Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with an ARC of “Forever Waste” by Suzanne Stephenson in exchange for an honest review.

There were two reasons I decided to give this title a go: the cover and the promise (or potential) of satire. I do love good satire. However, right from the first line I had one of those screech-to-a-halt realisations that this would not be a book for me.

It’s quite literally all tell and no show. I did try to give it a fair shot despite that, but I just can’t deal with the grammar and syntax here.

Just a few pages in there’s a line: “The smiling countenance revealed a number of gold teeth and had a considerable amount of 5 o’clock shadow but when it saw Steven’s worried look said, “Only joking, mate. You don’t look like you’re from round ‘ere?”

Lexical ambiguity is like the first thing they teach in line editing…

And that was the point I gave up. Yes, I know, I didn’t even make it four pages and that’s an abysmal way to treat someone’s work. I am deeply sorry. From what little I’ve read, all I can say is that this would benefit from getting run by a professional editor or two.

-DNF-