Best Seller

This is a dark and brooding coming of age story, mixed with a touch of evil and mystery. The young “heroine” is a strong, charming and astute young woman. But she hides a blackness on her life and soul, that blackness taints her future. She is smart, and interesting. She shows empathy, sympathy, love and kindness when she wants to. She may not look at herself the way we see her. Her true self is arrogant, spiteful, mean and manipulative. Her past is the reason she is what she is and does what she does. Family secrets come to her when she is too young to understand them and no one is left to explain them to her. She has a fantastic transformation during this story that many readers may not be excepting, because what she changes into is so wrong. This transformation is most definitely not for the better. The male protagonist is a unhappy, unsatisfied, cruel and desperate man. He wasn’t always this way, his luck turned on him. It leaves him vulnerable, sad, and isolated. He is focused on one thing, and one thing only. He had a fantastic writing career. It came with a moderate income, and success. But after his first book made it to the New York Times Bestseller list, his other books bombed. Along the way he tries in vain to get back out there, start writing again, start living again. He is extremely motivated to fix this one item in his life. As these two main characters cross paths, the fireworks start, and what a ride that is. There are some amazing twists and turns. You kinda might know what’s going to happen next, but then the story goes a little off center. The backstory of the characters are superbly written. The whole book flows so easy, that you may read way past your bedtime and not even know it. Pick this book up, you are going to love it. I know I did.

I enjoyed this story quite a lot in and of itself, but also the look into what must run through the mind of any author. The ego, the anxiety, trying to balance art and success.Interesting characters that grow and change over the years, a creepy and interesting story, and a weird ending to leave you wondering. I've been reading a bit lately about Buddhist concepts of ego, desire, and the inner voice. This novel really dug into the extremes of where our minds can take us.I found the parts about writing, criticism, and reviews very interesting. Especially enemies leaving bad reviews to sabotage other writers. I see reviews on Amazon where people say they didn't even read the book. And this book has a few one-star reviews that make me wonder. Used the word "serendipity" too much. Really? I missed that. Someone "read every other chapter." Well reader, perhaps you should watch TV, that's not how books are read...If you are looking for a good story that will leave you satisfied, give this one a read.

Nem is given a box containing her mother's possessions some years after witnessing her murder as a young child. The box includes a mysterious green book. Once Nem determines the meaning of the contents in the book (which contains only names and pluses and minuses) she begins to use the unique power of the book to her advantage. She starts with providing her adopted parents with good luck (a plus) but learns that every plus must be balanced by a minus (bad luck). As an adult working in a book store she meets author William Barnes whose first book was a best seller. He takes her under his wing when she decides to write her own book. His next two books are complete failures while her career blossoms.This is a gripping tale of misuse of unexpected power that keeps you reading into the wee hours of the morning, with a surprise Hitchcock-like ending. I spent my book allowance in 2017 on Susan May books instead of my usual Stephen King/Dean Koontz books - and will continue to do so.

So, I cannot believe that this was the very first novel, I've ever read by Susan May, seriously where have I been? This one gripped me, although it took me a few chapters to really get into it, but once I did I couldn't put it down. Well-written, and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. This book also opened my eyes to the darker side of the publishing world, and all I can say is, I'm really glad I'm not an author, I honestly don't think I could stand that kind of pressure. I really enjoyed this, much more than I thought I would. It was a good way to while away the weekend, and plus I finished in about two days, and I can't wait to read more of her books.

I enjoyed Best Seller and appreciated the insight about publishing. I was really hoping that Nem would change. I didn’t care much for the many details of her thoughts –I found that boring and at times it worked my nerves. I liked William a lot and would like to see him in another story. It was very wordy but for the most part I enjoyed it but kept checking to see how close I was to the end.

It took me a few chapters to figure it out, but I really enjoyed how Ms. May formatted this story. Bouncing between the past (Nem) and current (William) time periods is very clever. Without giving away the ending, I can only say the reason I didn't give it 5 stars was due to one of the surprises at the end. The surprise made sense, but it didn't exactly mesh with the first half of the story. I really enjoyed the book.

I was excited for this book and the beginning was intriguing. I was interested until about chapter 35, though, starting out the book, I found it annoying at first how the chapters were back and forth equally between William and Nem. It was almost like reading two books simultaneously. Once I figured out how the stories intertwined, I thought it was clever and then I got excited again. However, my excitement was misplaced since the book seemed to drag on from that point and I found myself less and less interested and even rather bored. I did want to find out what happened after investing the time, so I finished the book. The ending wasn't anything special either. I'm giving it 3 stars because it was an interesting idea. It just could have been much better.

I read this in two days.

I saw an ad on Facebook for this book. The first few times I ignored it, but then I thought why not? And I’m so glad I clicked the link. The story follows our two main characters, and there is quite a lot of detail. It took me a while to get into the flow, but it was definitely worth persevering, as once I got to the ‘gotta’ I couldn’t put it down! My colleagues at work kept telling me how tired I looked, mostly because I favoured reading over sleep 😂. For those that don’t know (and I forget who said it) the ‘gotta’ is when you get to that part of a book where you just have to know what happens next, at all costs. For me this book has it in spades!

sadly I have given up on this one. I found the storyline was too plodding and rather boring I like a thriller to grip me from the first sentence and although I was determined to finish this I did eventually decide it was more of a chore than a thrill and cut my losses

Nem is a young girl who finds herself orphaned due to witnessing her mum’s brutal murder at the hands of her crazy boyfriendWilliam Barnes is a New York Times Best Selling author, who, after experiencing the highs of being one of the greatest writers on the planet, finds his critics slating him and his book sales diminishing. His jealousy takes over him, and we experience the lengths he will go to to make things right and get to the bottom of his downfallOrelia works in a bookstore, and during a talk at her store by William, finds herself his mentee, as he helps her polish her book ready for publishing. She keeps herself to herself, and for good reason. She has a secret that she doesn’t want anyone to find out. But will they?Susan really knows how to tell a great, gripping, page turning story. You can practically feel the jealousy and hate that eats at William. Reading this, I actually felt the tension, the anger and the outright insidiousness of his jealousy.The characters all go through a transformation; some you’ll love, then hate, others vice versa, all leading up to a very stormy and climatic ending. There’s almost a cliffhanger at the end (I’m hoping there’s a sequel)There are also some sneaky cameos from a few other of Susan’s stories (I’ve nicknamed it the start of SMLU: Susan May’s Literary Universe)This book is exactly what it says on the tin/ front cover.The end. Goodbye

I looked forward to reading this book as the review was good but I was very disappointed. I ended up flicking through pages just to get to the end. Sorry I thought it was rubbish.

A total waste of time and money, the reason I bought the book was that it kept coming up on Facebook with great reviews, big mistake. The story starts off well but then another character is introduced, that's when it gets boring, the story switches back and forth between the boring and the interesting parts. Then there's big jump into the future, it went down hill from then on.