Romance novels

I’ll admit it. My guilty pleasure is reading romance novels. However, that pleasure comes with a major annoyance. Writers need proofreaders or copy editors, but often don’t use them.

I’ve read two books recently that illustrate the problem. “Her eyes darted to his mouth and back to his face.” So where was his mouth if it wasn’t on his face? Perhaps the author meant “her eyes darted to his mouth, then back to his eyes.

Another author wrote, “Her pursed lips take scribbles notes on her tablet tracking the day like some clinical f**king science experiment.” I’ll forgive bouncing from tense to tense, but I’d like the sentence to make sense. Her lips take scribbles notes? I can write with either hand, but I’m not talented enough to write with my mouth. Some punctuation would have be nice, too.

Many authors send comp copies to people before the book goes to final formatting/printing. These sentences stopped my reading flow for several minutes. I would think that others reacted in the same way. Did anyone notify the author?

To be fair, I’m a relatively slow reader. I’ve also been tested and have very high comprehension, accuracy, and retention of what I read. I think it’s because I read every word. I don’t skim. Maybe that’s the problem. The early readers skim.

I have read several comped books. I give the author notes, asking if the sentence written was what they really meant. I have also begged one author to choose either single quotation marks or double for a straight quote. Victorian England tended to use single marks. Modern US uses double. No one mixes them in one sentence unless there’s an embedded quote. For example, ‘Turn off the light.”

Choose one style and stick to it.

Authors, please remember genders, POV, body parts, and articles of clothing! It’s jarring to read that his hands are under her skirt when, later in the same sentence, he removes his hands from under her shirt. Or when she is contemplating his face and reaches out to carress her jaw.

The book with the woman who wrote with her mouth has been put aside and I’ll seriously have to think about my tolerance level before picking it up again. It smacks of another book where the author gave us this sentence: “The sleek, coppery locks that donned her head this morning …” I just can’t!

The other with the mouth somewhere other than his face — yeah, I’m still reading it and finding a lot of errors, but none quite as annoying as lips taking notes.