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T. Marie Benchley

Författare till Once Wicked Always Dead

1 verk 33 medlemmar 14 recensioner 1 favoritmärkta

Verk av T. Marie Benchley

Once Wicked Always Dead (2010) 33 exemplar

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Namn enligt folkbokföringen
Benchley, T. Marie
Födelsedag
1966-08
Kön
female
Nationalitet
USA
Bostadsorter
Montana, USA
Florida, USA
Utbildning
Masters in Journalism and Marketing
Yrken
Author
Relationer
Benchley, Peter (cousin)
Benchley, Nat (cousin)
Organisationer
Shriners Childrens Hospital
Agent
MMWE Publishers
Kort biografi
T. Marie Benchley is an author and student in life. With a family heritage of actor/writers including famed Author Peter Benchley of Jaws and The Deep, she was introduced to classic literature at an early age and remains a passionate reader. Although the only sharks on her pages are Attorneys and the monsters in her plots are Sociopaths, her primary desire is to entertain her readers.

Though formally educated in journalism and marketing, she is also an avid traveler, finding inspiration for her novels by studying people and listening to their stories. Happily married with a son and daughter, she divides her time between Florida and Montana.

T. Marie is extremely happy to announce that she will be donating a portion of all book sales of Once Wicked Always Dead to Shriners Hospitals for Children.

"Once Wicked Always Dead" Book Trailer and T. Marie Benchley's $1,000.00 Hidden Challenge from M.M.W.E Publishing House on Vimeo.

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Everyone has secrets, but there are secrets and there are Secrets! Once Wicked Always Dead by T. Marie Benchley is filled with secrets, some personal and others deadly.

Phillip Madison is hiding one very big Secret and Molly Madison, his wife, is the last to know. After 20+ years of marriage to a legal mover-and-shaker, Molly knows that their relationship has changed but she assumes it is because of work. Little does she know that Phillip is living a double life...not with another woman but with another man. As soon as "the other man" outs Phillip, she trades in her car for a truck, meets with a divorce attorney and moves from Florida to Montana to take over her family's working cattle ranch. Her life has truly been turned upside down, but the problems are just beginning. Fortunately she has Clayton Leatherbe, the ranch foreman, to help her through the transition of society wife to ranch owner.

Once Wicked Always Dead starts off with a murder and then transitions to a society lunch. Doesn't seem like these activities have a lot in common but Ms. Benchley does a fine job of bringing it together. There seems to be a lot going on in this story: Molly O'Malley Madison and ranch life and her romantic interest in Clayton; Phillip being outed then accepting his new life and finding a new love interest; Gavin O'Malley's secrets that may be a threat to Molly; Evin the resident bad guy willing to go to any means to get Molly's property; and Swan - Phillip's former lover and personal assistant, who is out for revenge. Oops...I forgot to mention the murderer that is taking out child molesters and bad guys. But Molly isn't a "bad guy" so why is she being targeted? Are the ghosts of her father's past coming back to haunt her?

Once Wicked Always Dead may loosely be considered a romantic suspense thriller, light on the romance. (There seemed to be more romantic action taking place with Phillip and Jack, Phillip’s new love interest, than there is between Molly and Clayton.) Although all of the characters intersect due to Molly and her past, present and future, the action doesn't make much sense or become cohesive until the end. I found most of the action and the characters to be somewhat believable but it stretched credulity at moments (I guess people with money can do almost anything). All things considered, this was a decent read in the suspense thriller genre.
… (mer)
½
 
Flaggad
BookDivasReads | 13 andra recensioner | Jul 25, 2011 |
I wish I could give this book a better rating. The story holds great promise but the writing didn't capture me at all. The beginning is an information dump, where the author is trying too hard to tell readers everything about every character all at once. When the story finally gets going, I felt like I was being told about each character's emotions but I never got in their heads and experienced the impact of those emotions. I lost interest and did a lot of skimming. In the end, I had no connection to any of the characters and didn't care what happened to them.

** I received this ebook as a review copy from BookMasters publisher via NetGalley. **
… (mer)
1 rösta
Flaggad
Darcia | 13 andra recensioner | May 17, 2011 |
This is possibly the worst book I have ever read in my entire life. And I am not being melodramatic. It's terrible, and I have sticky notes placed throughout the book to prove it.

I received this book as an ARC through a rather flashy banner ad in a newsletter. It looked interesting, and the premise sounded decent (though I can't recall now how it was phrased). Woman finds out her husband is having an affair and travels to a friend's ranch to try and make sense of life, but there are dark family secrets at stake and meanwhile, someone is killing johns. Sure, fine, a standard plot but it could be good.

After five pages, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into. After ten pages, I wondered why I was still reading. After fifteen pages, I picked up a pad of sticky notes and a pen, and started making note of all the logical inconsistencies, POV shifts, random actions by characters, awkwardly constructed sentences... the book now looks like a sticky note factory exploded inside of it.

I'd planned to write a lengthy letter to the publisher and ask why such awful tripe was allowed to pass through the editorial process and be placed in the hands of readers... but after doing some research on the author, the 'publisher' and the sudden explosion of publicity, I noticed that the 'publisher/distributor' also offered 'promotions packages'. Huh. Interesting. And one of their packages matched up with all the author pages/social media profiles/etc. of the author that popped up around the same time (in fact, I even made a comment on how horrible this book was on someone else's thread in the 75'ers forum, and "T.Marie Benchley" left a comment on my profile reminding me that it was just an ARC, and corrections would be made in the final copy... okay, first, there were grammatical errors in the comment that identified the writer of the comment as a publicity monkey, and second, you'd have to correct THE ENTIRE BOOK to fix THOSE errors... honestly...). So I suspect that if I wrote a letter at this point, I'd just be shouting at a brick wall.

