Very Amateurish First Effort
588183
Very disjointed, huge-gigantic plot holes. Extraneous characters just popping into the story. Evanovitch writes a better "Grandma" character, leave her to do it. Comic relief is not needed.
3152248
I couldn't "get into" this book at all. It came across as the efforts of an amateur who knew very little about life at all.
1498912
This was just a real jumble. I agree that this is a great first effort, but as a first effort, maybe the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th effort is what we should be reading. this one misses the mark.
I won't read another Raz.
2819383
I hate to mince words, so I'll say this outright; this is the dumbest book I've read in a long time. Sounds overly harsh, but I'll explain.

The writing style, especially the first person tense, is nothing but a jumbled collection of sentence fragments. These are commonly used as a stylistic device but in this book it's so overused it almost makes the story unreadable. The attempt at first-person funny is like Mark Tufo, but not nearly as well done. There were some VERY minor typos (so minor I'm not sure why there are so many reviews bashing the editing, it was really quite clean with less than a handful of exceptions.)

Now for the guts of it; the story itself is simply absurd. At first the protagonist seemed to be a incoherent collection of juvenile fantasies from a teenage shut-in, but the more I read the more I suspect the character is based more on the author, or at least his self-image. Take that as you will, I don't necessarily mean it as an insult. The sexual encounters, while graphic as warned, were simply laughable in their implausibility. I'm not sure if that's what he was going for, but when I'm laughing at the book and not with the author it seems to be a swing and a miss.

The action was good, but the zombies were obligatory and took a backseat (like, third-row backseat) to the often-bizarre, sometimes disturbing womanizing moments. I'm giving it two stars because he has a good story buried in here... he just needs to focus on telling that story and stop getting sidetracked with the protagonist's "manhood" as that made up at least half of this book and lent nothing to the story itself.
298472
The storyline was very disjointed and much of the dialogue was awkward. Perspective changed constantly. Very amateurish. It read like a poorly written first novel. I barely made it to the unsatisfying end. Very disappointing. I can't believe this was an Amazon.com Prime monthly selection.
183822
I really, really wanted this to be the Christmas book of the year, but I'd also like peace on earth and good will toward men. That isn't likely to happen either. For a first effort this story is a good try, perhaps a very good try. That said, it is clearly the work of a young author who is still lacking in the ability to create a believable time line. The books print is either double or triple spaced so the reader may well be disappointed in both the quality and quantity of read. A good editor would have worked on this problem before allowing it to be published, but that didn't happen. There are grammatical errors throughout that can be easily overlooked, but the deathblow comes at the end. Had this story been written by a gay male the book would have read much differently and the timelines would have been vastly different. Instead, our young lady author offers us her vision of what a first gay love might be like.  If only she knew, this would be a much more complex story and perhaps a move believable one. I urge the writer to keep going, but to include more research the next time. A lot more.  Looking for light read?  Go for it and let's encourage this author.
4142182
This is the first book I've read in awhile that I had to force myself to continue reading.  The first thing I noticed was the need for editing.  There were extra words that would pop up in sentences.  Homonyms were used rather than the words that the author (I'm assuming) meant to use. For instance, a couple of times someone "took a peak" when they really were taking a peek; and once the phrase "sew your wild oats" was used, when it should have been sow.  The writing itself was amateurish. It was choppy and not very cohesive.  At certain points, I felt like the author included filler pages just to break up the flashbacks.  As far as the story itself, the characters were all so very immature for being the ages they were. The story was dragged out so much longer than it needed to be.

