The first chapter of this book starts out strong, pulling me in to a story that this woman, Victoria, has to tell, her story. A story of a child born prematurely and not expected to live, who then defied all odds and survived, only to grow up and lead a disappointing life, devoid of any accomplishments, dreams, or anything that sets her apart from anyone else in small-town America. She married out of perceived necessity a man she didn’t truly love and who obviously doesn’t truly love her. Their relationship is comfortable in a sense, if not strained.

Then one day, she meets a man, an artist, who leads a very different existence than most of the folks she’s known her whole life. Victoria finds herself not only drawn to this man in a strange sort of way, but she also finds herself questioning her own life, her choices and her existence. He awakens old dreams in her of dancing and owning her own dance studio, things she gave up along the way to become a dutiful wife, and she never thought she’d entertain those ideas again.

As their relationship progresses, painfully slowly in the book, I might add, Victoria begins to find courage to confront her husband about things, courage to confront herself about many things, and the courage to begin to seek her dream again, for herself. Then a mysterious caller begins to make her feel special, wanted, and she shares with the caller personal, intimate details of her life. She doesn’t know who the caller is until later in the book, but I must admit I had already figured out who the mysterious caller was, and it wasn’t a surprise to me—though admittedly, the author does try to lead the reader astray to several possibilities of who the caller might be.

The Downside of NO STORY TO TELL, by KJ Steele

There is a story to tell here, but unfortunately, it’s tough to get to that story through the poor editing on this novel and the flowery and often superfluous prose of the writing. The writing, I believe, is intended to be full of imagery and prose-like, but in reality, it makes reading this book quite tedious. First, there is way too much description of things that simply don’t matter to further the plot or develop the characters. I suffered through nearly three full pages of the description of a hotel foyer that we only see up close one time in the novel and then only in passing a couple of other times. It makes no impact on the plot or the characters at all. It was, in my opinion, a total waste of three pages of prose, for no purpose whatsoever.

For example, this is how the author described one part of the hotel lobby interior: “The lobby of the hotel had been dressed for success, and even now still retained a glimmer of its faded flamboyance.” (It should not have retained ‘faded flamboyance’, since if it’s retaining flamboyance, it wasn’t faded when it was built – it’s faded now. It should read: Still retained a faded glimmer of its flamboyance. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s important to meaning and these small mistakes in the flow of the writing make this a tedious read!)

The rest goes on to say, “A curved staircase swept down from the upper floor and delivered itself into the lobby with all the flourish of an elegant lady joining in a ballroom dance. A legion of oak soldiers ran up its length, a smooth brass railing balanced with perfection on their finely turned heads. Here and there a comrade had fallen victim to various vandals, and dark gaps stood in their stead.”

What a tedious way of describing a staircase that no one even uses in the novel and is never seen again! The entire book is full of prose like this, which for raw descriptive is elegant enough, even if many words are frequently misused—such as using coniferous when she should have used conifers, or nauseous used when she really meant nauseated, or the improper use of the word epithets—and this type of writing really makes the story drag.

Additionally, perhaps it’s a regional or dialect issues, but everyone in the book asks questions with a “Hey?” after them. We’re going to the store, hey? Is this Canadian? Is this Midwestern? I don’t know, but I know it’s not how we talked down here in Texas, and I’ve never before seen this in the many, many books I’ve read. Additionally, all the characters at some point or another say, “Ya,” instead of yes or agreeing. I’m assuming this is a dialect issue, but I’m not sure it belongs in a novel for mainstream readers not from an area that speaks like this. It distracted me, again, from the story.

NO STORY TO TELL, by KJ Steele–Could Use More Aggressive Editing

As for the editing, there were minor mistakes, like a couple of words left out, double quotes used instead of an apostrophe before a contracted word, at one point she wrote, “I’d of” instead of “I’d have”, and other little things like this that should have been caught with a really thorough round of copy edits also detracted some from the story for me as well. The worst was probably the flip-flopping back and forth from present to past tense.

Tampax was written Tam-pax, which is a brand trademarked name, so checking for using it properly would have been nice, or simply calling it a tampon would have worked too. The word: till. This was written three different ways in the book, like this: Till, “Till (typo hers, not mine) and Til. Consistency and accuracy would have been nice. Or when she said, “…managed to coax casual into her voice…” that’s really not using the word ‘casual’ properly, since it’s not a noun (it’s an adjective). The book is full of little improper uses of words such as this that makes reading it difficult, even if one knows what the author intended.

Did I Like the Story NO STORY TO TELL, by KJ Steele?

I think the plot ambled along a bit too slowly and the author shared side stories about things that simply had nothing to do with this story and were not necessary for the plot or character development,  causing this book to be much longer than it needed to be. I also had a really hard time in the beginning chapters feeling any sympathy for the lead character at all. As many other reviewers on Amazon.com said of the book, the character development was very good. While reading, one can definitely get a feel for all the characters, seeing them the way I believe the author intended. The one exception might just be the main character, Victoria, whom I find a bit hard to like and a bit unsympathetic in the beginning. I do, however, warm up to her when she hits her stride along about Chapter 9, or so. Then, in the last chapter, Victoria loses all sympathy from me at all. In fact, what the author has her do in the final chapter caused me to throw the book down in disgust and frustration, and made me so angry I wished I hadn’t even read the book.

If an author’s job is to evoke emotion, then the author did her job with that, but not in a way that will make me want to read anything else this writer offers. The disappointment with the ending of this book was enough to turn me off to future books by this author, I’m afraid. I won’t spoil the ending, in case you pick the book up yourself, but once you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your commentary about the ending as well—just leave it in the comments section and I’ll respond!

There were some instances that seemed wholly unbelievable to me, such as when Victoria, because she was frustrated with her husband and his poker-playing drinking buddies tearing up the house and wantonly tossing cigarettes and ashes into the sink, took a potato peeler and started scrubbing the skin off her hands with it. Why? Seriously? And then she went on like nothing happened, making sandwiches for them and trying to hide her hands from them, with no mention of blood—do you know how much just one gash from a potato peeler done accidentally can bleed, especially while in water? The entire scene was just not believable to me, and then the author has the character try to hide it the next day by saying she used a cleaner without gloves. I’m not buying it.

If you take out these nuisances, though, and get down to the story, the plot does pick up some about mid-way through the book, and this is a decent story, even with the horrible ending.

If the author can learn not to take the prose quite so seriously, to simplify the language to make the pleasure of reading more available to the reader, I think there is some raw talent here that remains to be tapped. This story has much potential, so I feel the author’s future stories will only continue to improve upon that base of talent. If you’re interested in reading this book for yourself and discussing it, give it a CLICK HERE and let me know what you think.