Official Review: Nocturnal by Tim W BYrd

danielleamy · Post by **danielleamy** » 18 Aug 2019, 05:01

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Nocturnal" by Tim W BYrd.]

1 out of 4 stars

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Professor Davis and six of his chosen students explore a cave on an uninhabited island off of Costa Rica. What should have been a month-long expedition turns into a living nightmare. The explorers find out that they are not alone on the island after all. Years ago, an island tribe used to worship a nocturnal animal. It was believed to be half-human and half-bat. When the Professor goes missing one night, along with their only method of communication with anyone off the island, his students must find him. Will they help him before it's too late? Who will survive the night?

Nocturnal by Tim W. Byrd is only 108 pages long. However, the copy I received was split into two books. The second book was titled Nocturnal Battle of the Breed. It would have been better to advertise this as a sequel or to combine them into a single book. I found this confusing, as I did not expect there to be two books when I selected this to review. Even with both books included, I don't think it had enough content to warrant it being advertised as a novel. I had hoped Nocturnal would be an exciting horror and paranormal suspense novel. However, I soon realised this was not the case. It had a predictable and basic storyline, so I struggled to feel any suspense while reading. The characters were also very one-dimensional, which made it difficult to remember who was who. It's hard to care about characters when they have no depth. With minimal character or plot development, I struggled to find something to like about this book. The only positive thing I could think of is that the basic storyline does have potential to be something readers would enjoy, but it would need a lot of work.

I would class this as a short horror story. There was no romance, but there were many erotic scenes which I found unnecessary, strange and repetitive. I wasn't sure why these were included. There was also plenty of vulgar language and gruesome violence. For these reasons, I could not recommend this book to younger or sensitive readers.

My main issue with Nocturnal was the editing. I reached my count of ten errors within 3% of the book. I stopped recording them, as I was finding errors on nearly every page. I highly doubt this was professionally edited. This was really distracting and had I not been reviewing this, I would have stopped reading within the first few chapters. The issues I found included missing speech marks, incorrect capitalisation, apostrophe misuse, typos, run-on sentences and wrong homophone usage. For example, the word “were” instead of “we're” was used. There were also multiple formatting issues such as repeated paragraphs, random indentations and line breaks. Unfortunately, the lack of editing stopped me from being immersed in the story.

The concept had promise, but it would be much better as a short story rather than a novel. At this stage, I could not recommend this book to anyone, as I really struggled to finish reading Nocturnal. There were countless errors nearly on every page. Therefore, I have to rate this 1 out of 4 stars. With some serious editing, I would increase my rating another star. There would need to be a lot more character and plot development to increase the rating further.

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Nocturnal
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unamilagra · Post by **unamilagra** » 21 Aug 2019, 15:37

Oh no, such a shame that the book had so little going for it. Thanks for pushing through so the rest of us don't have to! Great, honest review.

Liana Mayhew · Post by **Liana Mayhew** » 21 Aug 2019, 17:57

Looking at the cover and title of this book, I was interested. I am so glad I read your review first. It seems such a shame though as I do like stories like this. Thank you for the honest review.

Erin Dydek · Post by **Erin Dydek** » 21 Aug 2019, 18:25

Thanks for the warning on this one! Short stories can be very enjoyable, but I agree that this one sounds like it could use some development. I hope your next book turns out to be more enjoyable than this one!

Post by **kandscreeley** » 21 Aug 2019, 19:57

It definitely sounds like the book has major issues. I do like the premise, though. I hope the author is able to take your criticisms and make this great. Thanks.

Stephanie Elizabeth · Post by **Stephanie Elizabeth** » 21 Aug 2019, 20:34

Yikes! It's too bad that the book failed to meet your expectations. Thanks for the honest review!

danielleamy · Post by **danielleamy** » 22 Aug 2019, 08:18

kandscreeley wrote: ↑21 Aug 2019, 19:57 It definitely sounds like the book has major issues. I do like the premise, though. I hope the author is able to take your criticisms and make this great. Thanks.

Everydayadventure15 wrote: ↑21 Aug 2019, 18:25 Thanks for the warning on this one! Short stories can be very enjoyable, but I agree that this one sounds like it could use some development. I hope your next book turns out to be more enjoyable than this one!

motherofmayhem wrote: ↑21 Aug 2019, 17:57 Looking at the cover and title of this book, I was interested. I am so glad I read your review first. It seems such a shame though as I do like stories like this. Thank you for the honest review.

unamilagra wrote: ↑21 Aug 2019, 15:37 Oh no, such a shame that the book had so little going for it. Thanks for pushing through so the rest of us don't have to! Great, honest review.

Stephanie Elizabeth wrote: ↑21 Aug 2019, 20:34 Yikes! It's too bad that the book failed to meet your expectations. Thanks for the honest review!

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment! Hopefully the constructive criticism can be used to improve the book. It has so much potential!

Erin Painter Baker · Post by **Erin Painter Baker** » 22 Aug 2019, 17:34

Kudos for making it through the book. It sounds like maybe it was originally written as two short stories and now the author is trying to convert it to a single novella maybe? But it sounds like the author needs to stop worrying about the form of the story and instead actually get an editor to go over the story.

OuKoyoo · Post by **OuKoyoo** » 22 Aug 2019, 20:53

I am not surprised that the book was given a one-star rating. I must thank the reviewer for reading the book to the end; I doubt whether I would have done the same.

ReneeBrown · Post by **ReneeBrown** » 22 Aug 2019, 22:42

This book sounds like a bit of a flop. Hopefully the author will try to improve. Thanks for the well-written review. I can tell you put effort into it!

danielleamy · Post by **danielleamy** » 24 Aug 2019, 18:10

OuKoyoo wrote: ↑22 Aug 2019, 20:53 I am not surprised that the book was given a one-star rating. I must thank the reviewer for reading the book to the end; I doubt whether I would have done the same.

esp1975 wrote: ↑22 Aug 2019, 17:34 Kudos for making it through the book. It sounds like maybe it was originally written as two short stories and now the author is trying to convert it to a single novella maybe? But it sounds like the author needs to stop worrying about the form of the story and instead actually get an editor to go over the story.

reneelu1998 wrote: ↑22 Aug 2019, 22:42 This book sounds like a bit of a flop. Hopefully the author will try to improve. Thanks for the well-written review. I can tell you put effort into it!

Thanks for the comments!

Kelyn · Post by **Kelyn** » 25 Aug 2019, 13:33

Wow, by your first paragraph I started to think the book was very promising; it does sound like it has a paranormal storyline. To have so much potential and go so far off base is truly sad. I'm also not sure how you could fit erotic scenes into this type of book and have it make sense. The myriad of errors was the final deciding factor for me, though. I'll be passing on this one. Thanks for the honest review!

Jade1692 · Post by **Jade1692** » 25 Aug 2019, 16:26

Very well written, honest review. It's so hard to struggle through lack of editing and proofreading, I applaud you for doing it. It is a shame, because like you said, the idea for this short story/novel has promise.