Monday, June 11, 2012

Day 392: One Hundred Book Challenge: Book Fifteen


The Locket by Richard Paul Evans

                I have yet to read his breakout novel. This was one of his earlier novels. I was a little wary of it at first since it appeared to be written in English used during our country’s birth. Any author “self-help” book will tell you that you are supposed to assume that your audience is just as intelligent as you are. “Dumbing” down your words makes it seem like you think your audience is too stupid to understand anything more than text speak, this loses fans. You also shouldn’t make your wording so difficult to understand that people have to go and get a dictionary at least twice a chapter. Well versed as I am, I still dislike reading a book where I have to stop for a few minutes and attempt to dissect what that sentence meant because I’ve only seen one of those words in one of Shakespeare’s poems.

                Basically, as an author, you’re supposed to make your readers think, but not too much. The beginning of this book, made me think too much. I eventually got used to this and was able to read the entire book without throwing it out a window (mostly because it’s my sister-in-law’s book and not my own and I promised I wouldn’t harm them while they were in my custody).

                This wasn’t like his other novels, it wasn’t really centered on the romance, it was centered on the relationship between Michael and the elderly woman he cared for at the retirement home he worked for. It was actually very dramatic and I’ve just discovered that he sort of wrote a sequel to it and that is the one I am reading next. Not because I enjoyed this book, but so that I can get it out of the way and go back to reading regular romances. I didn’t really like this one so much. I can’t even truly say I’d recommend it to anyone under any pretense except to read all of Richard Paul Evans work. This is purely my opinion and you can choose to take my advice or ignore me entirely. Everyone writes at least one crappy book and I think this may have been his. Again, no insult to him, just because I didn’t enjoy it doesn’t mean that he’s a terrible author or that the book was terrible. I’m just a pain in the ass and the first two books I read by him spoiled me as they were his later books. You get better as you go. 

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