Rating: WARTY!
I got this freebie which offers sample chapters of a bunch of "romance" novels - that sort of thing I never read, so I decided to take a look at this limited sample - each book had only an opening chapter or two - and to see if they were truly as bad as I think they are. It turns out - they are! Who knew? I decided to review these based solely on the sample chapters, which believe me is more than enough to judge this trash. None of these books would remotely pass the Bechdel-Wallace test because they can't even pass it within one female character's own head! It's all about guys and sex all the time and some might argue that this is okay because that's the whole purpose of the book, but I'd argue that people who say that sort of thing are missing the point - and by some serious margin, too. Actually it's not even a margin, it's more like a burgeon.
The first female mentioned is Corilla Delford! Seriously? That name sounds far too much like Gorilla. The story starts out with the main male character apparently having been punched in the face during the inevitable trope bullying (predictably jock versus intellectual) that's an irremovable fixture of YA stories that are set in high-schools. Immediately following the punch is a tedious first person introductory info-dump which made me yawn. Seriously, does this author think they can draw a reader immediately into the story with a punch and then keep them reading with a yawn-inducing info-dump? It looks like somebody went to creative-writing school. Or maybe not!
Info-dumps are second only to flashbacks when it comes to ways to turn me off reading your work. Too many authors don't seem to get that you can deftly interleave history with present action so it's not an info-dump. I guess this author didn't get the memo. That was enough to turn me off this story, but even so I gamely pressed-on, only to discover this was yet another dual first person voice story and I stopped right there. Barf. Seriously? Get a clue, get an imagination, try something original.
