The Claims Adjuster (Volume 1)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

On opening the file I received for this book I was confused. On the title page, not only was it oddly spaced so that the title looked like this:

The
Claims Adjus
er

but the part that is underlined was linked to a random article on Wikipedia. It didn’t really bode well for the rest of the book when there were major issues with the title page.

I’m extremely forgiving of errors in indie books because I know most authors can’t afford an editor, and it’s easy to miss some things. Especially with common errors, many times I won’t even mention them so long as they aren’t overly frequent. This book is littered with errors, some of which I don’t think I’ve seen in a book before.

The writing felt flat right from the start. Emotions never really came across to me. It was more like I was being told a list of emotions that the character was feeling than it being conveyed in the writing. It’s hard for me to explain why it came off as flat, but I’ll try to give an example. Here is a summary of his boss explaining what his job is with some stuff cut out.

“What we offer is not really a job in the way that most people view careers”, [sic] he explained. “You won’t have an office but you won’t be working from your home, either”. [sic]
“You won’t draw a pay check but you won’t have any bills to pay”, [sic] he offered…

“Your coworkers will be all around you but you won’t really know who they are. Your assignments could be emailed to you or you could come by in person”, [sic] he continued.

“We don’t sell anything. We don’t buy anything. We don’t repair anything”. [sic]

“We don’t break things, either”. [sic] He stopped.

“I guess you could say that we end things so that they won’t have to end themselves”. [sic]

“You won’t get a company tee shirt or name plate. You won’t have a badge or a pass card”, [sic] …

Look at all of that text describing pretty much nothing. It goes on and on and most of what he’s saying is a list of negatives. I could have easily added to the list with anything. “You won’t be selling ice-cream. We don’t sell books. You won’t need a Category D driving license.” It’s not building up tension, it’s wasting time telling us about all the things that won’t be needed or won’t be happening.

Second, just as a testament to the first thing I mentioned, just look at how many times I had to put [sic] in there. There’s plenty of other types of errors, too.

So, the overall story is that the main character, Doug, has been unemployed. He gets a job offer as a “claims adjuster”, which is essentially the government hiring him to kill people who would be too expensive to pay medical costs for. The chapters then have him kill a variety of different people. This sort of set-up has been done before and it can be interesting, I just don’t think it worked here.

The main problem is that the main characters aren’t likable. They’re not nice people and there doesn’t seem to be any insight that they aren’t, and scenarios are strange and judgmental. For example, there’s a time he went to the emergency room, and he describes everyone else as having “nice shoes” (he’s obsessed with shoes) and cell phones and ring tones and wearing shirts that he couldn’t afford, etc etc. At first I thought the point was that only rich people could afford the emergency room, though it’s still strange that he would be the only poor person who needs emergency care.

Later on it’s said that all of the people he’s complaining about aren’t paying for their healthcare – he is. It was a strange assumption to make, and it wasn’t the only time he jumps to the conclusion that he’s paying for someone else’ bill.

The main character’s moral compass is deranged and his reasoning is bizarre.

I thought back to a particular drunk driving arrest I had made years before. I was asked, on the stand, under oath with God as my witness, if I ever had even took a sip of alcohol and then operated a motor vehicle. I lied.

Okay, so he felt bad about lying on the stand. It’s a bit melodramatic, but I can accept that he would feel bad about that. Later, he’s assigned his first person to kill, and he thinks this:

I convinced myself that, if it was ok to lie on the stand years past, it’s ok to end a life for a good cause.

I don’t understand what one has to do with the other or how they’re even remotely equal in how bad they are. He’s comparing telling a small lie on the stand to following and murdering an elderly woman. “I told a lie once, so it’s okay to kill someone”. I don’t follow the logic.

Parts of this book made me uncomfortable in the way they were presented. The character seems to try and come off as “I don’t have a problem with women/gay people,” and unfortunately that seems to be followed by a “but” and then proceeds to be offensive.

The character doesn’t just have lewd thoughts about attractive women. Fine, people fantasize, whatever. But he has nasty thoughts about a lot of other women, particularly women he doesn’t find attractive.

Here’s how he described women who were waiting at the hospital with him:

The women were dressed in much the same fashion. Somewhat slutty, as I recall. They were the ones who needed the condoms. Several had three or four kids, all crying and asking for things like gum or candy from mom’s purse which seemed to never be empty.

He’s unpleasant. He’s knows nothing about these women except that he saw them for a few minutes while he was in a waiting room, and he’s jumping to the conclusion that they’re “slutty,” “need condoms,” and the way he mentions how many kids they have is disparaging. Even more, he’s complaining about these women who have “three or four kids” needing condoms and he has three kids himself, with two different mothers.

