Alaina Stanford

ABR's original Seven Year Rule audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Seven Year Rule by Alaina Stanford is the second novel in the series called The Rule. This novel begins by explaining the seven year rule of marriage, that after seven years, marriages begin to falter. This story follows three couples who are all best friends as they deal with and support each other as their lives change such as with children and custody concerns. The primary couple is now in their seventh year of marriage and there does not seem to be any issue, but then their lives are changed forever by an accident. The other two couples have their own marital issues that they must struggle through.

This novel is in the realistic fiction genre and I thought that the story was good. The challenges that the families had to deal with were realistic and the range of emotion that the characters showed were also believable. The focus of this novel was on one of the couples in this novel with the other couples’ story lines mixing in. It’s possible than the primary focus changes from one couple to another from from book to book in the series. In general, the story lines of the other two couples were not as well developed. One part of the novel that I found difficult was that there were so many characters with three couples and then their children and dogs. At first it was difficult to keep track of who was who.

The narration by Paul Woodson was decent, but I found the voices for most of the characters to be somewhat annoying. One aspect of the narration that I thought was well done was through his acting in combination with the vocals. For example, whenever the words were described as coming with some action, such as “she said, laughing”, Paul Woodson was able to relay that in the way that he said the line. I thought that was excellent. The production quality was good. I would recommend this novel to readers who like reading about the challenges and terrifying aspect of the lives of married couples in the child-rearing part of their life.

Audiobook provided for review by the author.… (més)

Twenty-one Year Rule (Rule Series Book 3)
Alaine Stanford
The story opens as Amy’s drunken father is choking the life out of her. Her younger brother, Bash, gets his father’s gun, shoots and kills his father. He’s arrested despite the saving his sister’s life. After years in juvenile detention and on parole, Bash goes to live with his sister and her cop husband, Randy. He meets a young ski instructor named Grace, and quickly falls in love but his checkered past soon catches up with him. When Randy is wounded in a struggle with drug dealers and the head of their gang comes after the family Bash is plunged back into a world of crime he tried to escape.
Twenty-one Year Rule is the third book in a series but stands well on its own. It’s an enjoyable fast-paced crime thriller with a touch of romance. I could not bring myself to give this book a top score, however, because of poor editing and writing. Grammatical and spelling errors pepper the work to the point of distraction. The point of view changes frequently, making the interesting story hard to follow. This tendency also dilutes to author’s voice.
The plot is a good one. With some high quality editing it should be first rate as it has the requisite twists, irony and several attention grabbing scenes. If you enjoy crime novels and a quick read this is the book for you.
… (més)