Review: Quiet River

Quiet River by Natasha A. Salnikova

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Book Info: Genre: Suspense/Psychological Thriller
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Those who enjoy a dark and suspenseful story and can be forgiving of the multitude of editing errors and misused words
Trigger Warnings: murder, stabbing (view spoiler)[in utero fetus, child goes missing (hide spoiler)], child abuse
Animal Abuse: dog (view spoiler)[is killed (hide spoiler)]

Please be aware: The author has contacted me to let me know that the book has been edited since the copy I received (which was provided to me about a year and a half ago). If I have a chance I will try to read the revised edition and let you know the differences. So please note that the copy I read was the original edition and that an updated and revised edition is available.

My Thoughts: This is quite an engaging story, but the editing is really sadly lacking. There are lots of words dropped in many of the sentences, leading to sounding like... well... like someone speaking pidgin English. You can find an example on almost any given page.

Some examples:
--> “Especially it was true when she needed to empty her bladder.”
--> or “He opened Snickers and bit off half of it.”
--> or “I said I need bathroom.”
--> or “Couldn't he find different time to be happy?”
--> or “His head was light, his muscles relaxed. Maybe it was tea? Than it was really helping.”
--> or “He was a publisher of two magazines and he got used to take fast decisions.”
--> or “...fighting current of air...”
--> or “...Matt took him four weeks ago for boy's fifth birthday.”
--> or “...looking in the window...” used twice to describe a passenger looking out the window of a car.
Unfortunately, I could go on with these sorts of things for pages.

I have found that these sort of speech errors are most common in those who initially spoke Slavic languages, something to do with the differences in prepositions and prepositional phrases, I think. Even my husband, who has worked hard for 20 years to adapt his language, still slips into these sorts of speech patterns. This book really needs to be edited again to fix this. While there are a lot of people who will willingly overlook these sorts of errors and simply enjoy the book, there are at least an equal number who will fling this book at the nearest wall. I've seen lots of one-star ratings on books that are much better edited than this one complaining about editing. If I hadn't at least enjoyed the story, this would be at most a two-star rating, but the story itself has a lot of potential.

I really hate to be so critical, because I've spent some time talking to this author and she's absolutely delightful and has a lot of experience writing under her belt, but she desperately needs an editor to fix the language in this book, and to fix the multitude of misused words, such as “defiantly” for “definitely” and “philological” for “psychological” and “overage” for “average” and many, many more. If you can look past these problems, you might enjoy the story itself, which was dark, suspenseful and creepy. I could usually at least tell what it was the author meant to say, although I will admit there were a few sentences that completely defeated me. I do have a few more books by this author, and this is her very first English-language novel, so hopefully they will have improved, but be aware: if you are very sensitive to errors, this book might frustrate more than entertain.

Disclosure: I won a copy of this book through the LibraryThing Member's Giveaway in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: Quiet River is a small town and people are friendly. But evil lives in quiet water, don't you know?

Lisa and Matt Collins spend a weekend in the town of Quiet River, Washington, where their son Evan meets a woman who says he looks like her son. She gives him cookies. The hotel clerk, an older woman, also gives him cookies, explaining to his mother that they came from the hotel's kitchen. Lisa ignores the clerk's strange behavior and forgets about her. The family goes back home to Seattle where Matt returns to his job as a magazine editor and Lisa finds out she is pregnant for the second time. Soon Matt's personal assistant dies in a car accident and he hires a new one: Kristine. One day Kristine presents Matt and Lisa with tickets to a ballet performance and that night their quiet lives change forever when they get involved in a violent store robbery and Lisa loses her unborn child.

Lisa and Matt think it is their worst nightmare, but how little did they know. They have to return to Quiet River to learn what the darkest dark is and what face it can wear.



View all my reviews