Review: Needs help badly!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 12, 2013
I'm very glad this was a free book, because I would have been upset if I'd actually paid money for it.To begin with, there had been little to no proofing or editing.  The story was riddled with typos, punctuation and grammatical errors - multiple errors per page, in most cases.  (Who capitalizes "Orange Juice" for goodness' sake?)  Another reviewer had commented on the lack of editing, and there was a reply in September 2013 which said the book had been recently re-edited and the errors removed.  I got this book in November 2013, and it was still full of issues.  If it had been re-edited, I'd hate to see how bad it was before!The plot of Three Year Rule was very thin.  I'd figured out who the protagonist was, and what he was after, by the time I was 1/3 of the way through.  I kept reading though, thinking there might be a twist at the end.  No, I was right from the beginning.I found the entire storyline to be very much without depth.  Details that could have added to the story were glossed over.  The timeline was erratic - In some places it dragged out minute-by-minute, and in others whole months were skipped over.  This made the development of the relationships difficult to follow.The characters themselves were also without depth or detail.  Life events that should have had some attention paid to them were only mentioned in passing.  Attacks that would have severely traumatized most people were barely paid attention to by the main characters.  The dogs had more sense and responsiveness than the people did!All in all, the entire book read like an extended summary that a high school-aged teen would write - brief and hitting only the high points.  I can't recommend it at this time.  Perhaps if Ms. Stanford went back and fleshed it out to add detail and depth, and got herself a competent editor, it could still be a good book.  That's what the two stars are for: the potential.