Review: Sleeping Roses by RaShelle Workman

Sleeping Roses by RaShelle Workman
My rating: negative 100 of 5 stars

By far one or the worse books I've ever read. Bad pacing, one dimensional characters, stupid main character, an ending that made the rest of the book seem like it was a waste of time, and tons of grammatical and spelling errors that leave you wondering how this got published.

Only good points is the book cover and the synopsis for the next book, which actually sounds interesting.

The Good

I love the cover. It's really pretty.

The Okay

The synopsis for the next book in the series is quite intriguing.

The Bad

Shut the faulty door, I sure have a lot of reasons why this book is positively horrid. But to save time and to refrain from ranting so much, I'll only mention 5.

1. The grammar and the amount of spelling mistakes in this book will make you scream. It's almost like this book didn't have an editor to look through this book before publishing it. I don't think you even needed an editor to catch these mistakes. Just looking over the work would have been enough. There are a lot of adverbs used for no reason too. They don't add to the story or the writing, it just makes everything sound clunky.

2. The characters are so one dimensional it isn't even funny. Sophie is stupid. Rena is the gay best friend who is in love with Sophie, but not really. David is the abusive husband who is so over the top you can't take this book seriously. Phillip is meant to be the complete opposite of him and while he seems nice, his love for Sophie is so shallow that you wonder why he wants to be with her when all she does is yell at him.

3. I feel bad for this point, because it sounds bad if you haven't read the book. Even though Sophie, the main character, goes through a horrible situation with her husband and is clearly scarred from the ordeal. She's way too much of a Mary Sue, which means she's TSTL for me to care.

The book starts off with Sophie leaving her abusive husband. We're told many times he's a psycho and that he's beat her a lot. So at point in the novel Sophie decides enough is enough and files for divorce.

The divorce lawyer asks her if he should send the divorce papers to her husband. Sophie says no and that she has to do it. David, the husband, before this happened has been leaving messages to Sophie telling her that she's dead if he sees her. He's already abused her and put a knife to her neck while they were together, killing her should be easy for him. Still Sophie decides to go to him, alone, when she delivers the papers. When her friend Rina offers to go with her, Sophie says no because she wants to be a strong independent woman and face her problems head on. So she visits David and almost gets raped.

Oh Sophie, you sure are a smart one.

4. Like I mentioned in the beginning, the ending makes you feel like this book was a complete waste of time. This is a spoiler, so visit my good reads review to see why.[At the end it turns out that Sophie has been in a coma for the past 10 years and none of the events in the book really happened. Things happen to her while in a coma which is why it translated to her dream world, but this whole thing was done in such a way that it made you feel cheated as a reader. (hide spoiler)]

5. Phillip and Sophie kind of suck as a couple; unfortunately, I can't mention more without spoiling the novel.[In the dream world they made sense. But then we find out that Phillip is really Sophie's doctor. That automatically makes the relationship inappropriate to me. Sophie, in the real world, has feelings for dream world Phillip and not the real person. She thinks she loves him, but knows nothing about him. Nothing. And for some reason he stops seeing her as a miracle, she did wake up after 10 years, but as a love interest and it doesn't make sense either. It's almost like the author wanted a happy ending for those two and put them together when it makes no sense. At all. (hide spoiler)]

Overall:

This book had a lot of potential and if this was written better, I think I might have liked this a lot. But the writing isn't good, there are a lot of spelling and grammatical errors, the characters are very one note, and the ending makes you feel cheated.

Don't read this book. It is, by far, one of the worse books I've ever read.

Rating: negative 100 stars out of 5 stars

Review: The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty

The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Once saw this book I knew I wanted to read it for two reasons. One, the story is about a stalker and after reading Zashiki Onna I kind of find stalker books to be interesting. Two, the main character isn’t freaked out about the stalking. She finds it intriguing and actually wants to meet this person. That’s just weird. Most books with stalkers are usually psychological thrillers, but this one was different. So for those two reasons I knew that I need to read this book.

The Good:

The book is about two people. Ellen, a hypnotherapist who has recently became an item with Patrick. And Saskia, the former girlfriend of Patrick who has a funny habit of showing up wherever he is for the past three years. Ellen’s scenes are in third person, while Saskia is in first person.

I actually really loved the two different perspectives between Ellen and Saskia and I really liked that Patrick, who is the person that ties the two women together, doesn’t really play a big part in the story. This is a good thing, because I didn’t like him. But it’s also a bad thing, which I’ll explain later on.

There is romance in the novel, this is a love story after all, but it’s not the main focus of this book. What I took from this story is the journey of two women to find happiness. Ellen has to figure out what she wants in a relationship, as well as figuring out her place in Patrick’s life, while Saskia has to figure out a way to get herself out of his life and be happy. The contrast is nice and I liked that the author went this route instead of something more predictable. Like Saskia being crazy and Ellen being in fear because she finds hair in her bed or something.

Even though Saskia is kind of…extreme, she comes off as sympathetic and relatable, which is weird because I’ve never contemplated stalking someone. Ever. Regardless of this small fact, you do find yourself rooting for her to get better and leave her addition behind her. She’s flawed and very human, which is why I liked her so much.

The Okay:

Ellen, while interesting enough as a character, didn’t pull me into the story as much as Saskia did. Her hypnotherapy is interesting and her fascination with Saskia, while weird, is kind of cool at the same time. But the more she got involved with Patrick, the more her story stopped being interesting to me.

I also felt like this novel had a lot of characters with many of them meshing into one another.

The Bad:

Patrick, the man behind this whole kerfuffle, was someone who needed to be developed but wasn’t. He’s very one note and during the beginning scenes with Ellen he was just creepy.

There is a scene in the novel (around page 50 or so) when Patrick introduces Ellen to his son, Jack. While Jack is watching a DVD, Patrick and Ellen are having a serious discussion about his Saskia problem. He isn’t pleased and doesn’t want to talk to her, so he decides the best course of action is to change the subject. The subject, well he asks her to go upstairs with him for a few minutes.

...He goes to his girlfriend’s house with his son. He gets his son to watch a DVD. He talks with Ellen about Saskia, isn’t pleased, so stops and asks for a quickie while his son is in the other room.

This hasn’t ever happened to me, so this may be normal for couples who have kids. But I always thought that when you introduce your child to someone, you, I don’t know, want to spend the evening getting your son or daughter use to the person you’re dating and not go upstairs for a quickie.

Then again, I’m not too familiar with this kind of scene so I could be wrong.

He’s also shown in an even more annoying light when he starts talking about his dead wife whenever Ellen is around. He reveals why later on and stuff, but I didn't like that about him either.

I think I'm being a bit harsh on him and I know that this story is more about Ellen and Saskia, but I just wish that Patrick was a better character because I honestly don’t understand what was so great about him.

Overall

I really enjoyed the plot, Saskia, and the writing, but I do wish that some of the other characters were developed a bit more and that Patrick was written better. Overall this was a fun read, so definitely check it out if you're looking for women's fiction that's different.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5