I received a copy of this book from the author as part of a group that I belong to on Goodreads.com. When I first started it, the premise quickly drew my attention and I was looking forward to an exciting read, until chapter three.
Now, this is probably just me, but being in the Navy, I have an extremely hard time with books that feature military characters, when the author apparently has not done their research. In the space of less than half a page, there were three glaring military errors, and because of this, I completely got distracted from reading and couldn’t back into it. For example, error number 1 – a Master Chief in the Navy isn’t one rank below a commissioned officer, there are also Warrant Officers (who were previously enlisted and then applied for a specific program), or the fact that (error 2) a Master Chief can’t just take a test and become an officer – in fact, there is an age limit on when individuals can apply for commissioning programs. Aside from these two issues, there were a couple of other military mistakes that just continued with my distraction.
From then on, I tried to keep reading, but was continually distracted by small bits and pieces that just made the plot seem even more implausible than it already was. I finally decided to give up on it around the middle of Chapter 4, less than 50 pages into it. While I think the author has potential in the future, I advise her to find someone in the military that can critique her work for accuracies, and a good editor to help with tightening up the prose, and turn her telling into showing with the writing. I have refrained from giving this book a star rating her on GR because I didn’t finish reading it and it didn’t seem fair to do that.