Later, he goes to beg for a job at the unemployment office because he promised his wife he would. He describes the receptionist as a “portly white female,” and goes on to say:

I doubted that there were that many men who ever got down on their knees for her, much less made her promises.

..exchanging glances with the secretary that seemed to go from shy to slutty…

This is not a character I want to root for. He’s the one who goes to this place and insists on begging on his knees for a job, and then he pushes all of these derogatory thoughts onto this woman who just happened to be there.

He’s not particularly nice to men either.

I was then called back by a gentleman who looked like he was better fit for selling cheap jewelry or waiting tables at a bistro in the French Quarter.

The lack of logic continues in another scene where his wife complains that he doesn’t have a job, and later on in the same scene he tells her that he has to go sign a new policy at his work. I was confused because he had already told his family he was an insurance agent, so she shouldn’t have thought he was unemployed. I thought maybe I missed something, but then suddenly he was doing things for ‘work’ again.

One of his targets is a gay man with AIDs. The book says this:

I had friends who were homosexual

But it has the worst kind of stereotype for a gay man, who isn’t even a character. I can’t call him a character because he doesn’t act like any human would. It isn’t just the fact that he starts sexually harassing the main character the minute he comes through the door, even goosing him (how is this man not in jail if this is how he acts?).

The man owns a pet store and is a snake enthusiast. However, he has several kinds of pets available. When the main character enters, he clearly expresses a fear of snakes. Most people, especially shop owners, would realize that the main character is not interested in snakes and would see if he was interested in something else. Not this guy. Since snakes are sexual he continuously goes on about the snakes and decides to feed them in front of the man who doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. Then he starts asking if he wants to hold them, and when he doesn’t want to hold the first one he asks about another one.

This is why I can’t even fathom him as a character. If someone goes into a shop and says they hate fish, you don’t proceed to go on about all the fish you have, and keep asking which fish someone would like to see. You would ask if they want a kitten or puppy instead. The only reason this character is sexually harassing the main character is because he’s gay. The only reason he’s obsessed with snakes is because he’s gay. He has AIDs because he’s gay. There’s nothing about this caricature that can’t be explained by saying “because he’s gay”.

And it goes on. He takes his wife to a fancy restaurant where he plans on telling her the truth about his job. The first thing I noticed was something small.

There were doctors and lawyers and men who had inherited their father’s fortunes and the women who chased those men.

No women are big earners? I thought maybe I was being nitpicky there, but it doesn’t take long for it to get worse. They’re in the restaurant and start talking.

These colors,” I said … “look more like pelican puke than a speared tune.”
She laughed. Loudly.
“That’s seared tuna and pelican’s don’t puke, they regurgitate…”

Several patrons and one of the waiters look our way and sneered. I hadn’t been sneered upon since I was unemployed and wearing clothes that were sneer-worthy. Tonight, I was not sneer-worthy and neither was my wife.

This man is a horrible, horrible person. Clothes aren’t what make a person sneer-worthy or not. The fact that he entered a restaurant and immediately started insulting it does. How are the people there supposed to react? Is that supposed to be charming?

This is the part where I realized the only reason his wife isn’t just as horrible is because we don’t see her as much as him and don’t have to listen to her inner dialogue. He tries to explain his job and it becomes a convoluted discussion about insurance and how they’re paying other people’s way. His wife then questions the waiter.

“If you get sick, who would pay for your doctor’s visit,” she fired at the smug young man.

The waiter retreated rather quickly but she followed him with her eyes.
“Cock-sucker probably doesn’t even have insurance,” she stated with disgust. “I wonder how many times we’ve paid for his colonoscopy.”

Charming. They then start discussing the other patrons and how he would kill them if they left without paying their checks as an example of what he does, sometimes being degrading in their descriptions of them. And when they’re leaving:

“Don’t you leave that cock-sucker one dime in tip,” she demanded. “We pay for his medicine; we shouldn’t have to pay for him to pick up my fork.”

So. They go to a restaurant. They immediately insult the decor. They start making a scene. She demands to know about a waiter’s personal insurance information, and when he’s startled and leaves she calls him a gay slur. They spend time being insulting about almost all of the guests, and when it’s all done they leave and don’t even give the waiter a tip.

These are terrible people. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that he murders people for a living.

This is followed up by something else terrible by his wife, Kim. She’s mad about his job. He comes home one time and she’s at the table with the kids. She tells him that they discussed his new job and what they thought about it. Why would anyone do that? He could very well think that she told them about his illegal job and he might say something that spill the beans in front of children. There was no point to it except putting the children in danger of learning something awful.

It turns out she cheated on him. Considering he’s been murdering people behind her back I don’t think he has much room to get mad, but he does and even thinks I had killed for this woman.

