Review: Good story tarnished by poor (or no) editing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 5, 2014
I enjoyed the story-telling but the editing needed a LOT of work. I understand this used to be available for free, and as a free book I think the level of editing (or lack thereof) is acceptable. But the book is currently $3.99 on Amazon, and for that I'm not so sure it's worth it. Fortunately, I was able to borrow it from a friend.So what were my issues with the editing? First, that the narrative style was in a distant third-person with lots of head-hopping. That kept me feeling very distanced from the characters and sometimes struggling to figure out if/when I'd jumped POVs. The main reason I didn't DNF it within the first few pages is because friends recommended it. Also, although most of the story was written in the past tense, there were brief, jarring, seemingly random patches of present tense. Plus, of course, the occasional sprinkling of similar-but-wrong words, like 'taunt' for 'taut', etc.I had just been on another Suzanne Brockmann rereading binge right before starting this book, so I'm sure it suffered much more in contrast than if I had been reading something - almost anything - else. I also thought the big denouement at the end was oddly easy. [WARNING: SOMEWHAT SPOILERY AHEAD]SORTA SPOILER BELOW...Sure, Leander is a smart guy and there were definitely clues, but it seemed to me that he figured out and accepted Axton's real identity much too easily. If he lives in a world in which werewolves are a myth, I wouldn't expect him to put those clues together and come up with 'werewolf'. And then he had no struggle whatsoever to accept it? It was really that easy? Sorry, I don't buy it.And yet, despite all those issues - and the fact that I kept thinking I was going to DNF it "any second now" - I stayed up and kept reading until I'd finished it. All that made rating it a bit of a struggle, but I finally settled on 3 stars since I did enjoy the good story underneath the clutter.