Best Seller Kindle Edition

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.

It’s difficult to review a book that I didn’t particularly enjoy but I will give it my best effort. “Best Seller” is a well written novel told from the POV of the two protagonists. William Barnes is a former best-selling author who is now down on his luck, and Nem, aka Orelia Mason, a girl who witnessed her mother’s murder and later becomes an acclaimed romance writer.Author Susan May is to be commended for her creativity with an original plot sufficiently twisted to even be called macabre. The dual POVs are seemingly unrelated for about half of the book, but the connection eventually emerges, and it all comes together.My problem with this tale is neither character is very likable so it’s difficult to empathize or connect with either of them. Too much of the protagonists inner musings make up the 450+ pages. It goes on and on and on, often needlessly repeating. I kept checking to see how many pages were still to be read and I couldn’t get there fast enough. That said, I am compelled to give the devil his due and rate “Best Seller” at four stars.

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 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.

What a fun and fulfilling read!Nem is a young woman who can assign bad luck to one person and can balance that by assigning good luck to another. That would include Nem, herself.William is the author of a best seller, who has mentored Nem in her attempt to become a professional writer, and as his subsequent books and his credibility take a major downturn, while Nem rises to the top of America’s Best Seller lists, he becomes suspicious. From that, we get a fascinating game of cat and mouse, except you will not be able to tell which one – Nem or William – would turn out to be the cat, and which one would be its victim. The story starts starts with a visceral description of a child’s nightmare experience, and shifts smoothly into a blunt description of devastating domestic violence.The depiction of writers and the publication process for “Best Seller” books is fascinating, and likely represents some of Susan May’s own experiences from her career as a writer of “Best Sellers”. By times it is a cut-throat contest, and a dangerous game, and war is waged by some of the participants who have made an art of trashing the work of others, using clever statements, innuendo, and “fake news”.The story of Nem and William finds its conclusion in a graveyard during a brutal assault of wind and rain and lightening and thunder.You can try and anticipate where the story is going and what should happen next, and the ending is better than you can imagine.“Best Seller” should become a Best Seller.

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!

After a slow start, this book quickly became unputdownable. A great read

I read all 671 pages over a weekend and loved it! It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that I didn’t want to put down. From beginning to end it kept me interested and wanting to know what comes next. Definitely worth the time. Looking forward to reading another Susan May novel.

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