He gets his last case and decides to kill the man she had an affair with as well as his target. For some reason the fake e-mails in the text are underlined and linked. We get more flattering descriptions of women as he says the new target’s breasts are more like a 36 long instead of 36 C. When he gets both in one place and kills them, he makes fun of the dead man who had an affair with his wife by ironically saying:

“You spelled besmirched wrong”, [sic] I added. “I hate bad spellers”. [sic]

He kills them both and it ends shortly after that. There isn’t much of a conclusion.

There were a few other smaller things in the book like a part where Kim describes how their son, Jase, couldn’t understand that they couldn’t afford to buy a fancy pair of shoes and other people could. Jase is a teenager. Jase should be able to understand the basics of how money works. In another part the main character was looking for someone to mow the lawn, saw an ad that had a ‘hot chick’ riding a lawn mower, and he seemed surprised that it was only for advertising. A grown man should realize that an ad like that isn’t true to life.

There are other instances of him talking about women and calling them things like “bitches,” “two dollar whores,” or calling Jase’ biological mother a “piece of crap”.

And, for positive, I do believe I found my favorite line in the book.

I could play one instrument and that was the radio.

When I first finished this book I thought maybe I would give it a 3 or 4 out of 10, thinking that I might have looked too deeply into some things. But when I went back and looked over what I had highlighted and wrote up the review, I realized that I wasn’t nitpicking. There really were some major problems and I don’t think they were purposeful. It wasn’t just the narrator who carried certain beliefs, but when other characters opened their mouths the same things would come out, which was why his wife was suddenly terrible to other people. The way a gay character was portrayed was probably the most offensive part, with him being little more than a pile of stereotypes.

The cost of healthcare can be a good setting for creating a story like this. Unfortunately, the impression I got was that this book didn’t look kindly on women or homosexuals, and it was more than just a flawed narrator. That’s why I ended up giving it a 1/10.

The Return (Second Coming Book 1)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

I’m just going to say it right off: This book didn’t work for me.

I’ve read some other reviews and I agree with some of the things they said and disagree with others. First, I agree that there are no characters in this book. I can summarize everything about a character in one line.

Sarah: She donates to charity and such and is horribly rich.
Peter: He runs a big shipping company place and is horribly rich.
Regina: She serves some guy and wears very impractical clothing. Also, as a woman who is sexual, she’s of course pure evil and loves torturing and killing people.

This is honestly about as much as I can tell you about any of these characters. They’re cardboard cutouts with names attached.

This book also desperately needs editing. It’s not one or two errors. There are errors everywhere.

You’re dad would be proud.

Thankfully, it was so expense that is was sold only in small jars.

The tenses will change, quotations marks are often missing, words will be missing and sometimes I’m not even sure who is talking. There’s even at least one spot where it suddenly switches to first person POV, and doesn’t have italics or anything to mark it off as thoughts. At another point a character thinks about doing something, and in the next two paragraphs announces that she’s done it when she hasn’t even left her spot yet.

Onto the plot. Geoff accidentally stumbles onto a Templar book while on vacation. For some reason this becomes the obsession of his life. Luckily, like all characters, he is ridiculously wealthy and can travel anywhere on a whim to research whatever he wants. Besides the fact that it doesn’t establish why Geoff cares so much about discovering the secrets of the Templars, it also doesn’t explain how he does a lot. For example, he goes to “library after library” and pours over books and manuscripts. Then we’re immediately told that the pieces “were starting to fall into place”. What pieces? I have no idea. We’re just told he’s discovering this stuff and figuring things out somehow. We don’t know what he read in the books, how he read between the lines and came to conclusions he did or what people on the street tell him. We’re just told he looked at books/talked to people and now he knows stuff.

At one point he’s at Oxford University and leaving the library. He notices someone else is there and immediately thinks he’s being followed. Like so many things in this book, I immediately ask, “Why does he think that?” There are plenty of people who go to that university, and lots of people stay late on campuses. I’ve even seen people sleep in random places like lounges or libraries. It’s not that weird to see a person there.

One of the things I disagree with other reviewers on is that the book needs to be longer. While I understand their opinion and why they would say that, I would say that there is a ton of useless text that can be taken out and replaced, like one point where the bad guys deal with a crooked taxi driver which has no bearing on the plot. The majority of the book reads like a list of events.

When Peter and Sarah go out on a date, we’re told things like what time Peter went to the hotel, what they ate, and a list of places they visited. We’re even told:

They seemed to have endless things to say to each other.

But we don’t see any of their conversations and we’re not even told what they’re talking about. The book tells us they have a lot in common, but I couldn’t tell you what any of those things were. Then there’s needless explanations, such as saying “It was obvious they had missed each other very much.” after they hugged. We shouldn’t have to be told that. It should be obvious when reading it, but it’s not because the writing lacks any impact. There are no emotional connections to any characters.

