Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First of all, not sure how this book was ever tagged "Christian" as a reviewer mentions. Maybe the word "Sanctuary" kicked off some kind of automatic labeling? This is not a Christian book but also doesn't hold itself out to be one. Story is a typical big city girl goes to tiny town for one reason or another (man trouble, money trouble, or in this case, both) and stirs up the locals. First, with so many references to the heroine (Kendall) having such limited funds and the newspaper she works for being on the brink of financial disaster, where does Kendall get the money to do things like pay several hundred dollars to a source? The book needs a good editor. Characters: pretty one dimensional - handsome, rich but obviously slimy guy tries to charm Kendall (guess the author was trying to create conflict?), then there's the typical brooding-cowboy-who-clearly-has-a-secret character; small town sherriff as bad guy, etc. All quite predictable and boring. What killed the book for me: I may have given the book three stars except for one thing. The author has Kendall's coworker, Ginger, speaking the most excrutiating dialect since she's supposed to be from Texas. Almost every sentence out of Ginger's mouth is the author's attempt at a folksy saying and Ginger says "y'all" every other word. A word to aspiring authors who studied dialogue in a writing class and want to be the next William Faulkner: PLEASE, PLEASE, DON'T TRY TO WRITE DIALECT! Sit on your hands, have someone hide your laptop, call your writing sponsor! Written dialect is extremely difficult to get right, and most of the time all it does is make readers cringe in embarrassment for the author. This book was written in 1998 - I'd be interested to see if the author has improved since then since other reviewers seem to be big fans of her work. This was a cute mystery that needs better writing - not even close to "gripping" or "kept me up all night" but okay for a free book. Oh yeah - the Kindle version has issues - had a few sections where a prior page or two repeated themselves, but that's not the author's fault.