Ree Y. (batreader) reviewed on 8/24/2014 + 11 more book reviews

I had high hopes when I read the title and blurb, but the book was a complete disappointment. Very poor writing! The descriptions were without color, detail, none of the 5 senses...a prime example was the main character saying she cooked all the things her daughter like for dinner, but there weren't any details to let the reader imagine the scene. In fact, that WAS the scene, glossed over and what she cooked were "things."

So, the reader "sees" nothing really, not the house...other than it was big, had doors and windows and furniture and she painted the walls (what color, what did the furniture look like, etc.?) The author missed huge possibilities of bringing this book to life by simply having the character sit "in a mahogany, carved side chair with plush cushions, the scarlet fabric worn down to a dirty pale pink" instead of her character just sitting down in a Victorian chair.

The print was weird in places, the punctuation off, and it was clearly a book printed by either a very small publisher or by the author herself. I couldn't manage to get past the first couple chapters, and even skimming was so boring that I simply gave up.

The author broke the cardinal rule of good writing: show; don't tell!

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