Review: Promising plot, with good mystery, but in dire need of editing and proofreading
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 24, 2014
Reviewed on behalf of The Review Boardby Harmony KentFIVE YEARS: A FIRE IN REDBRIDGEBY L.M. LANGLEYMystery, FictionThis story is predominantly about revenge.  Casey and Alex try to piece together events leading up to Nate’s death.  What they find leads them to believe it was murder, rather than suicide or an accident, and that an ex-girlfriend of Nate is responsible.  Casey is a social outcast in her small home-town, and Alex finds himself ostracized when a certain sexual encounter becomes known about.  They start out as not-quite-tolerating-each-other acquaintances, and end up friends.The plot was well presented, and the pace steady.  The characters were real and believable.  This is a story that finds it easy to keep the reader’s attention, with the mystery building right from the start.The book is told in first person POV for Casey, and third person POV for Alex.  What does become confusing is that within the same paragraph the descriptive changes from ‘he/she’ or ‘Alex/Casey’ to ‘the man/the woman’.  I couldn’t see any reason for this, and it threw me time and again.  What also threw me, and made me have to work very hard to keep track—especially at the beginning—was the unannounced time jumping.  The switches simply occurred between paragraphs, and in a few instances between one dialogue episode and another.  Generally, POV switches would occur whenever a time jump occurred.  I read to roughly halfway through the book before this stopped being such an issue and I felt able to just read, without screwing up my eyes and rubbing my forehead in consternation.The prose is extremely passive in nature, and has a lot of telling rather than showing.  Actions are often delayed unnecessarily by the use of ‘started to’ instead of the character just getting on with it.  There are a lot of sentences that are garbled, and appear half edited.  Many words are missing or simply misspelled.  There is the occasional comma splice and split infinitive.The Verdict:This is a book that shows great promise, with a good plot and well rounded characters.  If you like a good mystery then you will probably enjoy this book.  There is a need for proofreading and editing to bring the novel up to par and make for a smoother read.  Because of the sheer amount of errors I do not feel able to offer more than 5 out of 10 stars (2.5 out of 5, rounded up to 3).  However, with a good editor, I would say this is an author to watch in the future.