8/18/2015 3 Comments amazon.com / amazon.caFrom a Reader's Perspective. As a Canadian citizen, I cannot shop on Amazon.com; I must shop at Amazon.ca. Since I usually only buy ebooks, that's not a hardship (all the non-book things that Amazon.com sells, Amazon.ca is slowly, like death crawl slowly, adding, but who has that kinda money??) Buying an ebook from Amazon.ca is a bit tricky. One, most reviews are posted at Amazon.com, so I have to click a link to get to them. Two, there's no "Look Inside" feature at Amazon.ca, so I have to go to Amazon.com to check if the author did any kind of editing and knows jack about hooks and sentence structure in the way I like (or increasingly, can abide). So sorting my preferences and attempting to buy and/or download books I might actually like is a bit of an exercise, but the Amazon experience doesn't stop there! No, I get my book, and then Amazon.ca sends me an email a week later asking if I'd like to review it. Why, yes, I would! I would like to review it! Reviews help my fellow authors, after all, and someday I, too, may get reviews. I click on the link, write a review, sometimes nice, sometimes not (sadly it is a rare thing I find an ebook that truly delights me.) And then Amazon tells me that I am not allowed to post the review. In order to post a review, I need to buy something, once every thirty days. Anything. From Amazon.com. Where I'm not allowed to shop, being Canadian and all. Without a purchase, I cannot post reviews. So to all my fellow authors wondering why I don't post reviews, good, bad, or indifferent on Amazon, that is why. Amazon hates me. Because I'm Canadian. Or something... (that's a smirk in their logo, innit?)
3 Comments
8/7/2015 3 Comments Review...
Love in Between by Sandi Lynn
My rating: 1 of 5 stars I DNF'd at 22% (end of chapter six). All I can say is, how can you write first person and have so little emotion in the characters? This book is a good example of why editors are so important, and an excellent example of how to NOT write first person. For specific reasons why I couldn't get past chapter six... 1. when Lily catches her fiance having sex with her sister minutes before the wedding, this is the most traumatic thing ever and it's written with almost zero emotional impact. How can you do that in first person? This should have had me clutching my chest in heartbreak empathy! 2. The writing was terrible, with robotic, laundry list style descriptions. "I did this, then I did that." I've seen better writing from a 13 year old. 3. The dialogue was terrible and repetitive and about as natural as a drag queen's make-up. 4. Within the first six chapters we are told several times that Luke is rude and an asshole to Lily, when the scenes between them totally fail to support that. He's a bit distant, but he's not rude and he's certainly not an asshole! Why do they keep saying he is...? And then when I scrolled to chapter 7, I thought dear god, how much more of this dreck is there? and checked the menu. What? Another 31 chapters??? No fucking way! DNF! View all my reviews |
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