Miss Taken by Cleo Scornavacca

Miss Taken by Cleo Scornavacca

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was quite excited to start this book today. I loved the premise of Miss Taken – the bad guy falling in love with his captive because he abducted the wrong twin. When I began the book I was even more excited as it was narrated in the first person from Rain’s point of view. However, within a few pages my excitement began to dim because the author kept switching from present tense to past tense, the transitions were not only jarring but they were a sign of poor editing. As Miss Taken was available on Amazon, I downloaded the sample to set my mind at ease about the editing. However, the sample showed that the tense issues were not only not corrected during the editing process, but the author’s edits were also visible in the purchased copy. What do I mean by this? You can see where someone has stricken out the text and made changes; for example: There had It had never been a sexual relationship between Tommy and me. Not good, but ultimately not the reason for the low rating.

Despite this and because I received a review copy, I soldiered on in the hopes that the story would suck me in to the point that I could overlook the errors and tense issues as I have found – on more than one occasion – a diamond in the rough, a great story hidden within bad editing. Sadly, this was not my experience with Miss Taken. As I said, the premise was great but the execution was not. I found Rain to be extremely disappointing as a female lead. Initially she comes off as a strong and sassy woman, living her life to the fullest despite a somewhat debilitating medical condition. Yet time and time again, her behavior was equivalent to that of a doormat. Just when I thought she found her backbone, she’d cave at Dominick’s first apology OR even worse, apologize to him first for something that was his fault. I lost track of the number of times that she allowed Dominick to walk all over her – it was bad enough that the final time in this installment that she left him did not leave me with the expected feeling of suspense I know the author intended. As for Dominick, egomaniacal does not even begin to do him justice. Add to that his volatility and obsessiveness, it was too much for me to stomach which is why Rain’s constant forgiveness made no sense to me. I could not relate at all. This left the story feeling flat and disjointed for me.

I usually give a book two stars when it falls within the “Just okay” area and reserve one-star ratings for books that leave me thinking “I hated it and I want my time back.” I didn’t hate Miss Taken, so it’s not really a one-star read, but I didn’t consider it “just okay” either. It was more of a situation where I really didn’t care what happened to the characters and there just wasn’t that much that appealed to me, no matter how much I tried to like it. I enjoy abductor-abductee romances and have many in my Kindle library that I have read and reread. I was looking forward to adding Ms. Scornavacca’s Miss Taken series to my collection but sadly that will not be happening as Miss Taken didn’t work for me and left me with no desire to continue the series.

I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Reviewed by Angela at Crystal's Many Reviewers!

Check out the Miss Taken Series by Cleo Scornavacca blog post on Crystal's Many Reviewers!


View all my reviews