I’m in a book club that is not cheap… the fee gets you a paperback of the book as well as the chance to come and discuss the book for a few hours in a cozy setting. I was very excited to join! However, this is my first time and I’ve been slogging through the book. It has no redeeming qualities. It’s self-published, which the book club apparently chose to support a local author. Self-published CAN be good, but it can also be incredibly bad. In this case, the book looks lovely on the cover, but even a few pages in, you realize that there are literally mistakes all over the place… the book wasn’t edited. As for the writing “style”: think of a low cost romance (without much actual romance) combined with your 16 year old cousin writing their first novel. The dialogue is utterly inane. If there’s a theme, I think it’s “cliches”. 😛 There is barely a plot. Not one of the characters feels real, or gets developed, or has an intelligent thought in their head. And, as mentioned, there appears to have been zero editing–not even copy editing.
Obviously, I don’t want to make anyone feel bad… not the person who selected the book, and not the author. So I can’t really sit at that book club meeting and put down the book. But what WILL we talk about?? And more importantly, I think someone who leads the club should know, because it’s not really fair to the participants to choose this type of book for the club and charge for it. I think they intend to do a few more “local” books… Help!
by tree_soul