Which is why I disagree that the book needs to be longer. Instead of telling the reader a list of places they went, the author could have focused on one place and shown and actual scene with them, talking and getting to know each other. It could replace the needless text with something that shows us who the characters are as people.

The roles Sarah and Regina play might be upsetting to some. Sarah basically exists to have a baby. On the other hand, Regina basically exists to be sexy and evil. I don’t recall seeing any other female characters in the book, or, if there were, they were very brief. Whether they’re good or evil is summed up quickly. “Sarah donates to charity, therefor she’s good”. “Regina likes kinky sex, therefor she’s evil”. It would be so easy to do more than the cliche with these characters. Maybe Sarah donates for shallow reasons or for basic good publicity, but isn’t necessarily more generous than anyone else. Maybe Regina could have taken in “pets” who had been abused in their lives and she watches out for them. So much more could be done with them without making them flat characters, but it doesn’t happen in this book.

Sarah is part of a long line of women who will supposedly give birth to the savior at some point, yet her mother doesn’t bother to tell her anything until she’s dying. Sarah takes it surprisingly well. Everyone takes everything surprisingly well.

Even parts of the story are flat like this. For example, in Chapter 97, “Pilot’s Seat”, I could have summed up the entire chapter in a sentence and skipped it. I already knew exactly what was going to happen. Follow along and see if you can guess:

Peter, not long before this, studied how to fly a plane. For part of a month. They’re in the middle of an air fight. Suddenly, the plane he’s in starts diving. He knocks on the door to ask if the pilot and co-pilot are okay. No one answers. Can you write out what happens for the rest of the chapter? I bet you could and you’d probably be 99.9% accurate.

Then there are some major questions in what makes sense. For one, when it’s discovered that Sarah is going to have a boy, the doctor makes a note that the Davidson family had a pre-disposition for having girls. I don’t understand why he would make this note, though, because it’s the sperm that determines the gender of a child and the doctor would know that. Basically, Peter’s side of the family would be the one that would be looked at, not Sarah’s. The only reason the doctor makes this note is for plot convenience.

Later, they tie a man up to a bed and poison him to death. They then simply declare that when the police find him they’ll think he died of a heart attack during sex. Why would they think that? There wouldn’t be any signs of him having sex. Just taking his trunks off doesn’t mean everyone will conclude he was having sex.

Other times the good guys don’t take advantage of obvious situations. An attempt is made on Sarah’s life, but they don’t do anything to make it appear that the attempt was successful, so the bad guys find out right away that she didn’t actually die and continue trying to kill her.

There was also one particular uncomfortable moment for me:

He had also deceived quie a number of gullible, so-called, “intelligent” people into believing in global warming…

Regardless of my thoughts on the subject, when I read that line it felt like a jab at readers who believe in global warming. And:

It was not a place for the average pedophile priest or lesbian nun.

In my personal experience, the priests and nuns I know probably would not put those two things on the same level.

Even after all that there was still another major problem. The good guys were ridiculously overpowered. At one point I made this note:

Below deck, the Argo was outfitted to house 300 Templars with eating and sleeping accommodations.
Versus Regina.

Yes. 300 Templars, and on the bad guy side we’re shown Regina. I really didn’t feel like the good guys had much to contend with.

It finally sets it up towards the end that the bad guy has access to millions of people but it doesn’t feel like it throughout the story. It’s constantly Regina versus everyone. Not only that, but it readily sets up the Templars are being better trained. The Templars have more information, boundless resources, and another organization helping them. For the vast majority of the book the bad guys felt like the underdogs, not the good guys.

The books also feature protagonist-centered morality that can make the good guys seem monstrous by accident.

At one point, while people are trying to kill his pregnant wife, Peter is contacted by a business partner who tells him that there’s some trouble with him being accused of wrongdoing in Panama City. For some reason Peter decides he should go deal with this, even though they’re being pursued by people who want to kill his wife and it would be easy to locate him if he went to meet a regular business contact. Also, he and his wife have access to any amount of money they could possibly desire, so he doesn’t even need to do it.

But he goes anyway and of course gets himself and a Templar caught. Then they’re held hostage on a ship. The Templar, Hodgeson, is tortured while Peter can hear him from another room. He knows that Hodgeson is tied up in the other room. Suddenly a storm hits, and it conveniently breaks down the door so he can escape! So our hero goes to try and help Hodgeson, right?

