Review ~ The Accident - Dorice Grey

Ebook received from the author in exchange for an honest review

Published: May 6th 2013

ASIN: B00COKLL98

Description

Miruna meets a mysterious young man which seems to follow her everywhere. Soon, she realizes that she is the only one who can see him, but he is not a ghost and she's pretty sure he is not just the result of her imagination, either. He has a secret mission. Will she find out what is all about with this man and what is he hiding?

My Opinion

It was a combination of the mystery created in the description and cover that made me accept this book. It sounded like my kind of thing and looked like a nice romance novel so I gladly accepted The Accident. As well as this standing at only 27,112 words it looked like a perfect quick read that could break up my revision in short bursts. Sadly though this novel (well novella) didn't really live up to my expectations.

At the start of the book we find out that Miruna has been in an accident and intrigue is built as to what is going to happen next, especially when a mystery man starts following her. However the writing quickly started to irritate me due to the weird use of punctuation. Besides the excessive use of exclamation marks in places they were not needed as they put an odd emphasis on utterances,  the author also uses elipsis (...) continuously in random places that didn't require it. I tried to find a pattern but couldn't and not only did this lead to a break up in the flow of writing as I was constantly thinking "why is that there?" but it also had me re-reading parts with appropriate punctuation so the lines didn't sound so weird; either being shouted or with long pauses in between. 

As well as this the writing becomes repetitive with sentences frequently starting with "She did....She...She" or "he" one after the other. This was another thing that started to make my interest sway as it didn't engage me or keep me hooked. It needed more variations. As I mentioned I was reading this book as a break from revision so I decided I would read a chapter or two as a break, this plan did not go accordingly though as strangely this book has none! I know it's short in length but it was definitely too long to be one chapter and needed to be split into sections as there are readers like me who hate stopping mid chapter.

One thing I did like was the new take on angels and guardians with Adrian that I haven't come across before. It seemed more like a military organisation with the ID numbers and hierarchy and I thought it was original and interesting. However I do think it needs a lot of work as this is where the biggest problem arose. The concept was there but the writing is not. My biggest problem with the book is that the author more often than not 'tells' the audience rather than 'shows' them through description. It came across I was reading lists of facts and they didn't really build up a picture of what was going on or a relationship with any of the character. This also made the writing jumpy and lack fluency as a scene never really developed before the reader is thrown into another one. For me it needed a lot more description to help engage the reader and make it flow better. It would also have made it a longer read as it felt like the story was over before it started. 

As well as this when I did get to the end it was confusing and in my opinion really unoriginal. I won't tell you what it is in case you read this book but it is something I have been taught not to do since high school. Personally, when I read it, it rendered the rest of the book totally pointless and irrelevant and I was left feeling disappointed as it started to pick up slightly in the last 30 pages or so.

Overall I liked the concept of this book but I think it needs to go through some serious editing to fill in the gaps where the writing jumps, pick up the random punctuation and grammar/spelling errors and basically add more to the story as I feel it is under developed as it stands right now and leaves little for the reader to imagine or get lost in.

1.5