This novel has an interesting concept. Two people who were "best friends" from the time they were young and who also had a sort of relationship at one point begin to write letters when the man, Mike Richardson joins the military and serves time in Afghanistan. When his military career is finished, he goes into law enforcement. He works in Mississippi. Meanwhile, the woman, Samantha (known as Sam), has a four-year-old child (known as Trip), whose father is allegedly unknown. She has become a successful fashion designer in Charleston, South Carolina.
By chance, Mike is sent to Charleston for a conference and gets in touch with Sam for a bit of a reunion. She has a huge house and convinces him not to stay at the conference hotel, but rather, to stay in her guest room. The conference is cancelled, and they decide to spend some time together.
I won't spill the beans about any more of the plot, except to say that it's well thought-out and contains characters who interested me. However, I had a difficult time with the many spelling and grammar errors throughout the book. For example, even in the synopsis above, the main character is listed as Mike Robinson, when in the book, he's called Mike Richardson. When the author wants to use the word "bowl," it's printed as "bowel." Very different thing! In a number of passages, the quotation marks are missing--or overused--when a person is continuing to speak or has finished speaking. There's no consistency when writing out numbers (i.e., is it 100 or one-hundred?). What style guide was used when writing this novel?
The other grating grammatical item that bothered me was the overuse of capital letters. I know that when people work for the government (as I used to), they tend to use capital letters for everything. However, I return to the style guide issue. Is the word "federal" supposed to be capitalized or not? In the AP Styleguide, it is not to be capitalized unless part of an official title. Also, a few times, the author doesn't capitalize a word at the beginning of a sentence but does so with the same noun at the end of the sentence.
My recommendation, since the novel has solid characters and a good plot, would be to obtain a proofreader who uses a standard style guide and have that person do a thorough edit of the book to improve it. I don't want the writer to think the book has no value; on the contrary, it has great potential. However, this novel needs a good once-over to make its contents stronger.
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