Blurb:
As a
recovering alcoholic, Cole Tucker has no intention of falling in love with
Samantha Chase, especially when he learns her husband and daughter were killed
by a drunk driver. How would she ever be able to forgive his past? Samantha
Chase is happy to have found a place to start a new life with her son, the last
thing she expected was to fall in love with her new boss. But, how can she
overlook his former life?
You'll
love False Impressions by
Marianne Rice, a passionate and poignant tale of new love and second chances.
Donna's
Review:
Most
of you who read my reviews know that I analyze based largely on the elements that
False Impressions falls short in all of
the above. I hate to say it, but I got only 30% through the book before putting
it down. I just could not go any further. I tried to like it. I really did.
Authors put their heart and soul into a book, even if it is written badly, and
every successful author has a few bad books (or a lot) under their belt. That
having been said, however, it is not necessary for readers to read the bad
stuff. Authors put the bad stuff in the file cabinet. It is either forgotten,
laughed about later, or revised when they have better writing skills.
First,
the characters and the plotting. I will oftentimes put up with a lot,
especially off of new authors, if the characters are well done. In this case, I
did not even like these people, and I certainly cared not at all what happened
to them. They have issues (deceased spouse, alcoholism), but these have not
been translated into clear cut internal and external goals. Without goals, I
had no purpose for reading. I did not even have a purpose for reading each
section/chapter, because it was not clearly stated (or subtly stated) what the
point of view character needed to accomplish in that section to “fix” their
situation. As a result, there was no disaster at the end (clearly stated) and
no amendment of the goal as the plot drove forward (or was suppose to drive
forward) to the next disaster.
Another
problem was the dialogue, which in this situation falls flat. The characters
spend too much time talking about ordinary things. (Actually, any dialogue
discussing ordinary things, unless it drives the plot forward, is flat and
unnecessary.) There are long sections with the hero discussing superheroes with
the heroine’s son. Perhaps there was a point to this, but even at that, one
conversation would have been fine. There is too much cussing that serves no
purpose, and the sexual innuendos turned me off. I knew I was in trouble at the
end of chapter one. “He looked reluctant but gestured to the back bedroom where
she gave him the best two hours of her life.” Not only is the verb tense wacky,
but she was merely going to paint the room. A few more of those did me in.
There are better ways of creating a “sexy” or “romantic” mood within a book. It
involves the emotions and conflict within the characters themselves, not off
color dialogue and word play.
The
sentence structure is way too long and windy. Some of the sentences are so long
I had to reread to remember what was said at the beginning. In other places it
was short, with dashes and clipped words. Granted, these have a place in
fiction, but they should be used sparingly. Long sentences have no place at all
(because basically they become run on sentences). There are tons of comma
mistakes, and more often than not the verb tense is changed within a sentence
itself. (Reference the quote above.) The poor sentence structure, combined with
the ineffective dialogue, results in a confusing mush of sentences that do not
enhance the story but merely muddle it further.
Last,
but not least, this book is WAY WAY WAY overpriced. It is only 158 pages, which
makes the likely word count around 80,000 words. This is the author’s third
book, so she is not well-known. Few authors, even well-known ones, price kindle
versions with that number of pages that high. Perhaps that is the publisher’s
decision. Regardless, it is a bad one.
One
rose for effort.
(Note:
I did receive a copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.)
Length: 158 Pages
Digital Price: $5.99
Thanks
for visiting. Julie, Donna & Rochelle
No comments:
Post a Comment