The Shadows: A Book a Week Challenge

One of my goals this year is to try and read a book a week, because it’s easy to do and I love reading but it’s always one of the first things to leave when I get too busy. As a way to hold up my end of the bargain I’ve decided to write reviews of everything I watch and read because, let’s face it, I’m a writer and I pick apart a lot of books and shows without meaning to because I like to see the different ideas that at went into writing the book/show/movie. So I have a few that will come up because I can’t get them out of my head.

Some of them maybe long, some of them short. I’m not limiting myself to post limits because, while SEO is good or longer posts, I sometimes struggle from the pressure of trying to get that long post out and I don’t want to have to struggle with something that I love so much so.

So I finished The Shadows by JR Ward, a book has been on my TBR pile for months because life got in the way and I was plainly lazy. Finally getting to read it (a month after the next book came out…oops) and I have to say that while I enjoyed it, it was a little scattered and too chunky for my liking.

My favourite Black Dagger Brother is Rhage, I don’t know what it is about him, but if I could switch places with Mary, I would happily do so. I’m so excited that the next book (the one that isn’t a part of the spin off series) comes out later this year and is Rhage’s second book, because I found myself skipping parts of the story to read more about him and Mary.

Ward, from her previous book, is really good at balancing her different tangents of stories, but with this one I felt that there were just too much going on and at a whooping 576 pages, the book was a bit of a nuisance to get through because of it’s length and it’s jumping around.

I’m a big fan of different narrators. In my fictions books I’m playing around with two different narrators to keep the balance but there is something really untidy and unfinished with having so many at once. It had me skipping over various parts because there was just so much information and people, and because it had been a bit of a while between reading books, I was struggling to remember what had happened in the last one and the ones in the past. Not necessarily a bad thing but some authors summarise briefly somewhere in the book. I have always liked that JR Ward doesn’t, because it does get repetitive.

The book on a whole is pretty good and I can forgive some of the jumpingness of it but what I can’t forgive is the bad editing. I know that there are things that have been left in there that could have been a placeholder in the beginning, but it’s just beyond ridiculous when there was “someone said” more than once when there were too many people on screen and I could put my finger on who should have said it but without the titled there was no way that I could really do that.

In this case, the editing has been rushed. You can tell that there was an obvious deadline that had to be committed to but that doesn’t excuse that these things should have been thorough. I mean no one wants to go through a book and pick up on mistakes (okay I like picking up on mistakes because it means that my editing skills are getting better and better) but with something that is fairly obvious. It’s hard to think how something like this got missed by the editing crew when it’s their job to find mistakes like that and point them out for the writer to fix.

And that’s not say that everyone is perfect. I know I’m not. I make mistakes all the time, in coaching notes, in novels, in blog posts and I acknowledge that but I’d like to think that being acutely aware of that and knowing that mistakes happen would help me really look for them.

With the main story of Trez and Selena, it was nice, I remember bits as Trez spoke about snippets I’d seen in the past but it didn’t mean that there was some really sweet moments and it was a very bittersweet ending, most of Ward’s endings are a little on the happier side, so it was hard to see this one be not so happy but it was good to see that not everything ends with happiness, because life isn’t all about the happy.

But even so, I found myself more excited with knowing more about iAm, who is Trez’s twin brother, his story line captivated more than anything. If only there was more of that I could have paid more attention the book on a whole.

Over all the book was good, I think I scored it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads because it was okay and I don’t really like scoring anything below a 4 without due course (and if I can’t finish a book it gets 2 stars…maybe). So I’m sticking with that.

Hopefully the next book I finish is better.