Review: Couldn't finish it
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2014
I looked forward to this book. I love vigilante stories and think they should be in their own genre. But sadly, I had a very difficult time reading this, and had to keep telling myself to just keep going; maybe it'll get better and the bad writing will somehow diminish. I was really *trying* to give the book a chance. But in the end, I had to stop. There are too many books on my To Read list to lose time on books that just don't meet a certain standard of quality.My first problem was on page 2. A single tear makes its way down Annie's cheek and "There was no point in wiping it away." Why? Because she would cry again over the same thing in the future. The logic being, why wipe a tear today, when you're just going to cry again some other day? And then it says she would fight the on-going tears for as long as it took.I thought that the author was trying a little too hard there, but it could be forgiven and forgotten - if such bad writing didn't persist. But it did.At the top of page 3, Annie "whipped off her coat, feeling relief in the smoothness of suede leather shorts and matching halter top."What the heck does that mean? What are the shorts and the top providing relief from? It would have made more sense to mention something about her thoughts on being dressed like that in a church. But nothing about that was mentioned.In the same paragraph on the same page, Annie stands in a parking lot "scanning the nearby area." And then "At last, she sucked in a deep breath..."  At last? As if she were in a contest to see how long she could hold her breath? Or after forsaking deep breaths all day for shallow breaths? It just doesn't make sense that the sentence starts with "At last."On the next page, Annie walks up to a night club and we're told that "Music pumped through the walls, spilled out to the street like a torn bag of grain."Aside from the incorrect use of a comma, this is a horrible metaphor, comparing sound to grain. This made me visualize sound making it out through the walls of the club and then falling onto the asphalt and lying there.On the same page, a man at the bar catches Annie's eye, so she walks over to him, and he talks to her while she looks around the club. Then, "She gave the man a confirming nod and headed to the back of the club."What did she confirm? Did the man ask her if she was going to never say a word to him and leave him to go to the back of the club? Probably not, but we never find out what she was confirming.These aren't major issues, but they're there, and they distract. I couldn't get into the story and the flow of the plot because I kept stopping every few paragraphs and asking, "Huh?"Like when she said "This city claimed one of the highest crime rates in the country." Really? That's not something any city would lay claim to. It's something they'd be criticized for. The word she needed to use there was simply "had.""Before she pulled away from the curb, Annie checked back at her captive."She either checked her captive, or she looked back at him. But to say that she "checked back" is the wrong phrasing to use here. Likewise in the next paragraph, "She let out a cleansing breath as she descended back in her seat."  I can overlook the "cleansing breath" but did she descend in her seat, or lean back? She either went downward or back. I don't see how a person can "descend back.""Annie stood scrutinizing her to-do list" and she prioritized "each one." Each list? No. Each item on the list. But she didn't say that.Annie is eating an energy bar when her cell phone rings, so she taps a button to answer it in hands-free mode. "Some of the chocolate smeared on the buttons of her phone increasing her heart rate."  Really?"It's dangerous to eat and drive," the voice permeated from her cell.Permeated? No. Not quite.Annie went into an online chatroom and "began exchanging messages with screen name Ted."  Okay, so what's that user's real name? We find out that his name is actually Ted! So it could have said she began exchanging messages with someone named Ted. Telling us his screenname was Ted indicates that Ted is nothing but a screenname, but it's actually the guy's name.This is just one of many examples of how my mind is constantly jolted out of the story as I wonder about the way things are being written. I was convinced that this was a first time author who did not have the luxury of a decent editor to point out these flaws and make sure they were rectified before publication. (As well as the fragmented sentences and incorrect punctuation, etc.)"Short and stalky, his obviously tailored business suit resembled a perfect square."  Think of the silly image this creates in your mind. A perfect square? Equally tall as wide? "Short and stocky" would have been sufficient, but again, the author tries too hard for some kind of literary flair that just fails."The irony lit a spark in her, and she almost split into a grin." She, the person, almost split into a grin. Not her mouth, or her lips, but her."The hum of distant traffic dominated the intermittent dog barking or family chatterings from the open windows."There are mutliple things wrong with that sentence.  But I've already given far more examples than I intended and I'm not trying to skewer the author.If none of what I've mentioned bothers you, you might thoroughly enjoy the book. It has a lot of good reviews and none of the bad reviews even mention the things that I've just described (and which are just a small, random sampling from the first several chapters.)The sad thing is, there's clearly talent here. It just needs to either be developed, or edited. I see that this author is not only *not* a first time author, but has written several books. I can only hope that the writing has improved in the later books and that the author hasn't "learned" that she has no need to do better.