Review: Badly needs an editor & proofreader
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2014
I have to say that I am only reviewing the first 30% of the book, because that's as far as I could stand to read. The concept of the story is intriguing, but the author's style is choppy & amateur, which I was willing to overlook & plow ahead. Having read the glowing reviews on Amazon, I expected it to get better. What finally stopped me was the incredible number of errors -- punctuation (many commas where they weren't needed, incorrectly placed semi-colons, omitted apostrophes), incorrect words/homonyms (emerged/submerged, lay/laid, clinched/clenched, pedaled/peddled, shown/shone full/fool, too/to, shear/sheer swarthy/swath, etc.), bad grammar (much vs. many, dangling prepositions), missing or extra words, etc. I could go on & on, but just writing this is making me cringe.In the first part of the book, some details are inconsistent with the time period (1949-50): female college dorms would have had curfews as well as restrictions regarding male visitors. Would Barbara put on "running shoes" (didn't we call them sneakers or track shoes?) & a baseball cap to go out for a jog? She seemed to be firmly placed in the 21st century, not the middle of the previous century. As an employee (even a groundskeeper) of a prestigious & traditional educational institution, would Evan have been allowed to wear his hair so long? There didn't seem to be a reason for Barbara to become obsessed with Evan after having spoken no more than a couple of sentences with one another.If you're going to mention the title of a real (& certainly not obscure) book, *please* spell it correctly -- It's not Mien Kompf!I realized it was time to stop reading the book when I concentrated more on finding errors (which I highlighted and/or noted) than on the story. When I looked & saw that I had made 32 notes (not counting highlights) & I had read only 30% of the book, it was time to move on to something else.