War Brides Author: Visit Amazon's Helen Bryan Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1612183328 | Format: EPUB
War Brides Description
About the Author
Helen Bryan was born in Virginia, grew up in Tennessee, and is a longtime resident of London. A former barrister, she is the author of an award-winning biography of Martha Washington. She was inspired to write War Brides “by the true war-time stories of family and friends in the United States and England, and by the little known stories of the brave young women who joined Churchill’s Special Operations Executive.” This is her first novel.
- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (June 12, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1612183328
- ISBN-13: 978-1612183329
- Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I reached about the 25% mark on this book thinking that if only the author had employed a good editor, this book could be fantastic. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end and found out it's an Amazon Encore book. Really? This is "exceptional"?
Considering the ponderous structure, overabundance of insignificant characters, unnecessary sidetracks, and the amateurish POV failures, this is hardly exceptional.
It has great potential. I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened. I suppose the only character I wholeheartedly rooted for was Tanni. The rest were either too shallow, annoying, or questionable to care much about. I plowed through to the end wishing I was enjoying it more.
The author does a good job of setting the scene and painting descriptions. However, the pace is ruined by constant POV switches within the scenes. It's as if your whole house was divided into small sections with clear, foot-high barriers. Not noticeable at a glance, easily stepped over, but continually stubbing your toe and then having to lift your feet high to simply walk through the house gets more and more annoying. And tiring. Just as constantly having to shift mental gears when the next character's thoughts intrude is tiring. This is the sort of thing an editor should point out and correct. I can only assume that a total re-write was too much work and they wanted to cash in on brisk sales.
Ponderous structure: Starting everything out in 1995 in a prologue and introducing us haphazardly to numerous elderly characters does this book a disservice. The here-and-there approach was confusing. The book didn't really need to start until Chapter 1.
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