Review: If Only Ms. Owens had a Better Editor
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 28, 2013
If Only is dedicated to battered women and in the Dedication Ms. Owens says that if she can help even one woman to escape her abuser, she will be happy.  She then starts the book with her heroine, Bree Sexton, out with friends celebrating her divorce from her abuser becoming final.  How did Bree escape her abuser?  If her ex-husband, Bryan is as angry, violent and possessive as Ms. Owens portrays him, not to mention being a trust-fund baby with a father who will bail him out of any situation, how has Bree managed to get out of the house, live in the same town, under the same name, and divorce this madman?  Ms. Owens does not explain any of that, which in my opinion is what an abused woman needs to read in order to free herself from a similar situation.  Instead, she starts the story when the divorce is final.  Bree slips on a patch of ice and wakes up in the arms of “the one who got away,” and the book becomes urban fantasy—pure escapism.This is a first novel, so I could maybe forgive the fact that it is badly written with major gaps in continuity, major head-hops and poor grammar.  I can only forgive this because Ms. Owens actually went through a reputable publisher that is recommended on Preditors and Editors and not mentioned at all by Piers Anthony.  So, what became of her editor?She keeps describing Scott Weston, Bree’s dear hubby, the hero of If Only as having calloused hands.  Bree writes children’s books and Scott illustrates them.  How would his hands get calloused?  An artist might have a callous on his middle finger from holding a pencil or paint brush.  These days I’d worry about an illustrator getting carpal tunnel from drawing on a computer with a mouse.  But calloused hands?  Not unless he does carpentry or brick-laying in his spare time.Bryan Sexton is their publisher’s son and tries to beat and rape her at work.  She escapes and makes her way home.  The next day during a snowball fight, Scott wonders why she left work early.  It took him a whole day to wonder about it?  He even takes her face in his hands being careful of her bruises when he kisses her.  She’s pregnant with their first child—he didn’t rush home to see what was wrong and how she was the minute he heard she left?  He never even asks her why she left work early or where the bruises came from.  That was a huge hole—one any editor worth his or her salt should have made sure got plugged.  What’s going on at Liquid Silver Books that they let something this bad get out the door?  As for head hops, Ms. Owens changes points of view in the middle of paragraphs, not just scenes.It’s the job of the editor to fix these things.  If this book had come across my desk, I would have made her rewrite it to explain just how Bree got away from Bryan, and how she kept him from walking right through any orders of protection she may have taken out against him and taking his revenge against her before the divorce became final.  I would have made her plug up the rest of the holes in this story, and I would have made her stick to one point of view in each scene.  Ms. Owens had really good intentions for this story, but she missed the mark by several miles.  It’s a shame she didn’t have an editor who was capable of reeling her back in.  Had she published independently, I would chide her for that.  Instead, I’m chiding Liquid Silver Books, whose job it was to see she received that quality of editing.I’m sorry, Ms. Owens.  I don’t see how If Only can help anyone get away from her abuser, aside from helping her to be able to dream of a better life.  Maybe that’s a first step, but it’s not practical.  Perhaps your next book will give more detail about how you filed for orders of protection, where you went when you left your abuser, and how you managed to stay safe from him if he came after you when you finally got away.  But I would request a better editor for that one.