I like to consider a book review in three sections: 1) plot, characters, locations, 2) quality of writing, especially dialogue, 3) editorial accuracy. It’s on the basis of these categories that I figure out what sort of ‘score’ to rate a novel, using the Amazon 5-star method.

The Adulterer's Handbook by Sam Anthony gets four stars. Here’s why.

Starting from the third category and working backwards... It was a pleasant change to read an indie book that is refreshingly free of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. The professional proofreader residing in part of my brain was able to just doze off and pay no attention.

The quality of the writing is good. There's a great deal of dialogue, and it avoids pretty much all of the indie author problems that usually beset dialogue (as I've started to describe in my own blog). The style of both dialogue and main text is straightforward and to the point. Nothing very flowery. It works.

At the start of the book, and probably for a good 50-70% of it, there's a lot of humour and I found myself chuckling quite often. But in the last third or so the story descends into a very dark place indeed. The transition is, by and large, managed smoothly. It's all believable, which after all is a good litmus test for deciding if a story works. It does work.

I really have only one criticism to make. Okay, perhaps one and a bit.

The bit: towards the end of the book something about the MC's family is discovered (no spoilers here!) No problem with the actual discovery, only with its timing. It came at a very convenient point in the story.

And the one criticism I have is that the final scenes all happen rather quickly. There's been a long build-up, which works. And then a whole lot of stuff happens in about the last 20% of the book, and it feels rushed. I'd have thought it might be better either to just make the book a bit longer, or perhaps slightly adjust the balance between build-up and finale.

It's certainly one of the best indie books I've read recently.