Nope. The ship is sinking, he knows Hodgeson is tied up and has been enduring torture, and he knows he can hear him from where he was and had seen the room that Hodgeson was in, but he didn’t even think about trying to save the other man. He doesn’t even try. He hops right off the ship and leaves the torture victim tied up to sink with it, barely sparing him a passing though. Hodgeson is barely mentioned after that. Keep in mind that the only reason that Hodgeson is even there is because Peter decided to stupidly go do regular business in the middle of a life or death situation (not to mention he didn’t consider that they might spot him meeting with his business partner and then follow him back to Sarah).

This is exactly why the book has so many problems. Imagine, for a second, if we changed that scenario a bit. He goes to save Hodgeson, but the door is not just locked, it’s also strong and heavy. He tries to find a way to get him out but eventually has to come to terms with the fact that he’s unable and he has to save himself. Devastated, he leaves the man behind and blames himself for not being able to save him. Wouldn’t that have some more impact than him bounding off the ship and barely even remembered Hodgeson later?

And on top of that, he’s rescued by a fishing village later. These people are obviously poor. They don’t even have a telephone. So, after he’s gotten back to where he belongs and again has access to ridiculous amounts of money, does he ever think about these people again? Poor people who saved him, provided him with food, gave him a place to rest and even gave him transportation to where he needed to go? Nope. He got what he needed from them so they’re long forgotten.

This is protagonist-centered morality. People besides the protagonists are fodder – so much so that even the protagonist themselves don’t think much of them, and it can make them look unintentionally like horrible people. He knows someone is tied up and tortured on a boat but he only thinks of rescuing himself. He’s a super rich man taking things from very poor people and it doesn’t even cross his mind to repay them.

The plot of the bad guys was to take over the world, mainly by “stopping the prophecy” and putting in their own Pope. Now, Christianity is a major, major religion, no doubt. There are 2.2 billion Christians, out of 7.2 billion people. But if you look at that from the other side, right off the bat that means that 5 billion people don’t even follow the religion you’re taking over. Then, keep in mind, not all Christians are Catholics. So, remove half of the Christians and you’re down to 1.1 billion. Now, keep in mind: how many of them can be described as “devout”, and how many mostly go about their lives and don’t really pay much attention to the Church?

So, now you’ve nominated your own Pope. That’s nothing to shake a stick at but it’s hardly “ruling the world”. If the new Pope ordered Christians to kill people I doubt there would be very many who would listen. They’re still people with their own minds. In some places Christians have been greatly dropping in numbers these days because people have decided they don’t agree with the Church. If the Church started doing weird things that people didn’t like you can be sure that the number of followers would drop even quicker. It felt like this plan wouldn’t be quite as great as it might first appear.

In my opinion, the book needs a giant edit. It reads like a series of events, none having any particular emotional impact. “They went here, then they went there, then they…” Trying to think of something good to say about it, all I can come up with is that the general formatting was fine and the cover is nice. I give it a 2/10.

I WON’T be linking to this book.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.

One of the first things I noticed about this book was the formatting. The pages all bleed into each other, so the first chapter immediately bleeds into the second chapter, etc. There’s also weird spacing after a lot of stuff, as if someone hit return to space it out instead of using page breaks. It’s not the first time I’ve read an indie book that has done this, but I never really mentioned it before. The reason I bring it up this time is because this is a book about creating kindle books, so I expect it to look good.

The table of contents is a mess. There’s big paragraphs in it, as well as tons of links with “(Untitled)”.

Right at the beginning there’s some images proving that the author earns as much as the book proclaims.
I was a little confused because all of the books the author has available are under $4. So, let’s be generous and say he was making $2 per book sold. He’d have to sell about 7,000 books a month to make the $14,000.
I noticed his books on their rankings seem to be on average somewhere around #90,000 to #100,000, which means he’s selling a few copies, but based on my experience I’d expect them to rank a lot higher if he’s selling that many. I don’t know, it seemed off to me.

It did feel repetitive and like there was a lot of unneeded information. It started off with explaining what a kindle is. The problem with that is that if someone is reading the ebook – likely on a kindle or similar device – they probably don’t need to be told what it is. Likewise, if someone is reading a book about successfully publishing on the kindle, they probably don’t need pages and pages about something like “Why kindles are popular”.
It reminded me a bit of a forensic book I once bought that decided that it was necessary to provide the reader with definitions to things like ‘murderer’.

Then I noticed that in the few pages I’d read it felt like I’d seen some of the same things more than once.

Example:
At 6%:
“If you try to publish in the traditional way, then you might have to wait for months and years to get your manuscript approved and to get a good deal in publishing the book. In the world of publishing, the more you wait, the more money you lose.”

At 10%:
“One of the biggest advantages of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. This is a huge benefit as losing time is equal to losing money in the publishing world.”

At 91%:
“The biggest advantage of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. So you do not lose unnecessary time and money over such publishing efforts.”

