Review: Fun but frustrating!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 16, 2011
While I enjoyed this mystery, the sheer number of line editing errors repeatedly took me out of the story while I mentally reached for my red pen. Sentence fragments, random words, missing quotation marks, repeated sentence structures and the abundance and overuse of words like, however, even, just, that ... were constant reminders that this is a self published novel. I also found the final solution came out of nowhere. When you spend more than 300 pages on a mystery, you'd hope that, once the mystery is revealed, it would be one for which there were a few hints or clues. Not in this case. It felt as if the author, along with the reader, didn't know who the killer was until the final moments.Still, Taylor weaves a good story filled with tinkerers and elixirs, kilt wearing Scotts and sumptuous bedrooms warmed by crackling fires. The romance is well told, the characters well drawn if a bit cliché at times, and the setting fully realized as a recognizable London, only a bit different.Since this book was free, I can forgive the multitude of editing errors, but the frequency has me hesitating to fork out a few bucks for the next book. While the romance and setting are fun, the errors may make the reading more frustrating than its worth.