Pet Peeves in Books

I should be working on my synopsis but I was reading while I ate dinner and well I just have to get this off my chest!!!

I’ll admit I’m very, very, very anal when it comes to time lines in books.  Ask any of my friends I can tell you when something happened on what date.  Knowing dates is my thing – weird I know. One of my friends always says – “you really want to argue with Nicki about dates?” 🙂

Anyway I’m reading a continuity that actually came out in 2009.  I love continuities because you always get to see characters from previous books, it’s like seeing long lost friends again.

This series started July last year and finished in December 09. I’m thinking the first book started on Monday 1st July because they were talking about “Thursday’s 4th July party”. Now I’m pretty sure most 4th July parties here in the US do occur on that day. It’s a huge celebration for this Nation.  There is a little incident at the 4th July party when the hero’s (let’s call him Fred) supposed fiancee, (we’ll call her Joan) faints. Joan is not the heroine of the story, by the way. Anyway when I read that I went hmmm she’s pregnant and not with her Fred’s baby!! Although Joan’s aliment was diagnosed as heat exhaustion.  Also on the ‘first day’ of the book, there was a fire at the Fred’s oil refinery.

Let’s fast forward to book 4 which takes place in September.  The book opens in June and the Hero and Heroine (Joan from book 1) are having dinner and she was reflecting on being in love with the wrong brother, not Fred business deal fiancee.  As the paragraphs progress the hero takes a phone call about the fire at the refinery – hang on a minute, according to my theory that happened at the beginning of July!!!! And when the fire did take place in the first book, Joan had already become the fiancee of Fred.

At the beginning of book 4, Fred was arriving in a few days to ‘officially’ ask Joan to be his wife.  Joan and Fred’s brother made love on this night in June – hence confirming my theory from book 1 when Joan turns up and faints at the 4th July party – she’s pregnant.

What gets me is, did no one pick this error up in the edits. They usually have a ‘bible’ they follow. Was there an error in the bible?  OOH I just get so annoyed when time lines don’t work out the way they should!  Maybe no one noticed but I certainly did.

Another interesting thing in this book, is at the front they have a newspaper cut out from the local paper – like a little teaser about the story.  In this article the hero is referred to as “Wyatt”.  Hmm in the first book and second book and third book, his name was Mitch.  Also in the author’s note about the book, she also referred to him as “Wyatt”. Then the book opens up and voila his name is “Mitch”. I’m confused.

As I’m only 19 pages in maybe it will come out that his name is “Wyatt Mitch”. I shall let you know if it does.

The books in this series have been great and I hope the final 3 are just as good as the first 3.  I guess I’ll have to ‘let go’ of the little time line error. 🙂

NF