Book Reviews
IR Staff •
May 19, 2011 She doesn’t have any statistics on the fact, but Ace Jones is pretty sure her Mississippi hometown contains more than its fair share of hypocrites. But when her friend lands in the hospital from a beating at her good-old-boy husband’s hands, Ace takes on some of the town’s most self-righteous citizens. Dirt is dug up; incriminating photos are taken. And then Ace’s dreamboat ex-fiance shows up, determined to talk his way back into her heart. Our heroine is a bit over her head, but her razor-sharp sarcasm turns all this drama into an exceedingly funny farce.
There are a lot of spots “Diary of a Mad Fat Girl” could have run off the rails. It’s a crazy, madcap story, which can be deceptively difficult to pull off.There are elements that could have used a bit more development — for example, Ace’s relationship with sexy lawyer Michael. We get a bit of back story, and he does eventually swoop in and act the supportive gentleman, but a couple more scenes might have laid better ground for the ending. But all in all, ” Diary of a Mad Fat Girl” is both well conceived and well executed, and it’ll be exciting to see what happens when McAfee goes trad at NAL.
Reviewed by Kelly Faircloth
Has worked in test prep, movie production, and online content production. Books are her passion. BA in Folklore and Mythology. Wrote a college admissions essay on Lord of the Rings. Devoted Star Trek fan since the age of five. Her writing has appeared at Inc., io9, and The Big Money.
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Diary of a Mad Fat Girl
To be fair most independent authors spend much more time editing their work that writing the initial draft. Copy-editor is a very specific job and indie authors have to learn to do this as well as write the story. I think you would find that a lot of the errors picked up by these reviewers would never even be recognised by the average reader.
I’m not saying people should be lacklustre, but they generally do not think it is ok to publish without editing the text. It’s just a fact that you find much more grammatical snobbery amongst reviewers that in the general reading public, and no, that isn’t a slight at reviewers. If they didn’t have this they probably wouldn’t be reviewers.
You are absolutely right, PJ. But the thing is, even traditionally pubbed books sometimes have spelling and grammar errors. That’s not an excuse for indies. Every book should be professionally edited. And many of them are. So don’t let a few badly edited books taint the whole category. You’ll be missing out on some very good books!
Somebody please tell me why authors think it’s ok to publish without having someone edit the text. This looks like a really good read…but when reviewers complained about the grammar, spelling errors, etc…I took a pass. I am constantly disappointed by indie books for this very reason.