BOOK REVIEW: Sleep Then My Princess by O N Stefan

Sleep then my Princess
O. N. Stefan
Payella
2015
978 1 5199 7523 2

Sleep then My Princess is an emotional thriller set in Arizona. While mourning the death of her husband, Senior Tissue Engineer, Stephani Robbins, is plagued by recurring visions of a child being locked up in a chicken coop. Meanwhile, someone is sending her creepy love poems, roses, and photos that have been taken without Stephani’s knowledge. As more photos appear, the police suspect that Stephani has hired someone to take these photos. Before she can convince the police to take her seriously, she is kidnapped.

I am reviewing Sleep Then My Princess for the Online Book Club. The trick with suspense or writing thrills is just that – it needs to be suspenseful or thrilling, making you want to keep reading and find out just who did it or who is really the baddie. Sleep Then My Princess definitely ticked those boxes for me.

One of the aspects I quite liked was the misdirection factor. Early on we are introduced to an obvious bad dude, but is he really the one we need to be worried about or not? We have to keep reading to see what develops.

The plot is also multi-layered which also helps makes for a good read. Perhaps more could have been made of those additional layers but that may have meant a longer book whereas I think the length is pretty much spot on as it is.

The only real points I can pick at are pretty much rather minor.

Towards the end of the novel, at one point things become a little mixed up – exactly who is supposed to be talking to or hugging whom? But that was not hard to work out and could be easily rectified by the author if they wish. Other than that, I only noticed one typo (but failed to take note of the location so I cannot help the author out with that).

There were also some minor typographical or grammatical issues. In dialogue, when one person is speaking and that speech is to continue into a new paragraph, we don’t close the first paragraph off with a closing speech quotation mark. Instead, we leave off the closing quotation mark to indicate that the speech is continuing. To include the closing quotation mark is to indicate that the next bit of speech is coming from another person. Stefan repeatedly incorrectly closed speech off although it was not hard to pick up who was meant to be speaking.

The other typographical issue was that of using a hyphen instead of an em dash. When a dash is used at the end of a sentence to indicate the speech has been abruptly broken off or interrupted, the more usual requirement is that of the longer em dash rather than the short hyphen that Stefan used. Whether a space is required either side of the hyphen depends on issues such as location (US use compared to say British use) and style manuals used by publishers. A simple style guide such as Strunk & White’s Elements of Style (which should be mandatory reading for every writer) provides simple guidance there.

My small niggles aside, this was a good read and will be enjoyed by fans of suspense and thrillers.

3 out for 4 for Online Book Club