Me & Moe

Alex Swanson planned to be a serious journalist until her stepping-stone-into-the-business talk radio position became a path to nowhere. Now the Suits in charge are offering up her dream job on a platter—if only she’ll help them out with one little project: an endorsement deal for CreateADate’s online dating service. All they’re asking is for her to broadcast her personal life for listeners’ entertainment. Never mind that she lives with her grandparents and hasn’t been on a date since high school prom. Still, Alex finds a way to put her own spin on the assignment and enlists the help of her conspiracy-theorist Grampa and reality-television-loving grandma Moe as she tries to figure out the dating world. Along the way, she must evaluate her objectives in life and love and finally face demons she’d thought long buried.

Alex’s self-effacing wit paired with Moe’s flamboyant enthusiasm makes for an entertaining story. I couldn’t help but picture Alex as the queen of deadpan cynicism, comedienne Janeane Garofalo. I don’t often cast celebrities in my readings, but the association came naturally—maybe because much of the story is very visual (odd to say, since it’s a written story about a radio personality, but true nonetheless).

I especially appreciate that it sticks to the realm of dating and romance without touching over into sexual relations. The back cover description declaring “station ratings fly off the charts, as her morals fly out the window” had me concerned, but now I know that I can happily recommend this title to any of my friends….and I will.

A small caveat: there are a couple dozen glaring grammar and usage errors, so red pencillers may be too distracted to enjoy this great little story. Personally, I felt that the story was strong enough to overcome my annoyance at the poor editing job. Ponder the meaning of love, consider boundaries of privacy and the balance of personal and public life, and laugh along with this fast-paced read.

NOTES TO THE AUTHOR

This book really needed a better editing job. Don’t get me wrong, I love the story and recommend it to readers despite the errors, but they really should have been corrected pre-publication. Some of them could have easily been caught by reading the story aloud. Sometimes I would stop at a sentence where I noticed something seemed off and notice an essential word was missing, for example, on page 13, “After my parents died and I moved in to the small bedroom closest to the living room that my Dad as a boy, she asked me to call her Moe” should be “that my Dad used as a boy” or something along those lines (this example is also one of several times where words are separated that should be compound: into, keychain, etc.). On page 26, “And the crash caused me off my balance” is a weird mix of caused me to lose my balance and knocked me off my balance. A careful reading should alert you that it doesn’t sound right. Sometimes words are used incorrectly: pg. 72 “shuttered” should be shuddered, pg. 277 “rural” means country, sure, but not undeveloped wilderness, “apropos” (used several times) is hardly ever the appropriate word to use (but “appropriate” might work), and “populous” is an adjective (the noun form intended all three times it appears is populace). Fancy endings don’t make a word more correct, either: pg. 269 should be a variety of olive oils, not a “varietal” (varietal seems to only be used when referring to grapes and/or wine), and on pg. 274 it would have been okay for Alex to say she was opposed to it, rather than “oppositional to it.” Sometimes the error was a common usage error, like using “bare with me” rather than the correct “bear with me” on pg. 254 (bare with me implies an invitation to remove clothing), and sometimes a common phrase was given an odd form, like “odd and end” rather than odds and ends. This is a long and picky list (though it does not include all the errors I found, and I likely missed several), but bad editing really detracts from good writing. I would like to see more from you, but seriously suggest getting an editor who is willing and able to put the work needed into it, and then double-or-triple-check it yourself before printing.