Review: DECEPTIVE PRODUCT, DECEPTIVE SALES PRACTICE
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 09 12, 2012
FIRST: This particular product is not a romance; there is no sex, no seduction in any form but RAPE. AND MORE RAPE. CONTINUAL RAPE.Yes, I used caps.  Why?  Because I want potential buyers to know this upfront. While I firmly believe people can read whatever they wish, that choice should be based on truth, not deception. The author should have been as honest about the repeated rapes as she was about the violence. (EDIT/ADD: And no, not because I have anything against rape in books; I just wasn't prepared to read about it in this book.)Like some of the others, I downloaded this as a freebie after reading the blurb, which is buried somewhere within the excerpt, so allow me:A TRAGIC, MODERN-DAY LOVE STORY...He's a ruthless, drug-lord who kills at the slightest provocation; she's a sassy, foul-mouth, twenty-one year old who takes crap from no one. Put them together and watch the sparks fly. And fists.Add their greedy, backstabbing, amoral families to the mix and you have mayhem.Add the FBI to the mayhem and you have tragedy.Gringa is a modern-day, tragic love story that will have you laughing, crying, gasping and above all wishing there was more.WARNING: This book contains language your mother would definitely NOT approve of, scorching sex scenes that may keep you up at night, unnecessary and un-called for violence and is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18 or anyone seeking world peace just yet. (18 years that is, not months. Well, months too.)**********So I thought, "Hmmm, interesting twist--a bit wacked, but interesting so why not?" Also, the "warning" has such a cutesy, tongue-in-cheek tone, doesn't it?Here's "why not".  As mentioned, there's no romance. No sparks flew between them, unless you count the times he stared at her while she quaked in fear. She's left alone to be bullied by his mother and sister; a strange man walks into her bedroom and sexually harasses and assaults her. There is also strong implication that the "hero" and his sister are engaged in an incestuous relationship. The "hero" says maybe all of 5 words until just before he rapes her anally. (And yeah, I wrote the word--why not when some of the erotica sold here contain it in their "warning"?)The FBI?  Nope, sorry--huge no show for me, must have had car trouble. For that matter, where was the romance? Because I got the tragedy. And if I ever had the misfortune to experience such "scorching sex scenes", then I'll definitely be up at night.SECOND: This is not part of a series; IT'S A SERIAL. An author should know, so I won't waste my time explaining the difference.THIRD: Who's Diago?  Did we read the same book?  Let's see, file size = 210KB. Check.  Print Length = 449 pages. Really? In what universe, printer or ereader? Because after running a macro to clean up the crap formatting, voilà!... I got 70 pages, with Location ending at 1071 (original = Location 3040). I'll make it easy--that's 2/3 of NOTHING stripped out.I'm sorry but who indents to 1/4 of a Kindle screen? And at this day and age, are consistent paragraphs for straight text so difficult that several sentences would start in the middle of my screen? Even a manual typewriter had a set Tab key! Finally, how does "Chapter Three" end up in the middle somewhere but there's no other chapter headings?The truly sad thing about this mess?  Crap formatting, grammar and punctuation (and I mean to the point that I had to pause and mentally construct some sentences to get the gist) and misleading blurb aside, the storyline concept was good and had such potential!  In fact, the beginning was creatively attention-grabbing and the first half was not bad.Skimming the reviews already here, I agree with most of what Junecstraight wrote, so I'll just end this with "ditto". Like the heroine, I need to take another hot shower and scrub real hard.