Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Years ago, I hated when regular sized novels in certain genres started ending with cliffhangers in order to get the reader to purchase the next book in the series. A novel should be able to stand alone as its own story without holding the reader hostage to experience the complete tale. If the author is talented enough, they don't need to resort to such tactics. Tactics that pull the reader out of the story and completely annihilate the energy flow that conducts the emotional response within the reader. Thea Harrison is a spectacular storyteller. She weaves together fabulous worlds filled with complex characters and storylines. Each person in her worlds have distinct personalities with believable flaws and strengths. She writes stories that both tug at the heart, excite the blood, and provoke thought. She writes stories that her audience eagerly awaits and excitedly buries their teeth into every new release. Thea Harrison is a storyteller who you stay up all night to devour her gift, making sure to have a box of tissues and a snack nearby...Usually. The "cliffhanger" ending to this novella occurring just as the story takes off and right at a severly inappropriate and emotionally decisive place has really destroyed the pleasure I was previously experiencing during my read. It's one thing to have a cliffhanger after 400 pages of a well written tale that has wound up the first of many entanglements. This was something entirely different. This was telling a diner who hasn't eaten in a few days that they would be eating their favorite food prepared by the most talented of chefs, to let them watch it be prepared, see it being carried to their table on a pristine plate, allowing them to catch a whiff of the mouth-watering scent, to witness the dish be placed on the table right before their eyes...and then as their stomach growls with hunger pangs, to have a lid slammed over it, and the waiter smile tauntingly while exclaiming, "That looks delicious, doesn't it? Tell me what you like about it while I smile gleefully and promise to give you a bite at an undisclosed time in the future. Then if you're a really good boy I'll give you another and another. It'll will be cold by then. You'll forget how you salivated as the scent tickled your nostrils, but that's ok. I'm going to charge just a little bit extra and act gleeful as if my excitement of this little trick can fool you into believing it's acceptable and worth paying me for. Now tell me how fabulous I am for getting you to grovel. You know you want to!" No. No, I do not! I want authors and publishing houses to stop with their shenanigans and go back to doing what makes readers collect their every tale with unwavering love in the first place. Take however long it takes to write a good story and then give it to me COMPLETE. Don't destroy and/or weaken the story by chopping it up into multiple bite-sized pieces lacking the complete flavor profile to tantalize me. This is not the kind of "wanting" I enjoy being left with. Not at all. The last handful of years I've watched some of my favorite authors change how they go about writing, editing, and/or publishing their stories in what appears to be attempts to keep up with the low attention span/want it now avarice of today's consumer. Authors I've read for many years and would purchase their books sight unseen with zero knowledge of the storyline within. I'd do so because in my eyes their storytelling was usually that damn good. Thea Harrison is on my list of authors who I buy from sight unseen. This series is one of my favorite in this genre. I've stopped buying other authors who were once my favorites when they stopped placing the story first, and in turn I no longer found pleasure in the worlds they appeared to lose pleasure in sharing. I don't believe that's what's happening here, and I really don't want that to happen with this author and this series. If Ms. Harrison or her publishers read these comments, please do not jerk your readers around like this. Surely you recognize how such abrupt interuptions destroy the story. This is not that 1980s sitcom of 'Amazing Stories' (I think.) where the cliffhanger is keeping us alive until the next chapter. I'm excited about this tale. I'm just dissapointed and disgusted by the delivery. (Edited because I've came looking for the second installment and noticed Google keyboard threw some apostrophes in where I didn't want them. It has a naughty habit of doing that and I'm horrible at proofreading on the phone. My review has not been altered other than those minor corrections. I also haven't found the second installment, so I'm hoping with all that I am that Ms. Harrison and her publishers have listened to our preference to wait for her complete novels. That would make me one giddy reader for sure!)