So, The Thong Also Rises got an awful review in the Ventura County Reporter.


“The Bar Should Be Raised for The Thong Also Rises”

I wish that Jen Leo, rather than choosing which stories to include the anthology, had actually edited the writing in the stories. That could have evelated this entertaining-but-forgettable book from a comparison to channel-surfing to (gasp!) maybe even one of those HBO series you turn on the TV to watch. But it’s not there; and it’s too bad it’s not, because these stories had potential.

I’m not going to make excuses or defend the book, or my editing. But I wanted to share this with you because I know that there are authors out there working on their own books. So, if you ever get a bad review you can say, “Hey, Jen got one, too, no biggee, learn and move on.” It is impossible for us to please all the critics. Heck, it’s hard enough to please ourselves. Bad reviews happen, good reviews happen, too.

And the best part of this review is that I learned a new word—evelated!

6 comments

  1. Beyond being a lousy speller, the reviewer is also a bit sloppy with her information. I think she was slamming me, not Ellen, with the naked story she used as an example twice. That would make mine the “too long, anticlimactic” story. Just wanted to get the credit (my second bad review where I wasn’t properly named – the first one misspelled my last name).

  2. Oh, that entry cracked me up.

    When giving a critical review, I ALWAYS check grammar/spelling even more times than I usually do. Somehow, when slamming something, one has to be more convincing than when writing something positive (at least for an American audience!)

  3. It is always so much easier to write a bad review rather than a good one… especially a sloppy bad review. Criticism is good, meandering sloppy bad reviews — best forgotten.

  4. Really and truly, screw nasty reviews. If you want to add some somewhat constructive criticism, that’s one thing. But if you want to be ugly the way she was, screw her. She showed her true colors.

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