A Charming Crime

by Tonya Kappes

[MurderByDeath]

I really don't know how to accurately rate this book, so it gets two stars. The author has a great story line going for the series - the village is an excellent setting, and the premise of a place just for people with "talents" really intriguing. The characters all hold promise, and with further development, this village could become a charming place full of wacky, eccentric characters. Even the mystery was fairly solid for a first book.

BUT - Lord love a duck is the editing of this book BAD!!! And I don't mean "an" instead of "and" or "in" instead of "it". Whole sections of sentences are missing, or sentences just don't make any sense - and I don't mean contextual sense (although there's a fair share of this too), I mean grammatical sense - they aren't actually sentences! And this isn't in just a few place - it's every single page and almost every single paragraph. Seriously shocking editing - or, more likely, no editing whatsoever.

This book would easily have gotten 3.5-4 stars from me if it was in any way readable because I genuinely enjoyed the story itself. I'd like to read more about these characters and the village but I don't think I can slog my way through another story without any editing...