Overall, I did not like this book, and I will likely not be reading more from this author.
2890869
How does a slender 30-something mother of two make a real life for herself, when her loudmouth misfit ... of a philandering husband departs for England and a dashing young yachtsman comes calling?  Tend to her garden?  If her husband is her choice, how does she aid him to overcome the disrespect of practically everyone who knows him, including her parents, the hired help, even their teenage son?  There are the makings of a good story here.
Unfortunately, I found this first novel to be very much a freshman effort.  The main failing was lack of gut-wrenching scenes, those that draw the reader in emotionally.  I recall only one, and the author rushed through that one.  The characters are hardly able to engage with one another and remain disconnected throughout.  Most disappointing was the treatment of the Mason family estate, Mason's Retreat, which was never allowed to reveal its dark secrets.
4530177
I was looking forward to this, based on reviews. I'm baffled how this was rated well. FIRST chapter, it tells us that the AI likes the captain because he can keep his cool and isn't hot headed. Within ONE page, he "pounded the panel" and punched two things. Simply because they didn't see any ships when they stopped. I can't read such an obviously amateur book.
4386718
I picked up the free e-sample to see if this book would be worth the time.  I could barely get through the first chapter.  The writing is very immature and it took me out of the story many times, especially the italicized character thoughts.  Please tell the author to find a good editor and try again.  The premise sounds fantastic and it seems there was a lot of good research done.  It's just not ready for publication yet.
1618749
This book would have been fine as a first work by a college student studying creative writing, but as the product of a best selling author it is a joke. The dialog is banal, the characters are so thin you can see through them, and the plot is implausible. I can take implausibility if it is at least entertaining, but I can't even say I was entertained by it. Can someone tell me how the main character, whose wife is murdered many years ago, suddenly has a third child? No explanation. No reference to where this child came from, and obviously no editor for this author.

My only reason for finishing the book was that I fully believed there must be something redeeming in it for a publisher to make the effort to print it. Sadly, I was mistaken. Even the chapter structure was childish, since almost every chapter averaged only two or three pages.

There are thousands of great books out there by truly smart writers, so there is no excuse to read this book.
850355
I don't understand all the 5 star ratings.  The premise is good, a detective with a disability searching for a missing child, but it's very poorly executed.  There are so many misused words (peak instead of peek, allusion instead of illusion, etc.), missing or misused punctuation, poor grammar and what seem to be incomplete sentences ("I have a headache and I was wondering.") that I just couldn't get into the story. I even tried deleting and downloadng it again with no improvement. I'm not sure if it's bad writing, bad editing or bad formatting but I gave up at about 50%.
212322
After finishing this book, I looked up more information on the author, fully expecting to find that this was his debut novel. I was very surprised to find that he's written quite a few other books. For the most part, No Show reads like it was written by an amateur. Dialogue is either overly formal or overly casual and rarely rings true. The final showdown scene has absolutely no suspense, no shock, no intrigue. The entire plot is thin. There are strange details given about almost every character that honestly seem like shallow attempts at completing some arbitrary "character development" checkbox. Part of making a thriller great is the writing, and the writing in this is just laughable in comparison to just about any other author out there.

I thought about giving it two stars instead of one because the mystery of what happened to the main character's wife did keep me turning pages for a while, but even that fell flat - once I got about halfway through the book, I stopped caring whether he ever found her.

It is extremely rare for me to give a thriller less than 3 stars, because I am a sucker for even mediocre thrillers. But this one doesn't even make it to mediocrity. Overall, I was very disappointed.
3506685
An amateur effort. I was excited to read this story but couldn't get past the first few pages of community college level creative writing.
4604946
I bought this with another in the series, which I've also reviewed. I have to say I didn't make it all the way through this one, reading more out of the morbid curiosity of "how bad can this get" than any actual interest in the characters or story.

There are passages in the book which are so overblown and schlock sci-fi sounding - "With a swirl of fog that just screamed of mysteriousness and enigmatic happenings..." - that you almost suspect he's going for a "so bad it's good" parody. The complete absense of humor elsewhere in the book would seem to speak against this theory however. And don't get me started at his attempts at (presumably) "British" style dialog, which come straight from the "cor blimey guvner" Dick Van Dyke school of language.

