Review: Good writing, not so much the rest
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 31, 2013
Usually I find myself writing a review that starts with "this was a really good idea but the execution was not..."  I am kind of feeling the opposite after reading this book.  The author is really quite good with the technical aspects of writing and editing.  It is always a pleasant surprise to read a self published e book in which someone has done more than just used Spellcheck.That being said, I found the actual story line to be a bit flat.  It felt like the plot outline was done by a dreamy 16 year old then handed over to someone a little older to do the actual writing.  Maybe it was the ages of the characters that totally threw me off.  Serena was a 14 (almost 15 year old though!) and the 18 year old Will had the hots for her.  That was believable, but just this side of jail bait.  But he then hung on the edges of her life silently watching over her for the next seven years.  Kind of creepy. Then there were the four kids in Serena's family---from the way it read there were 4 of them between the ages of 18 and 15.  I am not sure how that happened or what the point of it was---were Anthony and Sawyer twins?  Maybe they and Mckinley were triplets?  Mckinley was the only of the siblings to serve a purpose to the plot so I found the addition of the brothers to be pointless and confusing.There was too much that was too easy to resolve.  I really disliked that way the story of the night of the assault was literally cut and pasted into another chapter.  That felt like an insult to be forced to read the exact same pages over again--I just flipped past them when it became obvious nothing new had been added.  The ending was just too easy and predictable---again, it seemed like it came from a teenager's "and they all lived happily ever after" notebook.I gave this 3 stars instead of 2 because the author does have good writing skills.  I just felt that the plot and characters did not match the level of writing.  Based solely on the story itself it would be a 2* book.