kind of formalized dialect that just doesn't read true.And that's really a shame. I think this author actually has some talent, and a fairly unique (though undramatic) take on her plots and characters - but the combination of poor editing and stilted prose simply disappointed me. This is the first book I've read from Ms. Leya, so perhaps some of her other work is a bit more compelling than "Lost In The Crowd".