The writing is good, as usual
352168
The writing is good, as usual. My issue is with the main character. I believe she's supposed to be around 40, but she acts like someone right out of school:  her hangup with the long ago ex-fiance was way too intense for her age; workplace actions childish. But I liked all the other characters and plot enough to overlook her idiocy. Perhaps a 40 year old editor might have helped! Fun read, though.
829920
I was all set up for finding out why the hero just had to be the hero and the center of the story, and it turned out it wasn't anything particularly unique about him, except for the fact he was an Amish farmer. Okay, so, the writing is really good. Really good. But it's an Amish power fantasy in the end. Not bad, but not entirely satisfying either.
2533664
The stories are good. The writing is good. The pace is a bit slow.  The politics of a county run jail is universal. Seems like this doc chafed at not being the total Captain of his ship.
434602
I gave this 4 rather than five stars has to do with the stories themselves.  I thought the writing was actually very good.  The author definitely has a way with words and describing a scene and setting up a particular ambiance.  I found the stories easy to read.  What I didn't enjoy quite so much are the stories themselves.  They're macabre, strange, odd...but this is no secret as the book provides sufficient warning as to the nature of the stories.  Most of the story's ending were predictable and many ended in an unsatisfactory manner.  Good writing, poor stories.
1639786
All the usual things are true: the book's well-written, the science is interesting, the characters are easy to like . . .and the plot is merely okay. Mostly it all seemed too easy. Yes, the dangers in the book were very real and people might have died if some events had turned a different way, but they didn't and everything gets solved quite neatly.

That's a real problem, and I think the way the story is written is the cause. Somehow the tension gets minimized in the course of describing the events and it doesn't matter if the people in the book give speeches about how incredible so-and-so's contribution to their survival was--if the reader doesn't feel it the first time around, saying it won't make it so.

I think my issue is that the first three books of the series were for adults, while books four and five are decidedly YA. Maybe that's because most of the characters are under 18, but whatever the reason, these last two books have been frustrating and disappointing for me.
3429495
As you might expect from the price, this is basically a teaser for the other books in the series. It's pretty good writing as far as it goes, but I was unconvinced that it's worth the $50+ to buy the rest of the series.
145271
This is the third book in the series, Kings and Sorcerers, and Im halfway through.  This is also the first series of books I've read by Morgan Rice.  Her writing may be better than this book reflects, but I can only go on what I see and read.  In general, the topic is great, but the writing is okay.

First, I often must reread sentences and I find annoying spelling, grammar, and typo errors that disengage my interest in what I'm reading.  If it happened once or twice, I would not mention it, but the editor of this book should be ashamed.  Interestingly, it seems to have gotten worse with each book, as if she was in a hurry to get it to the publisher.

Second, the characters are not as well developed as they could be, which takes away from the overall storyline.  There are too many side stories to keep the main character interesting and engaging.  The story unravels a bit as a result, and I find myself losing interest.  I liken this to TV series that go four months in between seasons.  By the time they come back, Ive lost interest and moved on to another program.

Regardless, I like the topic, and I hope her writing will get better with time.  I will read the rest of the series, as I like to get the whole story, but I also read other books at the same time, and they are a bit more engaging.
4794742
The writing is particularly artful, amazingly so.
662064
I've read somewhere north of 20 end of the world as we know it books.  If the story is great and the writing is great, I'll give it a five.  One Second After by Forstchen is a five.  If the writing is ok and the story is great/good, I'll give the book a four.  Lights Out by Crawford is a four.  When the story is good/entertaining, and the writing is acceptable, I'll give the book a three.  The "Home" series by A American get threes.  If the story is good, but the writing sucks, I'll give it a two.  Rawles' Patriots gets a two.  If the writing sucks and the story is marginal, it gets a one.

Grit's writing is improving and nearly earned four stars as a result.  This is a series that you will enjoy reading.
3147225
The story is fine. It's a well-organized thriller, well-paced and reasonably plausible. So, if you're looking for something to distract you, this is fine and even reasonably enjoyable. The characters have consistent and plausible motivations; even the villain is fairly well-drawn.