Instead, let me treat you to some of the delights of this book:

1) A man goes to the doctor for a blood test. The doctor takes his blood on the spot, says he'll be back, and an implied FIVE to TEN MINUTES LATER he comes back with the blood test results. And tells the character he has AIDS and Hepatitis. Know what the character does? Asks "doesn't getting blood test results take weeks?", to which the doctor replies with something like "oh no, they've made advances in modern medicine now that allow this". No, they haven't. And when your own character thinks something fishy is going on?!?! You've got a problem. This is supposed to be a contemporary book. I'm no medical professional, but that was a HUGE, GLARING error. (I even called up a doctor to ask if this was ever possible... yeah, not a chance.)

2) The head-hopping (point of view shifts) happen within the same paragraph. How are you supposed to tell whose thoughts are whose? At one point, it sounded like the main character knew about her husband's affair long before he said anything, and it wasn't until later in the chapter that I realized I hadn't been reading her POV and she still didn't know. Issues like this continue throughout the novel.

3) Glaring redundancies like "hushed whisper" and sentence structure that reminds me of a sixth grader: "As she drove off, she began humming a song her mother had taught her when she was a small child and she felt really good." (p.63) Punctuation errors are rampant. If they were going to fix ALL this before the final copies went out, why didn't they bother to fix SOME for the ARC so it was at least readable???

4) Things are often mentioned that other characters know nothing about, or that don't make logical sense because we haven't heard about them before and it's implied we have. On p.67, the main character is shocked to learn of the 'rumors' about her husband's "secret passions". What rumors?! Earlier in the story, we were told he'd been extremely discreet and no one knew. So how could there be rumors?! Here's a gem from the same scene, same page: "Now with her eyes wide open to her husband's years of reckless behavior, she could not count on him using condoms and partaking in safe sex."

5) When the main character's daughter learns her father is gay, she basically says "okay, fine" and goes on with her life... no questions, no emotional struggle, nothing. We're told that the daughter expresses disappointment with his actions in the past, but we're not shown... wouldn't that be an awfully important conversation?

6) From a sticky note: "And by p.103, there's still no tangible plot, or purpose behind the 2nd 'plot line' about the johns being murdered...also this is incredibly mundane."

7) Here's a good one, spelling mistakes included: "To Phillip's secret relief and a sense of sadness for his new friend, he kept his ears opened as Jack reveled to him the sorrowful ending of his love story." (p.120) This sentence does not make sense.

8) There are enough adverbs to heavily sink a ship suddenly. *sigh*

9) Someone gets murdered with an icicle for no conceivable reason. Okay, here's the reason: "The young woman then left her unfit mother and the home she had been raised in for the last time". (p.205) Telling, and modifier issues. And later on, a major 'bad guy' gets killed randomly, without any sense of resolution or justice for the reader.

10) This is about as bad as the doctor issue above: A policeman shoots an unarmed civilian, and shoots to kill. In the scene, one man is beating up another man, and the police burst into the room and shoot the assailant. And kill him. Just like that, without knowing for certain which man is which. Not believable, and I suspect the policeman who took the shot would be arrested or at least suspended permanently.

11) After the main character almost gets killed by someone, the 'hero' rushes in (he's bleeding profusely from a head wound) and proposes to her. Seriously?!?!?! That's not romantic, that's insensitive and possibly fatal (he has a head wound that is bleeding). A proposal?!? Really?!?!

Oh, there's plenty more where that came from... like I said, this was possibly the worst book I'd ever read in my entire life. And no sane person can claim "ARC" for this, because they'd have to correct the entire book, line by line, and then fix the gaping holes in logic and the glaring ERRORS in common knowledge. I don't know how anyone could have read this manuscript and given it the green light... it's stilted, badly structured, word choice needs desperate help (old-fashioned phrases pop in here and there and stand out like a flashing neon sign), and... I could go on and on and on, but you get the idea.

The book angered me because of how poorly written it is, and because some promotions team took the author's money and has been campaigning for the book... the thought that anyone will spend money on this drives me nuts. I feel very badly for the reader who is taken in, and I really hope someone tells this author that she should seek out an external editor next time, someone who can fix the story for her and catch things like 'blood test results in five minutes'. And, uh, rewrite the entire thing so it makes sense.

Don't touch this one with a ten-foot pole, and warn others to stay away while you're at it.
… (mer)
½
13 rösta
Flaggad
dk_phoenix | 13 andra recensioner | Dec 31, 2010 |
I have to admit that upon seeing the cover of this book I quivered at the thought of reading a romance costumed as a mystery. However I was pleasantly surprised to begin reading and not wanting to put it down. It has a great mix of both genres and the author melds the characters' lives together very well.
 
Flaggad
Ani36ol | 13 andra recensioner | Dec 10, 2010 |

Statistik

Verk
1
Medlemmar
33
Popularitet
#421,955
Betyg
3.1
Recensioner
14
ISBN
4
Favoritmärkt
1