Review: This did not work for me
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 10, 2014
Very Brief Synopsis - Professor Eugene Thornsby has hired Dr. Marielle Farnan to help with some sort of dive having to do with underwater volcanos. As "Thorny" is an archaeologist, I'm not quite sure why he is involved, unless the volcano unearthed some ancient civilization or something. Marielle is a coral expert. According to the author, Marielle is apparently an idiot in every subject except coral studies. Kind of a coral savant. So she has been hired to do research of some sort. If the reason was spelled out, I apologize. I must have missed it. Marielle and Thorny are partners for the dive, a cave collapses, and Thorny and Marielle are trapped.What worked - I hate to write non-positive reviews. I admire anyone who puts pen to paper and ends up with a published work. That said, I again ask, what worked?  Not much, I am sad to say. The story could have been interesting, could have been at least okay, but it really was not.What didn't work - The first 10% of this novella was an info dump. To make it even worse, the info that was dumped was largely not needed. There was no need to know about the ship captain's drama, or Thorny's ex-girlfriend. Those facts were not in any way relevant to the story. The writing was not polished at all. We flipped from 2nd to 3rd person narrative arbitrarily, and showed no real depth of POV from any character. There was a lot of telling. Lots and lots and lots of telling. The prose was not fluid, but rather was a series of telling what the characters were doing. "He did this" and "She did that" sort of thing. There is no connective writing, no flowing from one scene or action to another. There is very little descriptive in the narrative.The romance was negligible, the heroine was an hysterical, vitriolic mess with a mommy complex, and Thorny was the most bland hero I have read in a long time. We're told over and over that he is mean and hard to get to know, but really, I thought Marielle was the thorny one. Although Eugene does have a soliloquy about enjoying terrorizing his students and TA's, so...There were so many random characters floating around, I lost track, and did not care enough to go back and figure out who they were. Not every character has to have a name and a backstory. Just give me a line to let me know how they pertain to the story I am reading, please. If they don't have a part to play in the current story, leave them out, or just briefly identify and move on. Speaking of random, I got to wondering if this title was listed as an inspirational romance about 65% through it. There is a lot of religious reference for a few pages.Bottom line - This story could have been exciting, heart pounding and sexy. Instead it was dreary, repetitive and as asexual a story as I have ever read. With all due respect, I offer the heartfelt opinion that this author would benefit greatly from an editor to help punch up the story line, and get rid of the unnecessary details that littered this book. Oh, speaking of, if a bright red cardinal is protecting seeds, it is a "he", not a "she". The males carry the bright plumage. (If you ask why there is a mention of a cardinal in a book set in the Caribbean, I would refer you to the unnecessary detail portion of this review.)On the positive side, there were only a few grammatical errors.I was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.