Review: Don't Quote Me

Author submission in exchange for an honest review.

Title: 

Don't Quote me

Author: 

Charlie Kramer

Release Date:

January 20, 2011

Word Count:

approx. 58,000

Purchase Links:  

Amazon

Smashwords

Author's Website:

www.charlie-kramer.com

Description:  

London’s hottest fashion photographer, Claire Montgomery has a problem. Several actually. One; she remembers every event in her life by the shoes she is wearing at the time. Two; she has rules around dating. Three; her belief in monogamy stops her from marrying and four; her little hot pink book is literally on fire.

Claire’s a fun loving flirt who lives life by her own rules. She does it with style, in her vintage clothes and her over stuffed shoe closet, the only accessories she needs. Oh and of course she absolutely cannot do without quotes from the movie stars. Think Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Mae West and you’re on the right track.

Greek shipping tycoon, Sebastian Gionis has been announced as a candidate for Chic Magazines, Man of the Year. He’s good with business, not so good at relationships. He’s aloof and his physical presence has Claire’s her heart doing its own kind of rumba. In her eyes he makes Rock Hudson and James Dean seem decidedly insignificant.

Sebasatian’s appearance shakes up Claire’s life and lands her in therapy before she can hit the road on the way to love.
 

Deniz’s Review:

 

The premise of this book was interesting – serial lover reforms her ways and finds true romance – yet there were too many minefields of grammatical errors (past and present tense often used interchangeably in the same sentence) and mixed up imagery ("years of practicing in my bedroom mirror"; "I felt my smile titter") to wade through, so that the story inevitably became lost behind all the confusing jumps from conversation to interior monologue and then back to dialogue, with no connections in between (Claire’s friend reveals that her tarot reader says there’s man on her horizon, which leads Claire to thinking about Bridget Jones’s Diary, and then her friend says "I'll be fine"), compounded by omissions of detail (Claire has a falling out with her best friends and doesn't speak to them for months, yet no mention is made of the fact that she has to work with one of them every day).

Quotes from actresses and comediennes are sprinkled throughout the text, leading the reader along Claire's trains of thought. In some cases, however, they serve as breaks in the text, and it's left to the reader to figure out which is which – such as when Claire breaks up with one of her lovers, Nick. There's a Bette Midler quote, and suddenly she's thinking about sequins and fringe.

All in all, the story seems more like an outline, especially in the latter half, when Claire loses all her lovers, begins attending therapy, and falls in love. Save for one scene where she broods over her shoe collection and thinks about her past, no details are given of how her transformations occur; she announces that she’s going to confront her father, and the next scene has her stating that "confronting my father has given me freedom..."

Sebastian, meanwhile, is the strong, silent type – he hardly says two words throughout the novel, and though Claire hints at secrets about him, nothing is ever shared with the reader. On one of their first dates, Claire has a longer conversation with her friend on the phone beforehand than she does with Sebastian across the table! Then, when they finally do get together – after a few nights of him dropping her off with a kiss on the cheek – all she says is "And naughty I was! I’ll leave the rest to your imagination." The rest of what? More show, less tell, please!

Deniz's Rating: