Very disappointing...
599141
Very disappointed...took a long time to get to me, so was excited when I got it, until I opened it. It is blurry, you can see the pixels from where they enlarged the photo too much. Giving two stars only because from a good distance away it looks good! Trying to get a refund.
3002587
Very rarely do I give such a low review, but this was so disappointing.  I was looking forward to reading about a romance that started with a translator and a Russian hockey player.  I was looking forward to funny conversations/incidences as a result of translations as well as hearing some Russian words for that added mysterious romantic feeling.  Uh no, turns out the guy is fluent in English so while there were a few incidences of learning Russian culture, it felt like a regular American NA romance.

As another reviewer noted, the author didn't follow-up enough with characters and situations which she would introduce and she introduced too many on top of that.  This could have been a much more interesting story if the author hadn't tried to introduce so many angles to the h's life....

spoilers starting so stop reading if this bothers you----------

Here are all the elements that are introduced into the heroine's life
- ex soccer superstar
- mother murdered but murderer never found, plus heroine was present during murder?
- heroine always feels abandoned although her grandparents seemed to be loving, caring albeit unwilling to discuss her deceased mother
- discovers she has a biological brother
- becomes a lead singer for a band
- currently studying to be a social worker and has started one community outreach center and trying to start a 2nd
- does Russian translation as a side job for her grandfather which is how she meets the hero
- full time college student
- part-time waitress

In other words, the heroine has way too many activities.  It's like the author wanted to stuff the storyline with every fantasy or scene she thought would be interesting, but wasn't vested enough to write about these activities/interests/situations comprehensively.  I think if she did, it would have made for an extremely long book.  Really, if she had just played up the translation aspect with the heroine being a full time student that would have been plenty and the story would have been more realistic and interesting.  Okay throw in the band part as you need a reason for jealousy.  I became particularly annoyed with the half-axxed approach to fleshing out a scene when you read about the heroine getting roofed by someone she can identify - not cool to blow something like this off so casually, the perpetrator should have been identified to the police or in the very least, there should have been more reaction by the heroine not just a "ooh ick" response.

The reason for the hero breaking up with the heroine was lame.  He professed to being so head over heels in love with her and he drops her because of a poem she wrote where she disses him but the poem was written way before they even started dating/expressing an interest in each other.  And he stays away from her for 2 months!  Come on, that's a combined wuss/jerk move.

I had such hopes for this book and really wish I had given more credence to the 3 star and below reviews, but I was relying so much on an endorsement from an author whose NA books I had really enjoyed.  Guess she must have been a pal or maybe they share the same publisher and she was compelled to write a good review on her blog.
1267996
I have read many of the author's books and really liked them, however, this was a huge disappointment.  My favorite of theirs was Inheritance, and this book had numerous similarities to it (very young adult raising younger siblings, youngest child a rebel given to excessive cursing & minor criminal activity, female character falls in love with a married man who doesn't really love his wife, etc...) I was shocked at how much was a regurgitation of Inheritance.  But where Inheritance was fully thought out, The Real Mother had huge gaps in it.

First of all, what was the point of the character Donna?  She seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever.  Second, we are initially introduced to Sara as she meets Reuben on the job and tells him she has two properties she thinks he might be interested in.  This might be minor, but why wasn't the reader given the opportunity to envision Reuben seeing both apartments and which one he ultimately chose?  This would have gone to his character development.  Did the children's parents have no siblings willing to help out?  We were only led to assume there wasn't anyone, but it should have been mentioned.  Next, why skip over the whole scene where Sara finds out about Reuben's wife?  The reader is left to guess what Sara's response was to this revealing information.  It seemed a huge plot point to overlook.  Also, why wasn't the reader ever told what field of medicine Sara wanted to specialize in.  Again, this would have gone to character development--was it pediatrics, which would have explained her love of children?  Many, many scenes and facts overlooked as if the writers were in a rush to finish the book.