That’s right. I may have even missed one or two, but this is a short book and there’s three examples of it repeating the exact same thing, sometimes almost word for word. It repeats A LOT.

At 19% there’s a big list of ‘example articles’ which are then repeated on the very next page.

I also found it odd that at 12% there’s a graph demonstrating why it’s a good idea to write romance ebooks, because people prefer their romances as ebooks. Why? Because at the bottom of the list was cookbooks, where people vastly prefered those to be printed over ebook versions. And the author is saying that he sells so many ebooks, and almost all of the ebooks he has available are about cooking.
When he gets to talking about cookbooks, he puts up a list of places to take recipes from. Not just the text, but the images, too. People own the rights to their work, so I can’t agree with taking it. The images, as well. Someone took that image and someone owns the right to that image, you can’t just take it and profit off of it. The people who create that work deserve credit and pay for their work.
I can say that if I was reading a book and saw someone using images I had commissioned for my book, I would not be happy.

There were also errors:
“…I am going to show you publishing hot bestseller books and I have break that method…”

“At this point, you should have book with you.”

At one point it threw this out:
“Don’t put a bunch of PLR stuff together.”

But the book didn’t mention PLR or what it was earlier.

A lot of times the book just tells you to go somewhere else, like this:

“If you want formatting tips, it’s available on amazon.com.”

This book is FULL of lists of links that could probably easily be found online.

Also, it showed more examples later on in the book of the author’s success. The problem? The author blacks out all of the parts that would show what book it is. I could easily snap a screenshot of a bestseller, cover the ASIN, and pretend that I’m the #1 bestseller. I have no idea why the author would hide this information if they had books that were bestsellers.

I have a lot of major problems with this book. Of course, encouraging theft and plagiarism is at the top. It’s formatted poorly, has a lot of errors (poor grammar/missing commas or periods/etc) and encourages a lot of copying and pasting of other people’s work. This book was published on Jun 6, 2014. It has 63 5-star reviews (Jun 24, 2014). Need I say more about that? This book pads out its few pages by repeating a lot of the same things over and over.

As a matter of fact, take a look at this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J19FBR8/ref=pdp_new_dp_review

Compare it with this book’s page: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU7OLXA/ref=pdp_new_dp_review

Look a little familiar? Looks like the author published essentially the same thing twice.

All of this got me wondering, so I did a little more research.
So here we go:
From this book: “The Ninja Secret That Will Allow You To Create Bestselling Kindle Books Without Having To Lift A Finger”
Look what I found over here (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Buster-Formula-Publishers-Success-ebook/dp/B00JUAJSNQ): “The ninja tactic that will allow you to create bestselling kindle books without having to lift a finger.”

From this book: “He has opened doors again to his Kindle 1-on-1 Coaching Class for a very limited time for $100 per hour. Muhammad will be raise the price to $1000 per hour once he get 5 students.”
Over here ( http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Money-Mastery-Publishing-Revealed-ebook/dp/B00DVWSR40 ): “It not only works for myself, but the many other people that have been through this program. People have paid me over $1800 ($300/hour) to learn this information from me through 1-on-1 coaching on my blog, …”

This book: “Take action today and buy this book so you can start making passive income online through my Kindle publishing method for a limited time discount.”
Other book: “If you want to learn how to make passive income online from Amazon Kindle Publishing, then you absolutely cannot miss out on downloading this book!”

This book: “Simply click the “buy” button on this page and you’ll easily be able to read this book from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone.”
Other book: “Simply click the “buy” button on this page and you’ll easily be able to read Kindle Money Mastery from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone.”

It even offers a bonus video just like the other book.

So, there’s more than a little bit about this book that’s suspect. I’m sorry, I couldn’t rate this more than 1/10.

Beasthood (The Hidden Blood Series)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. There will be spoilers.

I’m not a big fan of romance, although I don’t have anything against it. I can still get into a story if it’s built up well.
And I don’t have any intention of discouraging the author from writing more. Even though I personally didn’t like the book I do hope she finishes this for the people who do like the book. The story ended on a cliff hanger and I’ll admit I’m mildly curious about the answer.

The story also had a strong start. In the first few chapters we’re introduced to Jaz and her recent problems. She had a traumatic experience a year ago that she’s still attempting to recover from and people are skeptical about what she believes is the truth. It sets up a good conflict where people on both sides can be understandable.

There were some parts, particularly at the end, that were exciting.

I should explain why I’m giving this book the score that I am, though. I’ll try to be thorough.

There were some small issues the book had. There were a lot of parts with telling rather than showing.
Two examples I can think of off the top of my head:
When Jaz suddenly starts talking to Maria we’re informed that they’d gotten to know each other over the course of the last few days. We don’t see it. One day they’re strangers, and the next time we read about them Jaz has developed a connection with her.
Another example is when Jaz is given the nickname “Skin”. I’m not even sure why she was given that nickname. She just has it one day and everyone starts calling her by it (this is towards the last half of the book, too, so the sudden switch was jarring).

