My Review of Carousel by Jennifer Renson

When I was first approached by the author to read and review this fantasy/fairytale novel, I was intrigued. The storyline sounds very interesting: a prince is forced to leave his home as a child because of the threat of plague.  He leaves behind a carousel, which was gifted to him when he was born.  The carousel is cursed by a demon who has the power of turning dolls into real children.  Will the prince return in time to save the villagers from the demon? Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
Unlike many of the books I read, this one is published by an actual publisher--not self published. I am an Indie author myself, so I know there are a lot of great writers out there who haven't even tried to get published traditionally, but when I see that a book has been accepted by a publisher, that tells me it should be very polished with very few proofreading errors.  It should have a great plot, and it should appeal to a great number of readers in the specific genre.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with this one. I was extremely disappointed in the number of proofreading errors.  There were not only misspelled words, there were misused words, words missing in sentences--all things you would expect a publishing house to catch. But they didn't.  That's not necessarily the author's fault, but if I saw this in my work after a professional editor had gone through it, I would be pretty darn upset. (I'm upset when I've paid someone who is not necessarily a professional to edit a book for me and I still see this issues.)

This Carousel just didn't make it around for me.

As for the story itself, it wasn't too bad, but there were somethings I honestly didn't quite understand. I don't want to give away too much, but for example, early on, we find out that the demon has snuck into the palace inside of the carousel. One of the horses on the ride is black and rotten. He oozes out of it.  Children love this ride!  They come over to the palace to ride it at parties, etc. No one ever noticed a black, oozing horse? I find this very hard to believe!  How is that possible? My daughter would notice if the carousel horse next to her had a dirty footprint on it. She'd definitely spot  a black pool of slime. So... that doesn't quite work for me. And when the whole story starts off on a premise that doesn't work, the rest of it kind of falls apart a bit as well.
There is another place where the characters find a large key--that they use for a door.  The description here was not enough for me to have any idea how that would work exactly. I found the entire incident extremely confusing....
I also wished there was more dialogue in the story. Sometimes I felt removed from what was happening to the characters, like I was finding out about it later instead of being in the moment with them.
I think the idea is a great one and that a lot could have happened with it. I was just slightly disappointed in the execution.  Since the author asked me to review and I don't feel that my review is extremely positive, I am declining to post it on Amazon. But you can see that the book does have all positive reviews on Amazon right now, so many other readers have enjoyed it. You can find Carousel here and the current list price is $2.99.
Right now, I am finishing up Grave Girl by Amy Cross, and I am really enjoying it so far. I hope to post that review soon. You can check it out here for only 99 cents.