Review: Nothing to Lose by Consuelo Saah Baehr
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 8, 2012
This review was originally posted on Big Al's Books and Pals review blog on Thursday, August 23, 2012I think this book had a lot of potential, but due to an overuse of narrative, it missed the mark for me. There is some good dialogue throughout the story, but the author spends most of her time telling us what the characters think and feel, instead of showing us. When an author tells the story this way the characters end up flat, and I have a hard time connecting with them. It's like reading a text book for me.Don, the black design manager who is determined to help April lose weight, is the most honest character in the story and shows the most emotion.April was certain she could control her future by simply losing weight. While it is true that losing weight will increase your self-confidence and you will feel better, it won't make all your dreams come true., although this is the way it worked out for April. After she loses sixty pounds, all of a sudden Luis starts paying attention to her, even though he never even acknowledges that she has lost weight. Thank goodness she didn't pin all of her self worth on emotionally aloof Luis.I suspect this relationship with Luis will end up the same as her failed marriage because none of the underlying issues of destructive behavior were dealt with. An open and honest conversation between April and Luis is truly needed for both their sakes, unfortunately we never got to see that.FYI:There are a few F bombs dropped along with other adult language. Sexual situations were mainly behind closed doors.There are several editing issues in this book: missing letters, wrong words, missing quotation marks, names such as Sarah is sometimes Sara, and Harald is spelled Herald one time. There are also what could be several small OCR scanning issues as in spaces (space s) in some wording (word ing) that doesn't belong. The editing issues surprise me because I was under the impression this was a traditionally published book at one time.**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **