Review: You'd totally get an A if this were high school
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 21, 2012
Dark Entry by John Kachuba is an engaging, though very flawed book. It reads like an essay by a clever 17-year-old, each detail and thought lovingly laid out in simplistic language, often needing commas and contractions. My inner narrator sounded like she was reading to a room of grade-schoolers.  There is no showing, only telling, and that telling included entire passages and points-of-view that were extraneous to the tale. I believe this fiction work suffers from the fact that most of Kochuba's books are non-fiction, and the two are very different creatures.The heroine was barely smart enough to draw air into her lungs, and this was compounded by an extraordinarily weak constitution. Luckily, she was beautiful, and therefore worthy of the worship of every male in the book. Supporting characters bear no surprises.As another review mentioned, the dialogue is awkward. Sometimes it sounds like a 50s movie, sometimes an inelegant attempt at slang is made. The text itself is relatively clean for an indie; I spotted six typos, a couple of Vizzinis ("This word, you keep using it. I don't think it means what you think it means."), and a chaise lounge. It's chaise longue. I hate it too, and I think "lounge" makes more sense, but we are not the arbiters of spelling.Despite all this, the story itself kept me engaged. I love a good ghost story, especially one with history. Particularly winsome was a character who lives in the woods. Even sexualizing him inappropriately, I assume to obscure his identity and intentions, didn't ruin the charm of watching his self-discovery. I wanted to see what happened to him, and I kept reading in hopes that the heroine would be eaten by something horrible. Though the ending was disappointing in substance and execution, I only mildly regret the journey.Conclusion: you could do worse for a free book, but don't pay for this one.***Reviewed by Indie Book Reviewer