The use of grammar and punctuation is, again, appalling throughout, with interminable run-on sentences, devoid of any punctuation, being a regular occurance. The author is also seemingly unaware of the existence of title case, given the title and subtitles of his books. In retrospect this should have been the tip-off that these books weren't what they seemed to be, screaming amateur from the very first time you see them in the Amazon search results. In the biog the author claims to be a teacher. I can only hope this is of Maths, or perhaps P.E. or some other practical subject, as the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

I had initially thought that these books were the honest attempts of an amateur author, that, although poorly written, it was the work of someone trying their best. The more I think about it though, the more they seem like a cynical attempt to make money for as little effort as possible, using the popular "Sherlock Holmes" & "Doctor Who" brands to hoodwink people into thinking they're buying something of quality.

Though described as novels, the can scarcely be more than 20,000 words, amounting to approximately 100 pages, so would more accurately fall into the short story/ novella category, though this strangely doesn't seem to be reflected in the price. The complete works of Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs are available on here for free - don't waste your time and money on this.
2968919
I am a fan of good fantasy and I was excited to read this book, given the many good reviews it has gotten. However, I was very disappointed.

It starts off quickly. Youre immediately in the thick of the action with a good hook in the form of a monster attack. However, this promising beginning gives way to clunky sentences, poor grammar, awkward dialogue, unbelievable characters, clich&eacute;s, and a questionable plot. Throughout the book, there are winding sentences that need serious tightening up. Phrases such as would have had, when had would do just as well. The phrase couldn't help but is so overused as to become distracting. Homophones are mixed up throughout: dawned in place of donned, rained and reined instead of reigned, bare rather than bear, and pouring when the proper word is poring. He adds apostrophes for the possessive it and to make words plural. There are incongruous phrases, such as ...tops of trees as big around as a fat mans belt... and fell weightlessly. These types of errors are immensely distracting and easily fixed by an editor.

I also found the characters to be poorly developed and uninspiring. I didn't feel that I knew what most characters looked like. The women are unrealistic and the characterization of the main female character is inconsistent. When we first meet her, shes a strong, independent bounty hunter. A few short chapters later and shes clinging to the lead like a frightened child. I never felt drawn in or captivated by the story. None of the intensity of the action came off the page. Sequences are glossed over and unsatisfactorily described, leaving any emotions one might have about the story lacking. The passage of time is poorly denoted. I have no idea how much time passed between Braxton leaving home and the end of the book. Many things happen and he meets a large host of characters along the way, but how long each leg of his journey takes isn't outlined. The story is rushed along without devoting proper time to the drama of the action or the development of feelings between the two leads.

In short, I wanted to care about the rich, diverse world the author created, but I just couldnt. Theres a lot of potential in this story and the world in which it takes place, but the written work falls short of realizing it.
3739098
I'm not sure what book the 5-stars reviewed, but it couldn't have been the one I read. The first five chapters of the sample were decent. Romig definitely has an imagination, I'll give him that. And praise the uniqueness of the world he built. But after the sample ran out, it was like he handed the keyboard over to a seventh grader.

The remainder of the book appeared to be in rough draft form at best. Multitudes of grammatical errors couple with exceptionally sophmoric dialogue ruined the imaginative back drop. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see angelic beings and their demon counterparts speaking like American teenagers circa the mid 90s. Tone is perhaps the most grating character I've ever read. I get it, he's sarcastic, but a little goes a long way.

On top of that, the author makes a number of entry level mistakes that most glaringly include dialogue tags on just about every line, and a very clunky method of delivering information. One section near the end in particular sticks with me. Event X happened, and instead of adhering to "Show not tell from Writing 101", the author follows up quite literally by saying "this was important for several reasons." And then goes on giving a play by play of the importance of Event X from each of the five involved character's perspectives.

I wanted to rate this higher, I really did. I love the genre and love indie pub authors. The bones were good, but everything about the execution screamed amateur. Hopefully the author's other efforts passed through a few extra sets of eyes before publication.