But the writing itself leaves a good deal to be desired. This isn't to say it's incompetent: aside from a few problematic details (inconsistent use of dialect, a few odd bits of usage/spelling, describing a character as in her '50s instead of her fifties), the story is told in good standard English, and even sounds decent read aloud. But anyone looking for a well-written (as opposed to well-*structured*) novel will cringe at the multiple violations of the "show, don't tell" rule. Here's two examples from Chapter 10, describing diner owner Chris:

"Chris was in his mid-twenties, but didn't seem old enough to have a child. Especially a dead one. Usually when folks had kids, they had a haggard look about them. As though they were simply aging faster or had grown up in a way that was impossible for those who were childless. Chris didn't."

This is lousy prose: the fourth sentence isn't a sentence, and the fifth leaves it momentarily unclear what the "didn't" is meant to refer to. But it's actually a good use of "show, don't tell". Chris is *shown* to have something unusual about him, and we are left in suspense as to whether he doesn't have the haggard look because he's unusually resilient or confident, or because he's some kind of sociopath. So, kudos. But then a couple of pages later, we have:

"He was dressed nicely in a crisp navy button-down shirt and black slacks. His face was, as always, fresh-shaven and, even in the distance, his strong cologne cut through the usually-comforting aromas of brewing coffee and frying bacon.
"Chris was always well dressed, more so than the rest of them. Maybe it was to take some emphasis off of his lazy eye which was so out of harmony with the other I it was difficult to tell exactly what he was looking at."

The first paragraph works: it's actually kind of a neat detail to have his cologne cut through comforting aromas, because it still further insinuates that there might be something creepy about him. But the second paragraph is a real flagrant violation of the rule. We should be *shown* his lazy eye and the discomfort Haley feels, even though she knows him well and likes him, because she just can't quite tell what he's looking at. Instead, the author draws the conclusion for us, *telling* us why Chris dresses well.

The novel is rife with this sort of violation: usually, this is the sign of a novice writer, or someone who isn't confident, or someone who's working much too quickly. But again, if you're just reading for story, there are way worse self-published novels you could be reading. If you're reading for the pleasure of reading, you're going to cringe a lot, which is a pity, because you might miss a good story.
83934
This book is more suited to readers that are fine without the answer to loose ends.  The writing is upbeat and sarcastic in a funny way.  I, prefer that most comments are satisfied in the story and not left for me to wonder why it was mentioned at all..  Also, I felt some actions and dialogues between the family members were just the same with only the day different.  But, if you just want a quick read and are ok with some things left vague then. It isn't bad.  Good writing, but if MS Lee, had left some items about the cousins out or a longer book, then yay.
935405
the writing is pretty good, the editing, not so much. I still reccomend the book and the series highly.
369759
I've read somewhere north of 20 end of the world as we know it books.  If the story is great and the writing is great, I'll give it a five.  One Second After by Forstchen is a five.  If the writing is ok and the story is great/good, I'll give the book a four.  Lights Out by Crawford is a four.  When the story is good/entertaining, and the writing is acceptable, I'll give the book a three.  The "Home" series by A American get threes.  If the story is good, but the writing sucks, I'll give it a two.  Rawles' Patriots gets a two.  If the writing sucks and the story is marginal, it gets a one.

What do you say? The writing is ok, the story is ok.  The author doesn't develop very many characters but tells a decent story about what happens in a neighbor after an EMP wrecks society.
1704273
Good writing. In fact, very good writing, but a mediocre story line. I stopped reading about 2/3 of the way through.
4571450
Salvatore's writing is not complex but the character development is pretty good if you read all of his works. My problem is that his writing is very predictable. Good will win with minor strife and only minor characters will die. I still enjoy his works though.
2341519
This is a whodunit with a detective who has PTSD. The whodunit part is hard to solve/guess, but not impossible. I've felt that to make it hard to guess the authors have forced the plot, so the ending/solution does not naturally follow from the story. The writing is good, and the description of England, especially the life in the villages far from London, and pretty much from anything else, right after the First World War was quite interesting for me (even though I did not know anything about these parts of the country, nor was I at all interested in such subjects before reading the book).
512698
The story's intriguing, of course. And the writing is fine.  Actually, the writing is too good. The metaphors in particular create the inauthentic tone so typical of ghost written books.  Maybe it would have been better if author Megan Lloyd Davies had straight out written it over her name and told the story in the third person.