Review: Compelling but not captivating
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 5, 2012
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it definitely hooked me. I read the sample pages and wanted to find out what happened next, and whenever I stopped reading for a while, the book pulled me back.On the other hand, I couldn't fully immerse myself in the experience because the main character's emotions seemed off-kilter. Perhaps it's just me, but the the heroine's emotions don't make sense in the context of the triggers, and her actions don't make sense in the context of her emotions. If something happens, I would expect her to feel something that's connected to the experience. Instead, she feels something that's unconnected to the trigger. If she feels something, I would expect her to do something based on how she feels. Instead, she takes actions which contradict what she feels.If this happened just once or twice, I wouldn't mind; I'd assume she was just differently wired from me. But it happens all the time. Her emotions might have been understandable if they had happened some pages earlier or some pages later, and her actions would also make sense if arose from emotions she had had some pages earlier or some pages later. But it was a constant emotionally unconvincing zigzag that frequently jolted me out of the story experience. Much as I wanted to identify with the heroine, I could not.I was also put off by the many spelling errors. In particular, the words lie/lay (lying/laying etc) were constantly confused. Also rites/rights. The proofreader seems to have had a problem with homonyms. More some words were used in the wrong context or the wrong form, e.g. plural instead of singular (sarcophagi instead of sarcophagus) and so on. For other readers, these errors may not be a problem, but for me, their frequency interfered with the reading pleasure.