And the end was extremely predictable.  I can only hope the writers do better with their next book...
727187
This product was not what I expected... Very disappointing
2326098
I have read all the China Bayles books and always looked forward to them, but the past several have been disappointments, none more so than the latest, Holly Blues. As several other reviewers have noted, it reads as if someone else is doing the writing, and there is certainly a lack of decent editing. Too many inconsistencies, too many stream-of-consciousness thoughts that have nothing to do with the plot, the character development (or lack thereof), or anything relevant or interesting to the reader. There was no mystery...I kept reading to see if there were going to be something unexpected, but there wasn't. And China's ramblings--or inner thought processes--were both repetitive and, quite frankly, inane. I really hate when a previously favorite series goes astray, but I'm afraid that's what has happened here. I may not be visiting Pecan Springs again.
2754762
I am still reeling from disappointment. I thought Brandon Sanderson did a great job on "The Gathering Storm" and "Towers of Midnight" but "A Memory of Light" has left me so disappointed, I don't know how to get it out of my head except to write this dumbo review. Basically, the story didn't have cohesion - there was way too much superfluous stuff going on that didn't have to be included, while primary issues that needed to be developed toward a successful build-up were just left blowing in the wind.

I'm going to list some stuff I hated so don't read if you don't want to see some massive spoilers. These items are not listed in any order.

*Spoilers*

#1 - Lan and Nynaeve had no time together in this book except for a couple of sentences at the very end.

#2 - Perrin spends page after page after page in the dreamworld trying to find Slayer and kill him - boring, boring...

#3 - The 4 great generals who have oversight of the battle are compromised by compulsion via Graendel. After the buildup of these great men, we see Bryne, Bashere, Ituralde and Agelmar being removed from command and sitting useless. Purely disrespectful way to end the careers of these great men.

#4 - The Aiel might just as well have been left out of this book - oh, wait a minute, in my opinion - they were!

#5 - The nation of Shara shows up during the last battle - did we really need one more element added to the already bursting balloon of confusion going on? This one was ridiculous. They were not a well known people. If the author needed some other people to battle besides the boring Trollocs, why not send in the Shaido? But then again, the "good" Aiel might have had to actually have a role to play in the book.

#6 - Why in the world did we need to kill off Gareth and Siuan and Egwene and Gawyn?

#7 - Leilwin or Egeanin - whatever you prefer was so superfluous that I can't believe she was even included in the book. Plus, her character had always been portrayed as being so strong - Sanderson turned her into a wimpy marshmallow in this book.

#8 - I thought the Ashaman deserved more than they got - both in support and in details. So much more could have been made of Logain and his leadership - wasted opportunity.

I could go on and on. But the biggest issue I had after wading through so many boring pages in my effort to get "somewhere" was the dumb ending. In all fairness to Sanderson, It's my understanding the epilogue was written by Robert Jordan but here goes: Rand leaving in Moridin's body, albeit healthy and with his right mind - thinking of the places he would go and what he would do giving the three women in his life a few final thoughts - wondering if one or all of them might follow them. It was as though they were nothing to him - absolutely nothing! What about your children Elayne is carrying? What about the fact that Aviendha can't walk and may be crippled for the rest of her life, what about Min, your faithful companion and encourager? This to me was the final heartless blow. That our main guy that we had traveled with, loved with, anguished over - some readers for 23 years and all of us for 14 books, could be so blase about the people he purportedly loved?

One last item - I did like Mat's character in this book and felt it was portrayed truer than most. Sanderson did provide me with some good laughs. However, Mat should have been leading the battle from the beginning with the other captains working under him. Also, Lan's character remained true to the end - just needed more writing about Lan and Nynaeve together.

I just re-read the two books in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive Series and he is a fantastic author. I can only wonder if he had too much going on and was under too much pressure when he wrote this book.
2128199
I have listened to the Sookie series on Audible books and found this book disappointing on many levels; I and my fellow Sookie fans have spent the last year rolling around theories  and scenarios we hoped would come about in the ending of the series and never would I have believed that Ms. Harris would give us such a uncomplicated and boring wrap up of the world of a characters she was able to make us adore.  The story didn't match up in it's narrative with the rest of the series, in that it wasn't written in the same style and even the reader Johanna Parker seemed bored.  I know it is too late to stop most folks from shelling out their money on this book as any true Sookie fan pre-ordered it; but if you haven't....honestly, it would have been much less disappointing if Ms. Harris had refused to even write another Sookie Stackhouse book.  Just goes to show you, when someone tells you something, listen!  Ms. Harris did say she had to end the series because she had nothing further to do with the character and she wasn't kidding.  I think that the only way Ms. Harris could even remotely "save face" for this book is to possibly have a world-wide writing contest and challenge her fans to writing a new last version of the Sookie Stackhouse series because she has proved beyond a doubt with her lack-luster ending that she has lost her zeal for the characters.  The disjointed story has insultingly boring ends for beloved characters besides Sookie including Eric and  Bill, and things that were hinted at in other books were never even wrapped up.  Straight up, bad work!
I have never written an Amazon review before and it saddens me that a series that has given me so much entertainment over the past few years had ended in a "plop".  Trust me Sookie fans, don't read the book, you can think up a score of possible ends to the story that will be far better.
1800635
To say that this book is a disappointment is a huge understatement. If you're looking for information on Jaxon's condition and how it affects the Buells' lives on a daily basis, you will be sorely disappointed. I started this book thinking that it would provide a more intimate account of Jaxon's daily life - what kind of therapies he receives, what medications are helping him, abilities, possible future treatments, etc. - but none of this is covered. It almost seems like the Buells hide information for fear that they'll lose their many admirers.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but instead of being inspired, I feel as if the Buells wrote this book simply for the money and nothing more.
2868570
I, like other reviewers, found this book very disappointing as compared to the earlier (pre-Narcissus in Chains) Anita Blake novels.  However, this book was frustrating not so much because of the typos or occasionally annoying catch-phrases, but because it actually has some elements of both the best and worst of the series.  For example, the murder investigation was pretty interesting. . . but the story unfolded in fits and starts and it had no resolution, really.  Also, some fun/interesting characters were represented (Nathaniel, Damian, Jean-Claude), but really only one develops in an appealing way character-wise.  (I'll let you discover which one.)  However, other characters that I like and who also seem to be fan favorites are missing completely; a stray mention here or there does not count as that character's presence (Edward, Asher).  Still, other characters I view as ancillary (Micah) are still around.  And, of course, that brings us to the gratuitous sex scenes.  Honestly, many of them weren't even that hot.  (Plus, it's gotten a little hard, at this point, to believe Anita is that conflicted about her new sexual freedom.)  I just knew that with a book this long, there'd be enough going on to save it, but I was wrong.  The early reviews I read when the book was first released were bad enough that I had fairly low expectations.  I thank those reviewers, because I picked the book up from the library, and wasn't nearly as disappointed as if I had spent money on it.  Hoping for much better next time.
710194
I was anxiously awaiting this book, as I had been doing for the previous two.  Another letdown, I must say.  I actually purchased the hardcover version of this novel in anticipation of the forthcoming events.  In  retrospect, I can't remember one significant thing that happened in the  book, as far as the major plotlines go.  DO NOT purchase this book...take  it out of the library or something....it was a complete waste of paper.
3903641
This was an EXTREMELY disappointing book. I have been a longtime fan of the series and have eagerly awaited sequels...until now. The great parts that I think many fans like such as the brotherly bond between Cal and Niko, Cal's identity/power struggles, the conniving irreverence of Robin, Niko's superhuman ability to keep everything together, and the threat of some creature of unknown power/destruction that the trio have to overcome has been a fairly standard pattern for the books. And it usually works.

But here, it's almost as if the author heard that fans like the Cal/Niko co-dependence and Robin's sexual ridiculousness, and Cal's over-the-top violence/foul mouth and decided to write a book that is 75% comprised of those elements (with a noticeable increase in violence, graphic descriptions, and general crudity)  and about 15% plot (and it's a decent enough idea for a plot). The unbalance of plot and these elements is so extreme that this book is almost unrecognizable from previous stories. While Thurman has tended toward repetition in some of the more recent installments (same phrases and ideas over and over again, we get it already), this book is by far the worst offender. The grand pronouncements and speeches different characters make at different points to each other are over-the-top bonkers, pretentious, unrealistic, and furthermore, completely unnecessary. Oh, and also the retconning of Cal's childhood continues (in that he apparently was always conniving, crude, and somewhat terrible, despite the first 1-5 books' depictions), which is also annoying.

Here are some examples of what I mean (minor spoilers):
1) Cal and Robin are running away from things that they can't defeat. So they're running for their lives. How in the world could they have a meandering multipage conversation of Cal whining about how Robin doesn't trust him despite all Cal has done in previous lives for Robin? I mean, seriously, this is neither the time nor the place to be having this kind of conversation that is completely tangent from the main story.

2) And another tangential story that takes WAY too long to convey is Cal and Loki meeting. Which is pretty much completely prima donna posturing nonsense between Cal, Loki, and Robin (who also seems to get more and more retconned into having additional powers), and also does not seem to have impact or payoff in this story.

3) The ridiculous melodrama after younger Cal lets older Cal fall asleep. And oh no older Cal has bad dreams. And everyone suddenly hates younger Cal for "betraying" him. I mean, seriously, WHAT? Completely unnecessary, stupid whining and whinging. The inconsequential angst and stupidity of everyone involved has hit 11 with that one.

Part of why my review is so negative is my love of the series as a whole, and I'm disappointed it has come to this. If there wasn't so much repetition and ridiculous filler, there wouldn't need to be "two" books for this story (looks as though the fluff/filler was to stretch this story into 2 books, rather than adding some more interesting twists; we hardly even meet the bad guy. I think this would have been a better story if we see more of the brothers' running battle with the Vigil and then getting intel on the new Big Bad that culminates with the opening scene, and then ends with Cal going back to fix things. That would be a more worthy two-parter. So much of what happens with the Vigil since the last book occurs "off-screen" so to speak that it is very unsatisfying.) I hope Thurman gets a good editor and can turn this mess around with the next book.
1546434
Let me start off by saying I had high standards for this book: I have a degree in literature and Bioshock is my favorite video game series. Sadly, I was very disappointed by this book. The character descriptions were far more "tell" than "show," a problem which got worse when the author started making such liberal narrative use of the audio diaries (especially the ones he made up, i.e. that weren't quoted from the game). (I mean, seriously? You have both Lamb and Steinman literally muttering their secret plots to themselves under their breath while in conversation with others?) Bioshock's visual aspect is such a main part of its appeal, and the author seemed to make no effort to describe the environment beyond saying they were "Art Deco" (or, in one attempt at variance, describing something as "Art Decoratif"). Every now and then I'd find a phrase that I thought was well-turned, but a lot of the descriptions were kinda lazy (he described three different female characters in the book as "frowzy"). I know only marginally more about the characters' backstories with the exception of Ryan, McDonough, and Fontaine. We already know that Sander Cohen is crazy, effeminate, and obsessed with bunnies; we played the games. Give us a sense of WHY he's that way. What character descriptions were given, were shallow, off-target, or just didn't make sense (see e.g. Tenenbaum's bewildering relationship with Frank, or the unrealistic explanation of her experience in the concentration camp). The emotional spectrum was fairly limited. The dialogue was disappointing, and not just because McDonough's/Atlas's/Tenenbaum's/Suchong's accents/speech styles were unconvincing. There was so much missed opportunity here, and that made me sad. I feel this should've been an early draft, not a finished product. There was very little of it that actually added to what I knew from the games, and it detracted from the actual story's emotional depth for me.
3525724
As an avid Jodi Picoult fan, I must admit that I was very disappointed in this book. Having read several others by her (my favorites being "My Sister's Keeper," "Nineteen Minutes," "Change of Heart" and "Plain Truth"), I kept waiting for this one to get better. It never did. In addition, this almost 500-page novel was both repetitive and melodramatic.

