As I said in this post, I bought UNBALANCED by Kate Douglas yesterday and read it in one sitting last night.
The main reason I bought the book was because I’d been reading so much about the publisher, Beyond the Book. And a lot of what I was reading was negative. But, as always, the negative posts are always the loudest. And, none of the negative posts I did read were based on anything I thought was solid criticism. Reasonable people, those who act on the information given to them instead of emotion, know and understand that it’s really too soon to tell what’s going to happen with Beyond the Book…or any brand new publisher…especially these days when everything’s so new. The old rules simply do not apply anymore.
For me, all publishing issues aside, it’s always more about the book and the readers who will be buying the book. And I found UNBALANCED to be a nice surprise. And this isn’t even my favorite genre, yet this book kept my interest because the writing is solid, the character development is strong, and the amount of dialogue is just right. And the dialogue was written well. No said bookisms where they didn’t belong…nothing amateur.
And nothing was overwritten. To be honest, I was a little afraid before I bought the book, because so many books nowadays…in all genres…are terribly overwritten. And a lot of them receive great reviews, too. But UNBALANCED had a nice pace and an even rhythm, and the storyline constantly moved forward.
The sex scenes weren’t as detailed as I would have liked in a book like this. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. They worked and I didn’t have a problem with them. And even though it’s not easy to capture emotion with a story like this, I think Kate managed to do that as the characters grew to know each other and become more comfortable with their situation. I even liked the little twist between Jett and Locan. No spoilers. But what I was hoping would happen, did happen. Nice touch and well done.
If UNBALANCED is any indication of what Beyond the Book’s other publications are like, it proves they are working hard to put out quality books at a good price. I know how hard we work at ravenous romance to do this, and at Loveyoudivine. And did I mention I only paid .99 for UNBALANCED? And that it was much longer than I’d expected? From a product standpoint, I felt as though I got my money’s worth and then some…including some bonuses at the end.
So I can’t recommend this book enough. I’m glad I took the time to read it, and to find out what kind of books Beyond the Book is publishing. My next purchase from this publisher is going to be a non-fiction book about card games and rules for card games. I can’t think of the title right now, but I saw it on their list and it looked interesting.
The one side note, which has nothing to do with the book or the publisher, is that I do think that UNBALANCED wasn’t described well enough on Kobo. As I said, I was thinking I’d be reading a short story. It is shorter than a full length novel but it was much longer that I expected, which is a good thing (about 13,000 words, and I had to go to ARe to get this info). And I think retail web sites like Kobo need to start giving out better product descriptions so readers know exactly what they are buying. And authors, this is why it’s just as important to get your product details out on your blogs and web sites as it is to get your storylines out.
