Riley Knight

Disclaimer: I read this as an ARC, advanced readers copy, for writing a review on amazon. I understand the value of reviews, and I will always be honest.

While the writer needs to work on her craft, quite a lot, she managed to capture a sweetness in this story that shows me she has promise. I hope she keeps working at it.

What is right? That sweetness, the old friends reconnecting, eventually, in a different way, and their relationships with the cowboy's young son. These are big deals, not to be discounted.

What's wrong is repetition, meandering, a need to practice writing a lot more. There was also an obvious lack of research on what "ranch work" actually is, and more was needed for what a painter actually does. Calling a person's painting a hobby when he lived in NYC was a major mistake. Sure he had a windfall, but NYC is that expensive.

Wading through some poor writing took me awhile. And then I had to wait for it to show up on amazon and here in order to write this review. Three stars is pretty good, keep writing!… (más)

The problem with self-publishing is that it is too easy (relatively). Writing a whole novel, even a rough draft, is a Big Deal. Writing's hard. But writing a good novel, ah. That takes not just work, but more than one pair of eyes, and some of those readers MUST be critical readers. And the writer must listen.

I bailed on reading this at 15%. Out of boredom, and despair. It's worse than her first book, which at least had heart.

This is almost like a first draft. The sentences are fine, but the paragraphs add up to tedium in repetition and in telling rather than showing a character's emotional state and response. These are common new writer problems, I am still working my way past them in my own work.

They should be far less predominant in a published work. Yet here we are. Normally I don't post one- and two-star reviews, but I read an ARC in return for an honest review. Honestly, for what the first chapter contains, it should be half as long. Same for the second chapter. There's so little substance. At the point I bailed, they were investigating a boring bank robbery.

What's wrong is fixable. But we never should've seen this stage. I am quite sure it gets no better. Reviewers who give this more than three stars are uncritical readers, which is fine, just, be aware what that means.… (más)