 Hello everybody, E here welcome back to 31 days of Halloween today. We are talking about Ross Jeffreys Juniper Ross Jeffreys is a fellow booktuber so far, I believe he has a novella this one a novel and a Novelette or short story. I can't remember. Let's see here. Tethered is the name of it Let me look at it at tethered a novella in flash Very interesting. So I'm gonna put this up here, and we're gonna jump into it The very first thing I'm gonna talk about in this review is something. I've already talked to Ross about and I'm bringing this up because He was very welcoming of my criticism And it's not really criticism as much as it it was, you know, just editing issues He said the very first person that Worked on it. He paid to have it edited. They were multiple multiple multiple issues He then had it fixed again in a second edition, and I may or may not have received a bad second edition from Lulu, I'll be sending my notes to him But for the first 80 pages of this one, it is absolutely riddled with errors Actually, I need to grab the book again because I want to admit I want to mention the type of errors that I found Lapses and tents there are several sections Five that I counted where he lapses from past tense to present tense in dialogue tags and one time in the narrative There was no reason for this that I could tell I'm not sure that it maybe this is a UK versus American thing. I don't think so I've read a lot of British fiction and I don't remember seeing things like that Next thing is homophones. There were two homophone problems. One of them. The most striking one was thir the possessive used for ther He's talking about over there kind of deal and he used there as in the possessive version of the word The next one is missing words now this one. I can almost promise you this is an issue with the editing That's why proofreading is so very very important. The proofreading catches the errors that editing makes If you are working with a line editor, especially a line editor, they are going to create problems by fixing your problems There's gonna be missing words. There's gonna be extra spaces There's gonna be numerous things that you have to watch out for when doing an editing That's why there's so many steps in the writing and editing process. You have beta readers You have content editors then you have Line editors and you have proof readers So and then people who read the actual proof of the book when you're done with it Like the printed copy of the book to make sure there's no and proof readers read the manuscript Proofers Literally read the proof of the book the and they call it proof because you actually have it in your hands You know that it's proof of this if it's of its existence and lastly punctuation errors throughout Sometimes like hey there Paul and that's not a line from the book, but hey there Paul It's supposed to be hey there comma Paul. That's you sometimes and sometimes not There are problems with missing punctuation. There's problems with Repetitive punctuation. There is just a lot wrong here I'm saying all that up front because what I'm going to say next is Positive I'm giving this book three stars I'm taking a full two stars off for the editing had this book been well edited I would have given it a full five stars because I absolutely loved the story and the characters the character Follows a woman who is the who is seen as the local witch her name is Betty In fact it follows two women and a man the man and well Janet and What's his client Janet and client are married clients a monster of a human being Janet is rather submissive wife a very country wife And then you have Betty who lives by herself and is very lonely Betty comes across a Tom In the road that's been hit Very very large specimen and things start going downhill From there because the town of juniper I keep want to say Jupiter the town of juniper is It has been ravaged by flood by fire by damn near any disaster that you can think of and They are on Everybody in town is struggling to get by so Janet and client they raise cats for food And one of the cats is is massive his name is Bucky Bucky goes missing and So what you can kind of see where the story is going? I loved what made me so mad and when I brought up the editing problems, and I told Ross is I even mentioned it on Twitter It makes me absolutely furious to see an author who is who you know is competent an author who you know Can write who is a talented writer? Have issues like that. I'm mad for him. I'm not really mad at him. There's no animosity here I like Ross. He's a great dude. He reviewed my book life after Dane I probably should have said that up front, but I had bought this book before he reviewed mine It's not like it was a review swap or anything but I can't ignore the issues with it And like I said, it made me very angry because the book is spectacular I would say it's one of the best books. I've read this year as far as story is is concerned The twist at the end is fantastic jaw drop Definitely a what the fuck moment And again, you know, it just kind of makes me angry that there's so many errors up until that 80 page mark and then oddly enough because it's usually the absolute that the The opposite not absolute the opposite Usually people clean up the beginning of the book and then the tail end of the book if there's gonna be errors That's where they start popping up. You even see this in a traditionally published a book books random house You love me had three errors in the final in the final couple of pages You didn't you see that? You know your attention lapses You see so I was very shocked to find out That the end of the book is pretty clean after those the last 50 pages. It's pretty much very clean You have three or four errors So I don't know if it was a printing error I don't know. I'm gonna discuss this with Ross more I'm gonna send him my notes and he can do with them what he will But I did love the book The this the story and it is a testament to how good Ross Jeffrey's writing is that I was able to finish the book Even though there were so many errors because usually when I come across Books with that many errors up front. I just give up and I don't want my editor I can't shut my editor brain off. I can't I just I can't do it now For those of you who'd say people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Yes, there have been errors in my book But we're talking a page after page after page after page kind of thing We're not talking about you know sink instead of skin one time or you know that that kind of thing You're going to miss things But when the book is so I don't want to say broken when that when the writing when there's so many errors That you cannot enjoy the story when it takes you out of the story That's when I feel it is too much if you've come across one of my books and you have found that that's fine That is a very very valid criticism and your opinion matters But with this one again, I can't harp on this enough It is a damn good book is a damn good story And I'm just disappointed that it wasn't cleaner there in those first 80 pages Our most casual readers going to notice what I noticed probably not our most casual readers going to Be upset if they do notice it probably not they're gonna give them the benefit of doubt am I being nitpicky? I don't think so not this time There were so many of them that it kind of ruined the beginning part of the book for me And I'm glad the last half was very very clean But have you read Ross Jeffries Juniper? I'd love to hear from you down there in the doobly-doo Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did you feel meh about it? If you felt any of those things Let me know in detail why you felt that way so that we can have a discussion But until next time I have any you've been you this has been another episode of 31 days of Halloween I'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Bye