For sometime I’ve had trouble falling, and getting enough, asleep, and this is a bit due to the fact that I’m a night Owl but have to be up at Sparrow’s fart for my day job. I soon realised that I’ve been spending far too much time on Pintrest when I should have been reading a book, an actual book, nothing electronic, just paper. So I wandered about the candy shop, (that’s I call a book shop because I’m like a kid in a candy shop), and sought out a book, in particular something light. What I had been reading was non-fiction so I now needed some light fiction for pre-sleep reading, and so I stumbled upon ‘the Dark Heroine,’ by Abigail Gibbs.
*Do not venture any further unless you’ve read the book, or if you haven’t and have no intention to then proceed, or if you don’t care and just like spoilers.*
*This is your last warning, here be spoilers.*
To begin with, I’ll say that it does have potential, or rather the author has potential, but she needs, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a competent editor. She is very young, only fifteen when she began this, so I must congratulate her, I know myself at that age would have given up at the third chapter. I didn’t know how old she was when I began reading that first chapter, but her youth soon made itself known, and remained throughout the story. That said, the sex scene was written rather well, which is odd to say considering her age, I’ve read some truly awful sex scenes from writers twice or even thrice her age.
As I said earlier I knew I wasn’t about to read anything too taxing, after all that was the point, but it turned out to occupy my mind and not in a good way. Again, I mentioned the lack of editing, and the story was often confusing, there were massive plot holes, and characters that changed so drastically and without reason. I’ve read enough fan fiction, to be familiar with the erratic writing style, plot leaps and holes, character assassinations, etc., but I would expect that for something to be put to print, to be sold, it should have been edited and parts rewritten. This does not seem to have been done, it seems like someone from Harper Collins went to the site Wattpad, (where it first appeared), and hit ‘print,’ put the pages together, slapped on a cover and managed to sell it.
There are a few things that really annoyed me throughout the book, but I’ll begin with the fact that the writer is not at all familiar with London. Perhaps I’m being picky, I know my way around London fairly well, having spent some time wandering it’s streets, (often it was a Sunday afternoon, walking off a hangover). Perhaps I’m expecting too much, but I don’t think it wrong to expect a book that I’ve paid for to have had some editing work done it.
– On several occasions I’ve been to/passed by Trafalgar Square at 1am, (and later), and there’s usually quite a few people around, also I can’t recall a July evening/early morning being so cold I needed a winter coat.
-Varnley Manor, (Vampire HQ), is apparently located somewhere in Kent, yet on the London shopping trip they drive into the north of London and take the tube to Oxford Circus? Also, if they have an infinite amount of money why take the tube, and why shop the high street shops?
-Harrods is now located on Oxford Street? When did that happen?
-Also the Embankment is near by Harrods. Even at its actual location, and sorry I’ve no idea where exactly where on the Embankment they end up, it’s still more than a few minutes walk. I’m going to guess they go the Chelsea Embankment, the closest to Harrods, but that would mean they’re near Violet’s, (she’s the Dark Heroine), family home, the one that she’s apparently being held hostage from. Odd, but that area would explain why Violet would see her ex-boyfriend’s chav friends (s)trolling along the river.
-From the Embankment, the trauma of seeing the ex’s friends, not the ex himself but his chavvy friends, no idea where the ex is as he’s not mentioned at this point, stay with me. The sight of his friends sends her into a crying frenzy for about an hour, (that’s about the time it would take), from the Chelsea Embankment to Hamley’s. Not her home, which would be closer, but a toy store. Even from the Victoria Embankment it would take at least a half hour. I checked a couple of times, thinking I’d missed out something, but I hadn’t, only the ex’s friends were mentioned yet just before she arrives at Hamley’s she’s now upset at seeing her chavvy ex, Joel, who then inexplicably appears at the same store.
-Later, back at the vast grounds of the Varnley Estate, Kent had been replaced by Devon, or so it seems. I’ve not spent much time in Kent, but from the author’s description I kept imagining Devon.
It may be a bit much to expect her to have detailed and accurate descriptions of theses scenes for a rough copy of her novel, but this is supposed to be polished, edited, am I really asking for too much?
~~~~Next instalment, throwing the character under the bus, car, train….
Born on a Wednesday 