There is a certain contract that I like to think exists between authors and readers.
- The book will be edited.
- The book will have fleshed-out characters.
Those are really the two most important things of a novel. If it’s romance, the rules are expanded.
- The reader must fall in love with the hero.
- The romance must be believable.
This novella is an insult to the craft.
Not only was it riddled with typos, it contained multiple instances of grammar fails. “Too” instead of “To”, no apostrophes on possessives, and several misspelled words.
It’s like the author didn’t even look over it once.
Then, to make matters worse, there is no romance in this at all!
It starts off with promise, despite the obvious errors, with a vampire immortal moonlighting as a therapist and a quiet librarian with low self-esteem meeting each other, but that’s as far as the promise goes.
After she sees him for a therapy session, he cuts it short because he’s desperately horny for her (she’s pouring out her troubles and he’s staring at her tits) and that’s unethical of a therapist. He asks her on a date and the next scene they’re in a private jet plane heading to some villa. In this jet plane, they eat.
This would be normal for a lot of romances, but the thing is, our heroine is overweight. This scene basically existed for her to feel guilty about eating and he tells her she can eat normally. I don’t even… like, just because you’re overweight doesn’t mean you’re constantly thinking of how fat your are or “Oh I can’t eat this he’ll think I’m a pig”
Like the concept is just silly. And that’s what’s so annoying about her. She constantly thinks about how fat she is. It’s annoying to read. Do skinny people constantly think about how skinny they are? No? Then why do fat characters think about how fat they are?
After a short jaunt at the villa where nothing happens except our heroine is like “OMG I GET TO GO PLACES I CAN’T AFFORD”.
The next scene several weeks pass in a sentence. And they’re in love.
The only scenes we have are:
- Meeting in the library because he dropped his cell phone in water and needs to use the phone.
- The therapy session
- The jet plane
I barely know him. She barely knows him. At this point in the romance we’re in the getting to know each other phase.
But in a sentence, several weeks pass and they are madly in love with each other.
NO.
N O
Even short steamy novellas still need to have romance. We still need to be able to fall in love with the hero. What’s the point of even reading it? I can find better titillating things that’ll do the same as this book except better. Hell, I’ve written things only 5,000 words that have more character development and romance than this thing. If you’re going to have a short novella, you need to make every scene count.
I didn’t even finish it, so I didn’t get to the likely only love scene, considering I was on chapter 5 of 6. And I didn’t want to. I’d probably have to sit there and read about her going “Oh god my fat is going to jiggle” when they’re making love. Blech.
Anyway, normally I would just not post about this, but I suppose I’m in a ranting mood. >>;;
Zero Hearts, hell, I’d give this a negative number if possible