A rare, unexpected disappointment

I so wanted to love this book for all the reasons, but this was a rare, unexpected Audible disappointment.

I don’t often leave reviews, but this is the review I needed to read before purchasing.

This was a well-imagined story involving characters with so much believable sincerity, but this otherwise accomplished author lets them down badly. The dialogue was not only in desperate need of an editor’s pencil, but was wincingly poor throughout. At times I felt like I was watching one of those hyper-contrived “dramatisations” of moral dilemmas and the super righteous they made us sit through in church and youth group, or appear unbidden on Facebook Watch, which of course made all of the character development die under a mountain of implausible cheese. The author is annoyingly preachy without being particularly empathetic and I was quite literally cringing (especially at the parts about Jan’s dog as a stand in prop for his difficulty with relationships). Coloured throughout with spontaneous interjections of the Dutch-derived expressions; the “love story” between Emma and Lamar as they bumble towards companionship was adorable.

The reading was competent enough, but wasn’t helped by the forced overburdened dialogue. I usually find myself able to forgive a lot of editorial sins in a good story, but wouldn’t have excused this one even as a debut effort. HOW did this even get past the first editors? I am indignant because there was so much beauty in this story that deserved a sharper needle.

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