Review: Sometimes a thesaurus is not your friend.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 11 29, 2013
I like to try out new HR authors, looking for gems such as Miranda Davis's debutThe Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series).  This Jefferson book has lots of favorable reviews so I thought to give it a try.Well, it has a usual HR plot.  A rake (who's not really all that hardened in his rakishness) must marry money because the earldom he has inherited has been depleted of funds by previous earls.  And there's lovely, wealthy Miss Tisdale, extremely prim and proper, who doesn't put a foot out of line and needs to be in complete control of herself and her life.  Well, you know what will happen.  Who doesn't when reading any historical romance?The characters, I'll have to admit, are better developed than in many debut HRs I've read lately, but it's still a pretty ordinary plot.  However, I was glued to the pages to the end, though not for a good reason.  The writing is strange.  Substitutions of the word one would expect in a phrase for an 'almost' synonym that is longer, more erudite-sounding but just enough off to sound jarring.  I found strange uses of words, grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes on every page and I am not exaggerating.Here are some examples of jarring words:"For some inane reason this audacious man...had rendered her unremittingly curious.""All the while, he observed Ambrosia out of the corner of his eye, unwittingly cognizant of her evasiveness.""His imprudence was ambient...""...his body throbbed with urge...""Probably even more nefarious than her late night family gambling was her review of her father's ledgers.""She's a true ingenue when it comes to games of chance."  [This was supposed to mean that she's really good at games of chance.]"She stared at him, her blank expression making her thoughts undistinguishable.""Dancing couples occluded her line of site [sic].""I'm going to appease my uncle's request and look over a few of the books.""Just being in the same room with him had made her unduly cognoscente of all her actions."And this is just a small sample.I also found egregious misuse of "whom".  Just to give one example:  "There are plenty of men whom make me feel ill."  There are plenty more examples where that one came from.And spelling substitutions such as "site" when she meant "sight", "illicit" when she meant "elicit", "passed" where it should have been "past", "censor" instead of "censure", etc., etc., etc.And just plain bad grammar, such as "Truth be told, he had always drank to excess."  Or "After you yourself has ruined so many?"  And this one takes the cake:  "...she wasn't alone at all and there in lied the problem".This is so full of errors that it would be a good exercise in a composition class at first-year college level to have students find them all.  So many that I could not enjoy the book and instead found myself just noting all the mistakes.Where are editors and proof readers?  Even if you are self-published you should have a bit more care than this.(Edited on 1/4/2014 to add that I have learned that some of the errors mentioned in my review have been corrected.  However, according to my sister, who read the corrected edition, there are still major grammar and spelling flaws in this book.)