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multicoloredbookreviews 's review for:
Trying to Live With the Dead
by B.L. Brunnemer
Getting through this book was a STRUGGLE and a half! Holy crap! I don't even remember the last time I had such a hard time! So it's truly a testament to how much I liked the characters and how cool the plot was that I managed to soldier on and get to the end.
Let me explain.
I'm an avid reader who's been at it for over 70% my life at this point. On top of that, I'm not a native english speaker. Both of those factors combine to make me extremely observant and nit-picky when it comes to how a book is written. I guess you could go as far as to say I'm a bit of a grammar nazi.
Please, know that I don't say this lightly but Oh, my God does this book need to undergo some SERIOUS editing. I can't even remember the last time I came across something this atrocious. It was utter SPAG hell. I even got this urge at times, like an unscratchable itch, to take a red pen and just go to town on this book.
The verbal tenses were ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE, even switching within the same sentence.
There was a crap-ton of grammar mistakes, especially of the your/you're, too/to, etc. variety. There was also the apostrophe apocalypse. More times than not they were misused when trying to denote possession. Lots of guy's vs. guys' instances and I don't think I came across a single instance of Miles' when talking about something linked to that character. Another thing I found incredibly distracting were the multiple occurrences of subject/verb disagreement: single subjects followed by plural verbs as well as the other way around. I also came across plenty of sentences that were missing words.
But I think the worst part, because it was the one that completely threw my reading out of whack, was the appalling use of punctuation signs. There were hundreds of missing commas and periods, and just as many cases of the exact opposite: they were thrown in in places they ABSOLUTELY did not belong. Examples that really stuck out to me were: the lacks of commas when a character was directly addressing another character (think: I'll see you tomorrow, Lexie or Hey, Ethan, are you okay?), and also how EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF DIALOGUE ENDED WITH A PERIOD! That's not the proper way of writing dialogue.
And how could I forget one of my biggest pet peeves? The lack of paragraph breaks when the speakers changed. If someone said something and a different character reacted to it, THERE SHOULD'VE BEEN A PARAGRAPH BREAK IN BETWEEN! But, because more often than not there wasn't, things get so freaking confusing and hard to follow along.
Example:
"You know I didn't mean it," he sighed patiently.
vs.
"You know I didn't mean it."
He sighed patiently.
Notice how the first example refers to a single person, while the second entails a person reacting to what someone else was saying? (Also, note the use of the different punctuation marks at the end of each piece of dialogue).
The bones were there. The idea was solid. It was a cool concept, full of potential. And that's why I bumped my review up a whole star. But this book sorely needs exhaustive editing (please start by removing 95% of the descriptions of what every character was wearing each and every day and the pointless minutiae of everyday life) and a few rounds of meticulous proof-reading before it can be anything more than a 2 star rating for me.