Case of incredible stupidity in a thing I'm reviewing: the kidnapping victim is shown a stack of Photoshopped pictures of her on dates with her kidnapper, "so no one will believe you're in danger". Assuming that Photoshop is that good, which it isn't, and assuming the kidnapper had access to pictures of her which weren't already made public on social media or in actual media since she's a public figure and people would recognise the photos edited, he explicitly didn't take her phone away. Is he expecting her to call the cops and them to go "sorry, obviously the existence of a photo of you with this man means the circumstances couldn't possibly have changed in the meantime even if the photo was real!"?
And the kidnapper has just left the kidnapping victim alone in a public place, with an easily accessible cellphone, twice in one chapter. This is turning into a Monty Python skit.
I now desperately crave a slapstick comedy where the kidnapper is trying to secretly let the victim go without pissing off the mob, but the victim is secretly trying to stay kidnapped for idk, insurance reasons. "Oh no, I have failed knot tying! Now to have a loud conversation in the next room! Is this a book about lockpicking, oh my!" while the victim is faking a sprained ankle and fixing the badly tied knots and sneezes loudly when it seems like a guard is falling asleep. Edit: depending on the precise ratio of dark/comedy it either ends with everyone dead or everyone married
I don't think this man's ever seen a leopard either. And what the hell does the gibbous moon smell like? Apart from those, who the hell is going to read through all this? A writing blog I follow once said "After three sentences of description, eyes glaze over." Cut that down to one if the sentences in question make no sense.
I don't recall where it was from, but somewhere on r/menwritingwomen someone quoted a book as saying "A pair of breasts went by", with no attention paid at all to the owner of said breasts.
I mean, if they were trying to establish the speaker as an absolute shitlord, they succeeded. But somehow I suspect that wasn't the intent.
The heroine from the book I discussed above where the guy keeps leaving her alone in public places while trying to kidnap her has, at the point I've got up to, just demonstrated that she's so """innocent""" that Spoiler: nsfw it doesn't occur to her that you can put both hands on a penis. There's an extended sequence of the guy getting more annoyed with her (this is on him as well for not telling her what to do) as she daintily pats it with one hand and acts like she's being asked to do rocket science to figure out what he wants. I mean, one would think that would be fairly intuitive, no? Also, I would like to add that the guy regularly stops the narration to tell the reader how intelligent this woman is.
Spoiler: rape joke Yes, that's absolutely an appropriate figure of speech when your story is set IN A PRISON. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but sheesh.
Well, it depends. Does it fit the tone of the piece? Is it in character for the person speaking to use that vernacular? No comment on the quality of the writing, but without further context, that sounds like it's something a character's saying and like... Depiction=/= endorsement, characters' views don't necessarily reflect those of the author, etc.
There have been similarly tone-deaf comments. The author almost certainly was using the term figuratively here and probably didn't think about the implications, but it's an unfortunate term to pick, IMO.
I legitimately have no idea what's going on in this book anymore. The shadowy bad guys' MO is to kidnap dozens of people, including highly recognisable celebrities, and store them... in a prison which is still in use for holding criminals, so law enforcement can't possibly fail to notice? I mean, I guess there's supposed to be a corrupt government thing going on, but so little detail is provided and the characters react so little to the idea that it's hard to tell.
Okay, this is the official worst idea for a romance series ever; hooking up with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as they commit genocides associated with real wars. WHY WOULD YOU THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA
Okay, honestly this COULD be an interesting idea if they'd stopped the premise about halfway through the sentence there--like, a romance about the Four Horsemen could be delightful, but...then they had to throw in the real wars thing...and the genocide...maybe they should've quit while they were ahead is what I'm saying
Pratchett and Gaiman could probably have pulled it off, but they'd have missed out the "gratuitous graphic deaths connected to real atrocities" part. ETA: Comments on the review of the first book suggest that Larissa Ione's "Lords of Deliverance" is a better take on the concept, where the Horsemen are actively trying to stop killing everyone around them. Can't verify, but might be worth checking out.
