Review: Good Stories, Needs Some Work
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2014
I was really torn on what rating to give this set. On one hand, the stories are fairly good, with good plot and character development and a nice variety in the unfolding of the story plots. On the other hand, the spelling and grammar was terrible and ridiculously frustrating and the author used the same plot device to create conflict between the couple in each book, and it didn't make sense for all of the stories.Michelle Hughes has great potential as an author. Each of the stories developed in unique ways, with a nice amount of variety in the way the characters interacted and grew within their own psyches and relationships. She also gave a wonderful and very healthy overview of what the BDSM lifestyle should be. For the most part. I did have some serious issues with Scarlett's Temptation, as I felt Rhett's behavior was something that a Dom as experienced as he is supposed to be would never be so stupid as to do. He completely violated the tenets of Safe, Sane, and Consensual and knew that Scarlett was inexperienced enough to not know what he was doing to her. She also forgave him far too quickly for my tastes considering how badly he violated her trust and risked her mental and emotional safety, and they didn't really have an in-depth conversation with him about their problems before she forgave him, which they desperately needed to do.Which leads me to my primary issue with the story development. Ms. Hughes has each of the stories unfolding fairly well up to a point, and at that juncture, she suddenly has each of the couples become completely uncommunicative with each other. In most of the stories, that just didn't work for me, since the Dominant and submissive had fairly good communication (or at least read each other well enough and trusted their instincts) up until that point. The last story in the set, Undercover Submissive, was the hardest for me to believe that plot device, since their communication was open, honest, and trusting until they just decided (for no reason) that they weren't going to work out and didn't actually talk about anything before separating. Ms. Hughes could easily have found better ways to develop some conflict or find a reason to separate the characters for a time if that's how she wanted the stories to unfold, but instead she relied on the same plot device in each story - the characters take their own insecurities and suddenly and inexplicably use that as a reason to assume the other person just doesn't want to be with them. Even though all evidence up to that point says the exact opposite. It was really frustrating.The grammar and punctuation was also a huge problem for me. Ms. Hughes regularly misspelled words, used the wrong words, used apostrophes to make words plural (one of my pet peeves), put quotation marks in random places or failed to put quotation marks around things the characters said, and mixed up pronouns and character names. There were numerous occasions when I had to go back and re-read paragraphs (sometimes multiple times) in order to try to decipher what she was actually trying to say, and it really interfered with the reading of the stories.I felt the last story in the set (Undercover Submissive) was the best, but I barely managed to get to that point because I found reading the rest of the stories so irritating and frustrating. The set has its good points, as I mentioned in my first paragraph, and I recommend the set as it is a great value for the price. However, I also recommend that you take some time between reading each story due to the poor quality of the editing, the trite reliance on communication problems, and the heroines' tendencies for Too Stupid To Live behavior. I also recommend starting with the last story in the set as it really was the best, even if it was also the shortest.