Picoult seemingly tried to follow the recipe that made "My Sister's Keeper" such a success. This was evident in the rocky relationships between the two girls, Willow and Amelia- a relationship that (in my opinion) should have been highlighted more. The dynamic between these two mirrors the relationship between Anna and Kate in "Keeper" without nearly as much realism or flair. In addition, Picoult (again!) dances over the fine line between protecting and hurting children in the name of unconditional love. The problem with this, however, came in the fact that Charlotte, the mother in the novel, was not at all likable or relate-able (which sharply contrasts to "Keeper's" mom, Sara) . All in all, this book never came close to measuring up to "Keeper," so to anyone who is looking for another fantastic read from Picoult, this book is not it.
262728
I'm actually really surprised at all the positive reviews on this last book. I enjoyed the first two books about Dank and Pagan. I thought they had enough action to make it interesting with enough romance to make it sweet. Drawing Leif and Voodoo into the mix just made it that much more interesting. This last book was disappointing. While the writing was well done with few grammatical errors, the substance and action from the previous books just wasn't there. I agree with another reviewer in that this book doesnt link with the others and the only part carrying over into this book is the readers attachment to Dank, Pagan, and Gee. It could have easily been a standalone book. The novel is also very short - almost novella style so it was a quick read. There seemed no real conflict or climax in the book at all. It did wrap up the series, but I was left feeling like "that's it?". There were also some pretty large plot holes or things that could have been "foreshadowing" but never lead to anything. All it all, it seemed rushed.

I also have to note on the considerably more graphic sexual situations in this book compared to the others in the series. While that didn't bother me at all, I did make the series launch from Young Adult to Mature Adult in this book. The steamy sex scenes would probably be inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18 which I thought was the author's target audience. The "preview" of another novel in the back of the book was EXCEPTIONALLY sexually explicit and was completely inappropriate to be in the back of a young adult novel.
3675843
I really wanted to like this book, especially after reading that it was compared to Nicholas Spark's work which I really enjoy reading. Unfortunately I found this nothing like Spark's writing and found it laughable that anyone would put this book in the same class. There was virtually no character development in this book to speak of and very little plot. I struggled to feel anything about any of the characters other than contempt or frustration, and had trouble finding any reason to finish reading the book at all. There was very little description in the book and the dialogue was simply ridiculous. I would urge you not to waste your money on this book, because if you're expecting a read like The Notebook you will be sadly disappointed. I wish I could get a refund for this one!
3265847
I'm really disappointed where this series has gone because it was so exciting and promising the first six books. In this book there is no plot, no climax...I didn't even know what the story being told was about; there was just too much of nothing going on. Neferet is the main focus in this book and as the antagonist, this character should be bringing readers to the central theme or climax of the story and taper off with some kind resolution and ending that grips the reader with anticpation of something. All this book does is tell us about Zoey and Stark's advanced relationship--with Zoey latching onto Stark like she is a bimbo and so co-dependent, Stevie Rae and her raven moker Raphiem fall madly in love and suck face, two characters die just like that, the group leaves school to live underground (whats with that crap), dead Heath comes back in the form of a vessel to save the day in the next book, Aphrodite is still her bitchy self (which brings some attitude to the book) and Neferet rides off in the sunset with her white bull...until the next book! So I think that about sums it up! Very disappointed!
4775653
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

I really wanted to like this book, but I ended up being disappointed. First off this book was broken down into really short (too short!!!) stories that were incomplete at best. I received a copy of books 1-3 for review and I was supremely disappointed that they "books" ended on a cliffhanger...it would have been nice to at the very least end with a HEA, but alas that was not to be. This book contained some disturbing scenes and I couldn't help but feel that the heroine was weak, stupid, and easily manipulated. I don't mind a female who owns her sexual identity and is okay in her own skin, but I felt that she was little better than a whore and she appeared incapable of being assertive and standing up for herself and her beliefs (which seemed non-existent). The hero was no better: he was shallow, weak, and even cruel at times. When presented with a challenge he was driven into a bottle and could have given a rats ass about the heroine...he treated her little better than a dog and gave her no respect despite being "in love" with her. Overall, I was disappointed at best and disgusted at worst...I gave two stars because it did not get so bad I was forced to stop reading, but that is being generous.