Review: James has Potential in her Writing - but misses with Stolen
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 29, 2013
Ella James has potential.I always start my reviews with the bad and end with the good. The bad? The writing. Ella darling, please don't rely on your husband anymore for editing and spend a little extra to hire an editor.  There's only so much sympathy an indie writer can get. Yes, your commas are all in the right place, but your sentence structure needs work! At times I became lost because I just couldn't follow what was being written. Since this is written in third person I didn't understand that childish narrative. Yes, it's a YA - but it was written more like first person pre-teen. Please give your YA readers more credit on language and sophistication, they seek it! We seek it!Julia was endearing in Stained but I completely lost her in Stolen. She becomes whiny, indecisive, and just an annoying brat. I don't like the Harry Potter reference, because as another reviewer says, it seems like cheating on description. The story was FAR too short and should've been tacked on to Stained instead since that one was short as well. This would have made a nice size book. Stolen seems rushed and not well thought out. There were too many disconnections throughout where things didn't add up.For the good. The storyline is fantastic and original. I love nephilim stories and really wished we got more from this one. I feel like the story itself has a ton of potential and I'll be keeping an eye out on James writing career. I really do hope this series gets picked up by a traditional publisher that can do it some service that it deserves. If it gets rewritten and cleaned up it'll be a hit all the way across. James has conquered the hardest part of writing and that's finding a story that we want to get lost in and this is that story.