1 out of 4 stars
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Manley is a sex-crazed divorcee or as he refers to himself, a puppy dog. Manley’s perspective on relationships with women is changed when he meets Libby, an ambitious college student with a good heart. A romance quickly develops between the two but Manley’s secrets and Libby’s overprotective family stands in the way of their happy ending.
I love romantic comedies in both movie and book form. Therefore, I was excited about the premise of How to train A wild puppy dog name Manley. First, I was happy to read a book about a romance with a West Indian main character. I believe that the representation of couples of color in romance novels is important and I like reading about cultures different than my own. Secondly, I thought the plot had a lot of potential for classic romance comedy complications. Manley's various dealings with current and past lovers plus his secret nightlife were perfect opportunities to put Manley into some humorous, and compromising situations. However, the end result was not humorous and frankly not romantic.
The biggest problem with the book was various errors. There were grammar, syntax and punctuation mistakes. There were many awkward and confusing sentences throughout the book. There were hyphens, commas and colons just thrown around carelessly. For example:
The writing style was unsophisticated. The overly casual way it was written made Manley sound very immature. For instance, Manley thinks to himself that “ A perky pair of breast, just a tad on the small side but a proper mouthful for someone like Mr. Puppy dog here to nibble on”.She did wake up well
enough to open up the door and let me in
when I got there, was mighty happy to have
the Rotti and drink too, all of the red-eyed
sleepy-look, quickly dissipated into a wide
awake and alert Ms. Mira, name-calling me:
sweetheart, darling baby.
The immaturity of Manley and the way he talks about his sexual partners makes the book unromantic and unsexy. When Manley reflects that “ The thumb and forefinger meanwhile were concentrating on the nippled spouts.”, I wondered if the author had used any female beta readers. In fact, by the end of the book, I was doubting that he had used any beta readers of any gender.
Another reason the book lacked romance or humor was that there are inappropriate, unhealthy and downright abusive sexual encounters in this story. This would not have been a problem if the writing was sophisticated enough to deal with these controversial issues. However, I couldn’t tell if E Lloyd Kelly was even unaware of how unhealthy Manley’s sexual encounters were.
The sloppy writing affects all the characters as shown by the dialogue between Manley and other characters (who strangely speak in the exact same way as Manley). For instance, “Mira swallowed hard, "I am in deep doodu,"she said to herself.”
The dialogue in this book doesn’t only sound bad, it is confusing since there are the only rare usages of quotations marks and often there were no line breaks between changes in speakers. The overall formatting of the PDF version is unprofessional. It includes no page numbers and the paragraph formatting was inconsistent.
With that said, my biggest frustration with the book is that Kelly had a lot of good plot ideas. On the surface, there were some interesting character dynamics, especially around Libby’s family life. But, those parts of the story are lost in the mix to the huge amount of backstory around Manley and his family that mostly leads nowhere. That backstory took over so much of the book that Libby and Manley didn’t actually spend much time together. Therefore, their romance didn’t feel believable or earned.
With all the errors and clumsy writing, I am confident this book wasn’t professionally edited. It reads like a decent draft of a novel. However, since I believe the book wasn’t polished enough for publication, I can not recommend it to anyone. Therefore, I have rated this a 1 out of 4 stars.
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How to train A wild puppy dog name Manley
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