Review: Unncessary components
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 24, 2013
I won't summarise the story because many reviewers already did this.  The story itself wasn't bad as far as the genre goes.  My comments are more on the technical side and style.  I find that more and more authors are using italics to show flashbacks and or a different thought or even an aside.  But if written well, italics are not necessary and can in fact confuse the reader.Dee used italics for her flashbacks, of which there were a lot -- a lot! -- and she used it in and around the characters' thoughts and speech.  Because the italics were associated with flashbacks, using it in regular narrative was a little distracting as I had the inclination to check back to see if somehow I was reading a flashback.  And why is it necessary to show the flashback in italics?  It should be obvious from the descriptions and the narrative that the reader is being placed in another time and place.Then there were the flashbacks.  I started skipping them and found that without reading even a line, I was able to fully understand the story and better appreciated the characters' experience.  Flashbacks aren't always good, especially when they run throughout the story like a second tale.  These went to almost the very end and in my opinion weren't needed.  It would have been more beneficial if Dee revealed the back story through actions, words and even during the counseling sessions.  This is one time when less would have been more.  The story is good enough told at half the length and with no flashback or maybe very little. It probably would have been good to begin the narrative at the end of the back story and then show this through their actions, reactions and interactions.  It's beneficial to give the reader a little bit of mind exercise and let them put things together; not in the sense of a mystery but more like, I'm a little smarter than colour by numbers.  I use this to refer to the way the characters would think of something and the flashback would take up from there.  It seemed a bit juvenile, as if  the reader wouldn't be able to make the link.In the end, I gave it three stars because it was an acceptable if not good story, except for the flashbacks...and the italics.