Review: Bittersweet Tale of a Winner
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 19, 2013
Who would be the first person you'd tell if you won the jackpot in the lottery? Spouse, family, close friends? How about nobody? That's what Rebecca has decided to do, at least for now. After finally convincing herself that she actually did win, she goes about cashing in the ticket and making plans. But as time passes and she still hasn't shared the news, it becomes harder and harder to finally tell people, especially her overbearing husband, Daniel.In the beginning of the book, it comes across as a humorous story as Rebecca goes about hiding her winnings from family and friends, buying a house and car, and generally shopping until she drops, all in secret in another city. She was basically living two separate lives, one as a downtrodden wife and the other loving the freedom and luxury that she's never been able to afford before. As such, the book would have been fairly predictable if it had continued in that way. Instead as the book evolved it became the story of a woman who finally was able to became her own person as we follow her back and forth between her two lives.I really enjoyed this book and found myself not only cheering on Rebecca as she found her footing, but comparing what she did with her newfound wealth with what I might do if I found myself in similar lucky circumstances. It drew me in and kept my interest as I cheered and mentally urged Rebecca on.So why only 4 stars? The book is in critical need of some intense editing. It's as though it was never proofread by an editor or any human, only run through a spell check. Punctuation is sparse and often incorrect with a lack of commas being the worst offender, words are missing from sentences, and wrong words appear in sentences. It happens often enough to be very distracting from an otherwise engaging, entertaining, and well paced story. Formating could be improved as well, but it isn't as much of an issue as the horrible spelling typos and punctuation errors. It's really a shame since the book is otherwise top notch.In spite of the poor job of editing, I'll recommended it, but I truly hope the author will put the effort in to fix the technical problems and issue an update.