Review: Unintentionally hilarious at times
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2012
Rachel Donnelly is a new author who clearly has a lot of potential.  However, she has yet to truly learn that words have power, and incorrectly-used words can prove disastrous to the mood of a story.Poor grammar and sentence structure rendered the first few chapters difficult to read, but things went really wonky a few chapters in when our heroine, Kay, traveled to France to visit her grandmother.  Kay shows her mettle in being brave enough to enter a chateau suffering from "white shudders."  One cannot help wondering if this condition will prove to be contagious, and if all structures in the region will soon be trembling on their foundations.Completely ignoring the ongoing tremors beneath her feet, Grandmere arranges for Kay to attend a masked ball.  There, Kay encounters at least two men with "well-formed physics."  Indeed.  Well.  That certainly provokes a mental image that is best not described.To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I ask the author, "Why do you keep using that word? I do not think it means what you think it means."I threw in the towel when, later in the book, our Kay (while apparently channeling Humphrey Bogart) tells the Hot Guy that "..I shall always cherish Venice the most."They had been in Vienna.Ms. Donnelly - you do have talent.  I really liked your premise for the story. I liked the characters.  But please - please - find yourself a professional editor.  Thank you.