Review: For dog lovers, not English lovers
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 9, 2013
As the description tells you, this is a love story between two people who make bad first impressions on each other.  There are a few other mishaps on their path to getting to know and like each other.  If you're a fan of stories with some friction at the start of the relationship, you might want to give this one a try (especially if you happen to catch it free).  There are a few sweet scenes and despite the two stars, it wasn't bad enough to make me want to give up on it.However, the book is in need of a competent editor.  Most of the mistakes were not typos, but grammar issues.  If you know that everyday is an adjective, that the past tense of lie is lay, and the difference between making a word plural or possessive, then you might cringe a little while reading this.  Or if random, commas in the middle of a sentence drive you, nuts.  (Or if you've gone past the third grade and understand that the moon doesn't rise "on cue" as the sun goes down.)There are also some minor continuity problems.  The guy's grandfather is praised for treating all of his grandchildren equally, but later appears to have only one grandchild.  The guy's parents were also conspicuously absent from his life story.  If the thing he is uncomfortable about had skipped his dad that would have actually made more sense.  Either that happened or his dad is dead and it feels as though one or the other should have been mentioned.By far the biggest issue with the story though is that the author seems to have written her dialog tags with an open thesaurus.  People in this story rarely said anything.  They commented, mentioned, whispered, asked, questioned, remarked, exclaimed and so on and on and on.  Good dialog tags need to fade into the background, not distract you to the point that you start laughing when the author pulls out a new one.Please don't think I'm listing the faults to be malicious.  I wanted to be specific as to why I rated it so low in case the author is open to constructive criticism and so potential readers could decide if the same issues would bother them.  Some people aren't as concerned with mechanics and style.  They only want a strong plot with believable characters and you can mostly find that here.  Especially if you are a dog lover, you might enjoy Dog Park.