I Belong to Him on May 21, 2015
Pages: 232

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This book may be unsuitable for people under 18 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence.

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Synopsis

I belong to him, but I'm married to another

Addison Walker and her husband of 15 years have three beautiful daughters.
Along with her best friend she owns a book/coffee shop.
You'd think she has it all. She doesn't. She is in a loveless marriage, and craves to be loved and desired.

Brandon Donavon is tall, handsome and loving. His ex-wife up and left him, making him a single father.

After meeting, Addison and Brandon have an undeniable chemistry. Things are looking better in Addison's life, until the accident.

Who will be by Addison's side when she feels her life will never be the same?

My Review

This is Ava Danielle’s debut novel…

…and I expected a bit more attention to be given to editing in order to put her best foot forward. The book has a good concept: lonely wife tempted by a single dad of a child in her own kid’s class. So, first off, we are disliking the heroine a bit. She becomes a cheater. But beyond that, she separates from her husband and soon after, the new boyfriend is staying overnight in her home (she’s still MARRIED) where her three young daughters are also sleeping. Okay, she’s a bad wife, and a bad mother. I feel a little sorry for her, but then the author makes her heroine give a snide comment about drivers of hybrid vehicles. Yikes! Way to piss off the huge automobile industry!

There were quite a few holes and inconsistencies in the story. Example: first the truck had wrapped around a tree, then it was wrapped around a stop sign, and later it was mentioned it was wrapped around a tree. So was it a tree or a stop sign? In Chapter 27, there is mentioned to be candles lit everywhere, which it would need to be dark to see these, right? Right after, it’s mentioned “His sunglasses,” but it doesn’t say WHAT about the sunglasses, whether they’re on the face, peeking out of a pocket, or hanging at the neck. Anyway, if there are sunglasses, there is also sun, right? Well, then the lit candles are mentioned again. A professional editor would have caught and fixed these problems.

There were problems on every single page of this book. I’m told there were beta readers that caught a lot of mistakes, but beta readers are not meant to be editors, and the mistakes were still numerous, too numerous to count. I didn’t mark all of the mistakes, but marked enough so I could make my point. If I had marked them all, I would expect to be paid as an editor. I’m not a good editor, but I am a reader with a sharp eye who knows when there’s been no editor at all.

The problems included the following:

• Misspelled words, misuse of words, wrong homonym, and several other similar problems.
  • Mouse in his brown hair, instead of mousse
  • Her breathing became rugged, instead of ragged
  • The character Kristina’s name was spelled Christina once
  • Knick in his neck, instead of crick
  • Machine beeps louder, more consistent, instead of insistent
  • Giving met support I need, instead of me the
  • Twunt–what IS that? I couldn’t figure it out. Nickname, maybe? It was only used once and not explained.
  • Dialed brown eyes, instead of dilated
  • Extend of his injuries, instead of extent
  • Couldn’t bare the thought, instead of bear
• Could care less–common misuse of the phrase couldn’t care less–I wouldn’t mind this as much if it was only used once in dialogue, as in the character misusing the phrase, but it was also used in the narrative.
• Capitalization mistakes
• Punctuation mistakes
• Paragraphs are chapter-length, and are not broken up between dialogue of different characters. Many times I lost who was saying what.
• Similar problem with phone conversations. The way they were shown were the same as how texting was shown. I didn’t know if it was a conversation or texting, or who was saying what.
• Run-on sentences. And on. And on. And on. Run-on paragraphs?
• Tense changed randomly back and forth between past and present.
• Contraction use–He let’s go and sits down, instead of lets.

That, by no means, is a comprehensive list, but only a taste. A professional editor would have caught and fixed all of these problems. I’m begging the author to pull the publishing of this book and rework it. If I had paid for this book and didn’t consider the author a friend, I would have returned it before the second chapter.

Ava, DO NOT QUIT WRITING. Live the dream. Care enough about the words you’re putting out to the world to baby them and give them all the care necessary for your readers to like what you’re doing. You have successfully published a book. I can only imagine how good it would feel inside for people to really like what you’ve written. I hope you’ll take this review as the loving kick in the pants you need to get an editor.

You’ve said English is your second language, and that’s all the more reason to be impressed by you, but also the biggest reason to have an editor with a better grasp of English. ESL is not an excuse to publish a book full of English grammar errors. Never in my life will I even ATTEMPT to publish a book in German. 😉 I’m still working on that first book in my first language, English, but I’m also going to use an editor, and get as many eyeballs on the manuscript as possible before it’s released to the world.

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.