Book Review: Victory by Naomi Paasch
I was nervous about this book, going in. A friend of the author asked if I’d read and review it, which I was totally cool with because I love helping out fellow indie authors, but I wasn’t super impressed with the blurb or the cover when I checked out the Amazon page. (A note: I received a free copy to review.) However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this book.
Victory is told in two parts alongside each other. One is the story of an author struggling to finish her first story, one following the story she’s writing about two characters seeking out the meaning of beauty. Both are almost exclusively dialogue. This leads to some questions (Is the voice the author’s talking to anything more than her own inner critic? Who is the author writing for?) and the feeling of disembodied voices, but I’m fairly certain this was a stylistic choice and I think it was effective, at least during the author sections. In the sections that are the author’s story, I might have appreciated some more description and action, though there was more in the story sections than in the sections with the author.
I appreciated how much I was able to relate to the author’s struggles, being an author myself. I often find myself unable to relate to book characters, so this was a nice change, and it was nice to be reminded that I’m not the only one struggling with these doubts.
I was less invested in the story within the story, but I still found the topic to be fairly interesting and at least somewhat enjoyed the characters’ views and conclusions on the definition of beauty.
One thing that made the story a little bit difficult to read was that there were places in the sub-story where Paasch didn’t pair actions and dialogue properly and it was difficult to figure out who was speaking, especially since the characters’ voices weren’t especially distinct. But since this is a short story, it didn’t bother me for terribly long.
Overall, this was a fairly well-done book, even if it doesn’t make tops on my list. It’s worth a read, and I think I’d give it about 3.5 stars.
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