This could have been fixed easily in some parts.
Example: Nik was itching with impatience but he was very good at self-control. He reined it in and told himself over and over again that it would take time. Just wait, he chanted inwardly.

This is a lighter example where we’re told that he has a lot of self-control.

Compare it with a simple revision like this:
“Nik was itching with impatience but held it in. Just wait, he chanted inwardly.”

It’s more succinct and instead of being told he’s good and self-control it shows it more.

Another example:
“…and Saga -a dark-haired, curvy woman with long black hair who was the Spokesperson for Weaponry and Training Facilities. All her family had been killed years ago in the civil Pack wars; her only relation she knew of was her distant cousin Fraya, who was standing behind her.”
This is the first time I think we’re even hearing of Saga and all of this is dumped on us.

There was also a habit of using “-“s a lot. I believe it was only said twice, but it also says Jaz’s eyes are kyanite colored. I wouldn’t say this was a major issue the book had because I don’t recall anything else where a bizarre word was used instead of a simple word, but saying something like “blue” or “deep blue” would have worked better in those two instances.

Some parts didn’t make sense to me.

“The night sky was clear: he’d seen when he’d gone out for a smoke not long ago. He didn’t smoke; that just proved how stressted out he was.”

If he doesn’t smoke then why does he have something to smoke in the first place? As a non-smoker, I don’t find the thought of smoking relaxing at all. There’s no addiction so there’s no drive to do it. Taking a deep breath would be far more suitable.
There was also a part where someone was wearing three inch heels during construction work.

Those were the minor issues I had.

The issue that I had with this book that I couldn’t get over was the characters actions and how the actions were treated.

I was frustrated by chapter 12 because no one had even attempted to talk to Jaz despite numerous opportunities for them to do things in a far less traumatic way. Even after finishing the book there was never a good explanation.

They expect Jaz to like them and eventually come to trust them, but they didn’t talk to her, comfort her, or even attempt to bring her into their group in a civil manner.

To explain it better: Jaz has recently been introduced to a relative of hers named Erica. Erica invites her to vacation with her somewhere. Jaz ends up in a car with her, her husband and a driver.
On the way there they drug her orange juice and she ends up getting very sick. She doesn’t know they drugged her. She just thinks she’s sick.
She has to throw up, so before they arrive at their destination she makes them pull over so she can throw up in the woods. While she’s throwing up she notices two people in the woods.

And because she sees people in the woods? She gets grabbed and restrained by the driver, operated on while she’s unconscious to remove her toenails, as well as prodded in more intimate areas to check if she’s fertile, then thrown into a cell and held captive for days.
Not taking into account the fact that they drugged her and made her sick to begin with, the way they handled her seeing people in the woods made zero sense.

Much later in the book we see that the two people are incredibly severely punished for having been spotted, because it “forced them to bring her in the way they did”. Why? I have no idea. She barely knew any of the people she was with and she saw people in the woods. She had no reason to believe they were connected to each other, or even that there was some sort of problem with people being in the woods.
The group she was with could have easily shrugged and said, “Must be hunters”, or hikers, or something. Why they chose to assault her, kidnap her, mutilate her, violate her and hold her hostage in a cell instead bewilders me. They kept her in a cell for days without ever trying to explain anything to her.
Even if they didn’t think she would believe their explanation – which was reasonable – that doesn’t mean not explaining anything. Even if she didn’t believe them, talking to her would have given her an understanding of what they believed and why they were doing what they were doing.
They could have told her their beliefs, dealt with the fact that she wouldn’t believe them right away, and as she changed they could have explained that the things she was experiencing were part of the change.

Almost anyone could have brought her in better than they did.
On top of that they dump sensitive information on her while she’s going through all of this, like telling her she’s adopted and fertile.

To start with, it was unnecessary for them to do an invasive test to see if she was fertile without her permission.
Imagine if instead the broke the subject of her being adopted while on the way their, opening up communication and giving her a chance to ask questions. They could have later brought up that it was possible she really was fertile, and let her decide if she wanted to be tested or not.

That wasn’t the end of it.

There’s a huge problem in this book with the characters showing no respect for Jaz. At 25% through, for her that she should take a shower. They don’t ask her if she wants to take a shower or tell her, “There’s a shower over there if you want it”. At this point in the book they’ve gone out of their way to make me dislike them and every part that shows Driver being sad that Jaz is hurt rings as hollow, because they’re making no attempt to do anything but hurt her.

