Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I can only imagine (and hope) that the positive reviews written about this illiterate, poorly-written, punctuation error-filled piece of dreck, were written by the author's friends and family. There is hardly a single page, where there is not a glaring run-on sentence (what do you have against our punctuation friend, the period?) or other punctuation error. I should have been warned by the run on sentence in the author's bio--I mean, it was RIGHT THERE--but I foolishly ignored that big, red flag. The author describes herself as an avid reader, but apparently she has never noticed the punctuation rule that a name in a sentence is offset by a comma. I was mystified by her omission, especially since she loves commas so much, she uses them frequently in the place of periods. I had to laugh out loud, however, when one of the characters said, "You don't understand Jack!" I immediately heard in my head, "You don't know jack!" Sadly, that was the only enjoyable moment I had during my reading. About halfway through the book, the author discovers the semi-colon button on her keyboard. She then proceeds to use this in place of some of her commas. Sometimes, it's okay. 99% of the time, the use of the semi-colon is wrong or unnecessary. Here's a tip: semi-colons are wrong or unnecessary 99% of the time! Then there are the odd word choices the author makes. The characters "aspire" several times. Not to be a better person, or to become a rock star, or to make the best chocolate chip cookies ever, but other things that other people might "hope" or "intend" to do. "I aspire never to hurt you," kind of makes sense, but it's not really the right word. Then her hero "leveled" himself on top of our heroine, instead of levering himself (okay, maybe just a typo...), and his curiosity was "peeked," instead of being piqued. Her heroine has lots of dresses with strings. This may just be me being picky, but...they're LACES! Dresses LACE up the back. Yet countless times, the heroine is helped into a dress, and a servant pulls the STRINGS tight. At one point, the servant tells our heroine that men don't understand strings. Ummm, I'm pretty sure they do. Even worse, the context was that being LACED into the dress was causing our heroine pain because of her broken rib, but I had always heard that broken ribs are TAPED TIGHTLY, and that this actually causes LESS PAIN. Okay, but we'll give her that one, because, hey, I'm not a doctor, just the holder of a BA in English. I gave her that one until the hero's eyes "dilated into pin pricks." Pupils expand when they dilate, plus most people describe it as "pinpricks." One word. *palm to forehead* There were some interesting ideas in the book. Unfortunately they are never followed up on. I read the entire book just to be sure, and I can confirm for you that no interesting idea that is put forth is ever followed up on, explained, or explored further. To top it all off, at the end, the hero completely ignores weeks of increasing intimacy with the heroine, the fact that her life is in danger, and that he has never offered her any alternative to being his slave and/or dying, and decides, based on her escaping to SAVE HER LIFE, that she is a two-faced bitch-traitor, whom he must hunt down, capture, and torture in varied and horrible ways. Up until then, he'd been an amazingly nice guy. But we're supposed to buy this. The same way we are supposed to buy that our reckless, brave, sassy(? some other reviewer called her that--I don't know what book THEY were reading), survivalist heroine just lets some weak, blonde poke, pinch, stick, and push her, BREAKING HER RIB, because she thinks the hero won't do anything about it, if she tells him. Okay, let's leave aside the fact that the hero threatened three people with DEATH for TOUCHING her at this point. Our supposedly spunky heroine needs a MAN to take care of this situation for her?!? She can't find any way to put this woman in her place?!? She says she'd rather be dead than be a blood slave, and the worst thing that would happen is that the hero would be angry at her for whupping up on this blonde, and he would kill her, but she chickens out. Lets this woman treat her like a rented mule. Sickening. Then when the hero banishes the woman--that's all, just fires her and banishes her from the palace--the heroine tells him he was cruel. SERIOUSLY!?! This is only the most glaring example of the author describing the heroine one way, only to have her act in a completely out-of-character way. To add injury to insult (and yes, I mean adding injury to insult, because the book is an insult to the reader, but this last touch is so manipulative, it hurts), the book ends on a cliffhanger. You want to find out what happens? Buy the next book. I wouldn't pay money for such poorly-written stuff, even if I had come to care about the characters, but since I couldn't read a single page without being booted out of the story by some error, I never did come to care about the characters. I could go on, but a complete list of all the errors in this book would be as long as the book. I will end with a word to the author. In your dedication, you thanked your freelance editor. I don't know how much you paid them, but you were robbed. Completely screwed over. I would bet $10 that the woman went through your manuscript with Spellcheck, kept it for another 10 days to make it look good, then sent it back to you and collected her fee. If she had given it even the most cursory look-through, she would have noticed that you frequently have your characters lay, instead of lie. Not to mention your complete disregard for periods.