Official Review: A Hard Pill To Swallow by Shantina Wilson
Posted: 01 Jul 2019, 13:37
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "A Hard Pill To Swallow" by Shantina Wilson.]
2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Sanaa and Thomas seem to have the perfect marriage. He loves her even though she can’t give him children, and he works hard. His mother is a problem as she is opinionated and wants grandchildren. She encourages Thomas to find someone else and secretly tries to fix him up with Nadine. Then, Sanaa discovers her husband has another life with Nadine and a child she didn’t know about.
Leslie is Sanaa’s sister. She is married to Alan, a man who tried to be a good husband at first. Now, he cheats on her and beats her. His best friend, Rodney, is a negative influence as he has a history of hitting women. Leslie has a child by Alan and refuses to leave him. She has her own secrets.
How did their lives get to this point?
A Hard Pill to Swallow, written by Shantina Wilson, is 241 pages long and fifty-two chapters and is supposed to be a romance novel. It begins in the present day when Sanaa finds out that Thomas has been cheating on her, and we discover that Alan has been beating Leslie. Then, it goes back to ten years prior and begins slowly building up to the present day, giving us the pieces of the puzzle for us to understand how they got to this point. The plot is interesting, although none of the issues are resolved by the end. “To be continued” is written on the last page, and, after reading the book, I found there is now a part two of A Hard Pill to Swallow.
This novel is written mostly in first person but with multiple people narrating. The author has each chapter labeled with the name of the person doing the talking during that chapter. This works well the majority of the time. Occasionally, someone other than the person listed is doing the narrating. At other times, the author would switch over in the middle of the chapter to someone else’s point of view without notifying the reader. On at least one occasion, the author goes from one person narrating to a different person in the next sentence and then back to the first person. This is with no notification of who is talking. All of this makes it difficult to easily follow.
Sanaa and Thomas’s characters were well developed and were my favorite part of the book. They were relatable and likable. Sanaa lost all confidence in men after her last boyfriend left her with a sexually transmitted disease that caused infertility. Thomas slowly won her over, and she was willing to trust again. They fell in love, and, even though he had always wanted children, Thomas said he was willing to give them up if she would marry him. However, Nadine was able to entice him in ways he couldn’t seem to overcome. It is easier to forgive his cheating when one sees how hard he fought against it in the beginning.
I felt like the other characters were not as well portrayed or likable. Most were driven by sex and selfishness. They didn’t care who they hurt as long as they got what they wanted. Almost all the characters cursed like street thugs, even Thomas’s mother, and she was supposed to be a church-going Christian. The N-word was used frequently. The sex-at-any-cost mentality, the cursing, and the vulgar language left me hoping for the end of the book to come soon. This was my least favorite aspect of the book.
There are multiple flaws in the book in the form of grammatical and punctuation errors. Some examples are: “ . . . didn’t see any scares or bruises.” (scars or bruises) and “ . . . it had caused server damage to my ovaries.” (it caused severe damage to my ovaries). It could use a professional editor to clean up the errors, which would help with the first person narration problems listed earlier as well.
Because of the issues listed previously, I am rating this book 2 out of 4 stars. Readers who enjoy erotica might like this story. I can’t really recommend it to romance lovers because there wasn’t as much romance as there was graphic sex. Adults who don’t enjoy reading books containing cursing, vulgar language, and explicit sex should probably skip this novel. It is not suitable for children or teenagers for the same reasons.
******
A Hard Pill To Swallow
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Sanaa and Thomas seem to have the perfect marriage. He loves her even though she can’t give him children, and he works hard. His mother is a problem as she is opinionated and wants grandchildren. She encourages Thomas to find someone else and secretly tries to fix him up with Nadine. Then, Sanaa discovers her husband has another life with Nadine and a child she didn’t know about.
Leslie is Sanaa’s sister. She is married to Alan, a man who tried to be a good husband at first. Now, he cheats on her and beats her. His best friend, Rodney, is a negative influence as he has a history of hitting women. Leslie has a child by Alan and refuses to leave him. She has her own secrets.
How did their lives get to this point?
A Hard Pill to Swallow, written by Shantina Wilson, is 241 pages long and fifty-two chapters and is supposed to be a romance novel. It begins in the present day when Sanaa finds out that Thomas has been cheating on her, and we discover that Alan has been beating Leslie. Then, it goes back to ten years prior and begins slowly building up to the present day, giving us the pieces of the puzzle for us to understand how they got to this point. The plot is interesting, although none of the issues are resolved by the end. “To be continued” is written on the last page, and, after reading the book, I found there is now a part two of A Hard Pill to Swallow.
This novel is written mostly in first person but with multiple people narrating. The author has each chapter labeled with the name of the person doing the talking during that chapter. This works well the majority of the time. Occasionally, someone other than the person listed is doing the narrating. At other times, the author would switch over in the middle of the chapter to someone else’s point of view without notifying the reader. On at least one occasion, the author goes from one person narrating to a different person in the next sentence and then back to the first person. This is with no notification of who is talking. All of this makes it difficult to easily follow.
Sanaa and Thomas’s characters were well developed and were my favorite part of the book. They were relatable and likable. Sanaa lost all confidence in men after her last boyfriend left her with a sexually transmitted disease that caused infertility. Thomas slowly won her over, and she was willing to trust again. They fell in love, and, even though he had always wanted children, Thomas said he was willing to give them up if she would marry him. However, Nadine was able to entice him in ways he couldn’t seem to overcome. It is easier to forgive his cheating when one sees how hard he fought against it in the beginning.
I felt like the other characters were not as well portrayed or likable. Most were driven by sex and selfishness. They didn’t care who they hurt as long as they got what they wanted. Almost all the characters cursed like street thugs, even Thomas’s mother, and she was supposed to be a church-going Christian. The N-word was used frequently. The sex-at-any-cost mentality, the cursing, and the vulgar language left me hoping for the end of the book to come soon. This was my least favorite aspect of the book.
There are multiple flaws in the book in the form of grammatical and punctuation errors. Some examples are: “ . . . didn’t see any scares or bruises.” (scars or bruises) and “ . . . it had caused server damage to my ovaries.” (it caused severe damage to my ovaries). It could use a professional editor to clean up the errors, which would help with the first person narration problems listed earlier as well.
Because of the issues listed previously, I am rating this book 2 out of 4 stars. Readers who enjoy erotica might like this story. I can’t really recommend it to romance lovers because there wasn’t as much romance as there was graphic sex. Adults who don’t enjoy reading books containing cursing, vulgar language, and explicit sex should probably skip this novel. It is not suitable for children or teenagers for the same reasons.
******
A Hard Pill To Swallow
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