This book suffers from a huge problem of the characters acting horrifically, but it doesn’t treat it as if they’re acting horrifically. We’re supposed to brush aside what they do and accept them as good guys.

For example, here’s a passage:
“I want you to tell me,” he pushed, gazing at her, unblinking.
She exhaled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She then nearly recoils from him when he approaches.

“He eyeballed her. “Is that why you’ve never asked what you are?” he questioned. “You’re afraid?”
She shook her head -more to tell him to shut up than to say no.
“You can’t run away from it.”
“Stop. Okay, just stop,” she snapped.
He blinked and closed his mouth.
She huffed. “I’m just trying to deal with one thing at a time, so will you just back off.””

Then he sits down by the wall and stares at her (though a bit later it says he’s looking at the ground), as if it’s only going to be a few seconds for her to deal with being kidnapped, mutilated and held hostage among other things. This guy is a jerk even when he’s supposed to be being nice. He’s pushy, invasive, and he’s sitting in ‘her’ room staring at her. By all rights that should be absolutely terrifying for anyone in her position. He just asked her if she was scared because he got visual clues that she was probably frightened, and he’s doing this anyway.
This isn’t even mentioning that she was clearly uncomfortable around him and everyone had left her alone with him multiple times already. And continued doing so.
She gets manhandled by him several times in the book, too, all the way through.

They complain that she doesn’t ask questions, but when she does they don’t give her answers. Like, “Who is Lora to you?”
A huge portion of the drama of this story could have been resolved if anyone tried to communicate with Jaz.

When she’s helping with construction another member of the group continuously harasses her and no one does anything about it. We don’t see much of it, but we are told that it happens for days, and Jaz is in a whole group of people.
This cultimates in Fraya challenging her to a duel. We’re eventually given an explanation for why people didn’t try to interfere with a duel, but we’re never given an explanation for why everyone allowed the harassment to continue for all of that time.
Before Jaz was there, Lora is constantly harassed and doesn’t tell anyone because she’s “not one to complain”. Based on how openly she’s harasses and abuses Jaz, I can only assume pretty much everyone knew Lora was being attacked this way regardless of whether she said anything or not.

Somehow Jaz ends up being pinpointed as being guilty of being harsh or cruel, and she’s constantly apologizing when she’s the one owed an apology.

There are so many issues getting attached to characters in this book. Jaz trying boxing for the first time with Carr could be nice – if it wasn’t for the fact that he was allowing her to be harassed and threatened for days prior without doing anything to protect her or even complaining about it.

“She’d been warned. Driver had tried to tell her. She’d been too much of a coward to ask about it. To get his or Maria’s advice. She’d shunned any that was given to her. She’d made anyone stop if they spoke about it, changing the subject or bluntly telling them to move on. Now she regretted it wholeheartedly.”
She was drugged with something that will make her body changed without explanation, operated on without explanation, held in a cell for days without explanation, been harassed without anyone trying to stop it, had knowledge purposefully held from her over and over again for weak reasons, and it’s her fault that she doesn’t trust these people enough to ask them about something?

Both Lora and Jaz can be petty, too. They discover that Nik slept with Fraya once years before he met either of them, and this is a big deal for some reason. Jaz’s virginity is also brought up a few times as if it’s something to be ashamed of.

After getting in a fight with Fraya, Jaz says this:
“”I don’t know what came over me.” she met his eyes. “Will I be punished?””
When I read the fight scene, based on everything else in the book, I was afraid something like this would happen. Fraya was threatening her family. This is something that she should be reporting to people. Instead Jaz says what I wrote above.

“That would be cruelty, and there’s very little a despise more.” [sic]
Nik says this at one point. He brutally punished two people because Jaz saw them in the woods. He’s manhandled and terrified Jaz several times. His words don’t ring true, and I didn’t know how Jaz could believe that statement when she’s witnessed the opposite.

“He stepped forward in irritation. “Stop telling me what I will and won’t understand, what you can and can’t explain and just tell me. Right. Now.””
Nik yells this at Jaz. This is what Jaz should be saying to all of them.
Moments later he’s yelling at her about breaking curfew. Which is, again, something she wouldn’t have done if anyone had bothered to explain to her that she could be murdered if she went out at night.

During the whole book these things were blaring at me. The book wanted to sweep it under the rug and move on, but I couldn’t ignore the questions pecking at my mind. Things like, “Why in the world did they have to treat her so inhumanely?”, “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this blatant harassment?”, or “Why is the book making out Jaz to be the one who is out of line all the time?”. I needed much better explanations for their actions than what I got.

It’s clear other people have enjoyed the book but I just couldn’t get into it for those reasons. Still, I wish the author luck, and perhaps I will enjoy a different book from her in the future.

I give this book a 2/10.