Review: Amazing story, but needs an editor
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 12, 2014
This was an awesome, page-turning, New Adult romance on the darker side. The blurb and cover drew me in, and I was glad that I picked up this book from Amazon. The story, which takes place in the 1980s, follows Connor Clay, an 18 year-old punk rocker with a shattered past. The story is told from his POV as he goes through the trials in his life from past girlfriends, to family issues. The author covers some very deep and controversial subjects from rape, abuse, suicide, drugs, and more. The thing I loved about this book was that these characters were real. They made real decisions, and I can connect with them. Especially Connor's friend and bandmate, Tonya.I was born in the 80s, so it was nice to go back in time and relive those awesome days of music and fashion, and even smile when some pop culture references are dropped here and there. The author did a great job in describing this era to the finest detail, which is a plus.There's very little to no sex in the book. But reading this story, there's so much going on that it's not needed. This is probably the first NA book I've read that doesn't feature explicit sex. There are sexual references here and there, but that's about it. I didn't realize this until after reading the book. But that goes to show you that you can still have a great NA book without having a bunch of sex in it.Toward the end of the story, it gets really heart-wrenching, as Connor breaks down about his past. I feel for him. He thinks no one can understand him. Despite it all, the story ends in a HFN, and I look forward to reading future books and seeing what Connor is going to do next. I'm definitely hooked on the story.I would have given this story 5 stars because I loved it so much, however, there was one BIG thing about this book that annoyed me to no end: the editing. I'm not sure if the author self-edited or what, but it seems obvious there was no professional editor involved. The typo and grammar issues were rampant throughout the story, and at times, took me out of the story, which annoyed me. Issues like (there/their/they're, to/too, its/it's) kind of things, capitalization and punctuation errors were all over the place. And there was a frequent misuse of the comma splice, which was the most annoying of them all. For example in Chapter 15: "The cop leans in the car, it's Officer Flashlight from the Laundromat -- Dano." Sentences like these were everywhere, and I think any professional editor would have gone through and fixed them.