Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Book Review - The Dead Woman



Possibly 4 Stars = Above average--consider reading

This was a quick little read about a "drifter" coming into town who has an interesting sixth sense.  He can tell, visually, when people are about to meet some terrible fate.  A twist in this story's middle--if you want to call it a twist; it seemed extremely obvious from the beginning to me--tells us all about who the Blake County serial killer is.  While this is an extremely fast-paced and well-written shortie novella, which took me about five hours to read, I was disappointed in the story's lack of resolution.  The ending made me flip back and forth through my Kindle and go, "Where's the rest?"  I realize this is part of a series, but I have read MANY other series stories in which the ending, well, ended.  All-in-all, if you have a day to yourself, you'll mostly be entertained with a slight let-down at the end.

I deducted one star for what seemed to be a lack of resolution, and a quarter star for eight errors, which were primarily typographical errors and two grammatical errors.  I usually don't bother factoring such errors in unless there's seven or more so while I might not usually bother with eight, that number seemed high since this is a short novella.  While I was entertained overall, I expected more from such experienced writers.

NOTE: I recently learned this was an unedited copy so I changed the "stars" above to reflect that.  However, as I haven't read an edited copy, I kept the rest the same.  I was told that an unedited copy was sent to reviewers, which confuses me.  Why would writers send anything less than their best to people who are likely to be most critical? 


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