Top 5 books I would have paid to edit

Please excuse me while I cry in the (bookshop) aisles over the ways I felt like this book let me down.

I have never not loved an Ashley Poston book. Until A Novel Love Story. (Admittedly I do own 4 that I still haven’t read.) The Dead Romantics and The Seven Year Slip were some of my favourite books in the years that I read them. I bawled my eyes out while reading both. But I don’t think this one had that Ashley Poston magic. (And it’s the reason why I still haven’t read Sounds Like Love.)

Here’s what I would do:

• Beg Ashley Poston to let me work with her.

• Break the book down to the tension points – because the second act sags and the characters don’t have a real reason to interact.

• The ending was missing something. Like, a heartfelt reason for the MCs coming back together. It just wasn’t believable (yes, even in a magical realism story). They needed a catalyst to give them the leaping point.

I really wanted to love this book more. It had a great overarching story, good themes, and fun, unique characters. It had twists and turns, and I did not see the ending coming.

But that was partly because it felt so anticlimactic. This was a story that could have been epic — a post-COVID urban fantasy time-defying classic. But it wasn’t.

Here’s what I would have suggested:

• The setting could have been more ambiguous. It’s very openly set in the bush of Australia. Personally, I think that limits the readership to Australians. C.G. Drews does this perfectly with her YA contemporary novels. They could be set anywhere, but have slight hints of Aussie-ness — more like a IYKYK scenario.

• I still don’t really understand how the magic worked. I would have helped create some way of finding out answers to why some people got trapped and were immortal, while others could come and go, and more others aged. 

• I didn’t really understand the villain’s motives. Like, sure, I get it. But was it strong enough for a 100+ year grudge? I didn’t believe it.

Here’s the challenge with picking The North Wind. I actually really loved it. Not quite a 5 star (amazing) read. But definitely great. It has so many elements that I love — it’s a Hades and Persephone retelling, it has an abundance of Slavic lore mixed in, and all of the characters are flawed in their own way.

But, if I had this as a manuscript, there are elements I would have recommended to be looked at. Such as:

• The orphan trope is so overdone, and really not necessary in this story. It doesn’t add anything to this story and could have just as easily included the parents.

• Which also would have meant that maybe the miscommunication / sibling becomes the parent / self-scarifing trope between the sisters could have been something else. Jealousy, perceived favourtism, a love interest scorned one for the other.

• And that in turn could have helped build a stronger, more emotional ending. Not just a polite-distance, we’ve-all-moved-on-with-no-real-resolution-but-perhaps-the-promise-of-maybe-something-getting-better-eventually ending.

OMG. Where to even begin with this one. For starters, let’s address the two elephants with this one.

1. Armentrout literally says at the start of From Blood and Ash that she didn’t let an editor near it because she had a vision. I firmly believe that an editor shouldn’t change a vision — just make it more coherent.

2. I know a lot of people love this series — you can come for me in the comments, that’s fine. But this might be the hill I die on: Hansel and Gretel couldn’t find their way back if this plot was made from neon, glow-in-the-dark boulders, let alone breadcrumbs. I said what I said.

Here’s what my advice would be:

• For the love of god, please get a line editor / proofreader. They won’t “change your vision”. They WILL make sure that your characters have consistently spelled names. (Niall / Naill and let’s not forget Hawkethrone / Hawkthrone / Hawkethorn / Hawkthorn / Hawkethorne / Hawkthorne — I would have renamed him Cas as well.) Not to mention the repeated paragraphs where things were clearly moved around, but left in two spots.

• Book five could have been two chapters at the end of book four. Wholly unnecessary. Please save the reader (and their wallet) from 600+ pages that didn’t substantially add anything.

• Can we please revisit the world-building? I still don’t understand why some parts of the world have showers and modern plumbing, and we’re still using bows and arrows for combat. Unless the showers are some kind of ancient Greek aqueduct system?

• With this, I’d also like to address the language. It’s half proper-English in that high fantasy way, interspresed with sayings like “go get ’em, tiger”. Do tigers exist in this world? I have so many questions like this.