Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I reached about the 25% mark on this book thinking that if only the author had employed a good editor, this book could be fantastic. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end and found out it's an Amazon Encore book. Really? This is "exceptional"? Considering the ponderous structure, overabundance of insignificant characters, unnecessary sidetracks, and the amateurish POV failures, this is hardly exceptional. It has great potential. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened. I suppose the only character I wholeheartedly rooted for was Tanni. The rest were either too shallow, annoying, or questionable to care much about. I plowed through to the end wishing I was enjoying it more. The author does a good job of setting the scene and painting descriptions. However, the pace is ruined by constant POV switches within the scenes. It's as if your whole house was divided into small sections with clear, foot-high barriers. Not noticeable at a glance, easily stepped over, but continually stubbing your toe and then having to lift your feet high to simply walk through the house gets more and more annoying. And tiring. Just as constantly having to shift mental gears when the next character's thoughts intrude is tiring. This is the sort of thing an editor should point out and correct. I can only assume that a total re-write was too much work and they wanted to cash in on brisk sales. Ponderous structure: Starting everything out in 1995 in a prologue and introducing us haphazardly to numerous elderly characters does this book a disservice. The here-and-there approach was confusing. The book didn't really need to start until Chapter 1. After that, there were too many cases of the author shifting the reader out of one place and plunking us down in another to start over. Heavy reliance on dialect in certain cases was grating. It took too long to find out how all these people related to each other. Simply put: there are too many threads all tangled up in this book, and the author did not weave them together with enough skill to produce serviceable cloth. So many scenes could be cut without leaving any holes (example: the scenes in Auschwitz). Again, a good editor would advise this. But setting a short deadline is generally more profitable than taking the time to polish a manuscript to a high shine. Finally, as mentioned by other reviewers, the end is jaw-droppingly unconvincing and preposterous. The long, drawn-out narration by the twit reporter adds nothing but irritation. The author goes on at length thanking all the people who helped her produce a "polished" manuscript. I can only hope that next time she finds editors who will be more interested in a tight, technically clean manuscript that reflects well on her than on rushing substandard work to market.