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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a fan of Louise Penny and have read all of her books.  I've seen her speak in person a couple of times.  She does a great job at those events, so if you are a fan and have a chance to attend one, I recommend it.

[b]However[/b], I read a comment (maybe on Goodreads?) about the short choppy sentences and incomplete sentences, and now I can't unsee those in her writing!  The commenter suggested that she's in need of a good editor, and I agree.  Here's an example of two consecutive paragraphs from A Better Man (2019):

"His gaze, Tracey saw with some alarm, wasn't angry.  Wasn't threatening.  Certainly wasn't frightened.  It was thoughtful.

Anger, rage, violence Tracey could handle.  But this was just confusing.  And off-putting.  And a little frightening."

This structure is throughout the book; this is not an isolated example.  I need to look back and see if she was doing this in the earlier books, and I didn't notice it at the time I read them.

I tried to read her recent book written with Hillary Clinton, and I could not finish it.  I will try again at some point.[/quote]

Op here - yes!!! The first few pages of the one I tried reading were exactly like that!  Almost as if it were written to be less taxing for the reader…but it’s in some ways more difficult to mentally merge all the mini-sentences into one complete thought.[/quote]

A Different PP:  I read very quickly -- so, not quite skimming, but close, so I'm fine with her style.  I've wondered if she's doing talk to text for some of it, since to me, a lot of it doesn't quite read like something that someone is writing out or even typing.  I decided that if she and her editor were fine, I would just roll with it.  If I were a slower, more careful reader though, I think this type of style would be more than a bit frustrating, because I would be trying to read for complete sentences that aren't actually there.

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