At first glance, Peace in the Storm looked like a great choice for a book - a sweet clean interracial romance involving a couple who’d been together and broken up. Sounds good, right?
Well, it started good and swiftly went downhill, from “oh, this is interesting” to “this is good but it really needs a proofreader” to “…what?” to “oh no you didn’t”.
Let’s start with the good (what little there was). I liked the first 10% of the book. Unlike most of the reviewers on Amazon, I liked Lisa, the MFC, and her best friend Trish. (I did not like Chance, the MMC. He had anger issues and other problems.) I liked the concept.
The first problem I noticed was the editing - or, rather, the lack of it. This book needed an editor. Or multiple editors. Multiple editors would’ve been good. Like a proofreader (please do not switch between past and present tense multiple times in one paragraph, monkey’s is terrible pluralization, and aggregated is not the same word as aggravated), a fact-checker/consistency editor (name changes! the wrong number of branches at the Brooklyn Public Library! a character’s hair color!), and a serious plot editor (this is not Christian/inspirational romance, your characters need some realism in what’s achievable by the time you’re thirty, and please toss all unnecessary perspectives from your non-MCs).
After the editing, the next problem was…well, let’s quote what I said to my co-author.
“When did this turn into the Hunger Games?”
Yeah, that gif is more true than you know. At some point this book turned from “okay, so the divorced couple is going to get shoved into cute vacation situations where they have to spend time together and maybe get back together” to “we’re trapped on a deserted island with possibly genetically engineered monkeys and dogs that want to kill us!” Seriously, when the monkey tore out the guide’s throat, I went “…what?”
So they survive the deserted island and we get some stupid chapters from other perspectives (nice to know Trish was looking for them, but I could’ve assumed it without her POV), and then they end up in the hospital.
And this, this is where the book really made me nope out.
Because Chance? Well, he’d been alpha male and a bit of an ass before, but now he really turned into a problem. He insisted on treating his ex-wife like his wife, taking total control of her life, to the point of MOVING HER THINGS INTO HIS HOUSE AND SELLING HER CONDO WITHOUT HER APPROVAL. WHAT.
Yeah, that’s the point where I almost tossed the book until I remembered I was reading on my iPad and I like my iPad.
Okay, seriously, whoever he talked to about putting her condo on the market should’ve told him he had no right to do that because, frankly, if I’d been Lisa, I would’ve sued both him and the company for doing that without my approval. And moving her things into his house? No. Just no.
So yeah. I could’ve lived with the lack of editing. I could’ve lived with the science experiment animals. I could’ve lived with Chance being a bit possessive. I could not live with someone who controlled the other person’s life and then expected her to get back together with him anyway…and she did. No.
I very much do not recommend this book, but if for some reason, you’re interested anyway, you can find it here.
One star, and it’s lucky to get that high.
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