RealTime

A Painful Read


(Nobody Will Remember)

One would expect readers, offered a copy of Lindstein’s book in exchange for writing a softball review, would be gushing with praise. After all, it was free. But many couldn’t get over the clumsiness of her pedestrian prose and her preposterous narratives.

“The synopsis was more exciting than this quite weighty tome which took a long time to say nothing really in particular.”

One reviewer concluded, “The synopsis was more exciting than this quite weighty tome which took a long time to say nothing really in particular. …It reads very clumsily, there is a great deal of exposition and the dialogue doesn’t ring true. …the way she behaved did not seem genuine.”

Another reviewer outright rejected Lindstein’s attempt to depict an evil entity in whose grip her protagonist got caught up: “I just didn’t get the feeling that things were that bad, I didn’t feel overly sorry for the characters. …Sorry, but for me this was just a letdown.”

A recurring theme among reviewers was that Lindstein’s yarn was painfully “slow” while her villain was “an idiot and the main protagonist was just as stupid.” As another more restrained reviewer put it: “Sofia, the protagonist, seemed a very silly character indeed. I never warmed to her, I found her annoyingly childish.”

“His eyes lock onto hers, reeling her in like a fish flopping on a line. Then his gaze moves up and down her body, and up again,
setting her on fire.”

Yet another reader lamented, “I dislike animal torture and senseless animal killings in books.”

To quote prose from Lindstein at her best, after some 500 monotonous pages of more of the same:

“His eyes lock onto hers, reeling her in like a fish flopping on a line. Then his gaze moves up and down her body, and up again, setting her on fire.” [Reviewer’s note: Enough already! No wonder several readers said they had nightmares.]