Review: Charming but flawed
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 5, 2011
I love the series because I am in just the mood for an easy escape.  But three things have begun to bother me a lot - perhaps too much for me to read another in the series.One is too much repetition from one book to the next, almost as if the author is cutting and pasting rather than writing anew.  Who needed to be faced with a second version of cousin Althea's Organic Vegetable poem, even with the slight revisions?  It felt like I was having filler foisted upon me rather than writing, as if I were paying twice for one thing.The second thing that is really bothering me more and more is the sloppy proofreading.  It seems to have been proofed, if at all, by a mechanical program that doesn't recognize the need for articles and doesn't notice word inversions.And the third and final of my complaints is that the author doesn't seem to know that sometimes it is correct to write "Alex and I" as in "Alex and I went to the parade" and sometimes it is correct to write "Alex and me" as in "Blue gave Alex and me a soft 'Woof!'  The error --  writing "I" where "me" is called for -- is called false gentility and occurs in both our spoken and written language more and more frequently and will no doubt someday not too long from now become acceptable by default -- but it hasn't yet and it really grates on my mind's ear when I read it.  I think this is another instance of the need for professional proofreading.These complaints aside,I do like Chloe Boston, her love for her animal companions, her way of describing her intellectual processes, and her loyalty to both her obnoxious and her charming relatives.  I do wonder, however, if, in a town as small as Hope Falls, there are enough citizens to continue killing them -- whether by accident or by murder -- and still maintain a sufficient population to be able to afford a meter maid.