Review: The Editing Is Unacceptable
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2014
I made a mistake. I didn't realize this was a Mathew Ortiz book, or perhaps, subconsciously, had hoped he'd improved.Sadly, that's not the case. There is no way to excuse the hopeless editing and the almost-illiterate writing. And it's a shame, because Mr. Ortiz is actually a pretty good story-teller and develops original and attractive characters.But I just could not slog through the editing.In the first few pages of the book, my reading was stopped cold by an amazing series of obvious grammatical and spelling errors:"The Why's and How's of divorce." (there are NO apostrophes in plurals!)"They knew why we got divorce." (past tense, please!)"I got into the shower naked. I could feel the water on my naked body... we get it, Mathew, the guy was naked, you don't have to say it over and over again.Some of the problems were just bad or awkward writing:"After we had left the restaurant we had ended up making out in my truck" ahem... try "after we left the restaurant, we ended up making out in my truck". What, the past tense isn't good enough?"If it wasn't [sic - should be weren't] for Vivian, Thomas and RJ, I would have left her earlier in our marriage." (In our marriage? Isn't "I would have left her" enough?) Or were you going to leave her "all alone" in our marriage? Sorry, not that big a deal, just an awkward construction amongst many similar others."My phone alerted me that I had got [sic] a text. How about "gotten"?"He had barely spoke [sic] to me since I divorced his mother". Should have been "spoken", of course."Refusing to see me and siding with his mother." This sentence has no subject, no verb, it's just a fragment.And then there were some blatantly unbelievable statements, such as:The hero hit his full height of 6' 4" and filled out by the age of 12?  Six four at the age of 12? Must be a freak of nature.And this was all in the first six pages. Sorry, I couldn't complete the book because I just couldn't stand to slog through such terrible writing and editing, once again.It's a shame. Mr. Ortiz might be a pretty good author (he is already prolific) if he can just find an editor. Maybe you have more patience and willingness, than I do, to spend a good portion of your reading time trying to determine what the author intended to write, as opposed to what he really wrote. I suggest you read the sample on the "product page" and decide if you can justify the slog through the bad grammar, spelling and unbelievable characters or not. Obviously, some people have, because they gave this book good reviews. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.