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I don't even know where to start with this one... I have never heard of this author before but the cover drew me in and I love to support new authors so I bought it on a whim. The title didn't really say much to me (sounds like horse stuff) but I care about the content more than what it's called so I plunged right in. I didn't read the reviews when I got this but I went back and read them after I finished curious to the reception this got... are we all reading the same book here? Not to be cruel because that's not my intention but I can't be honest and call this anything other than what it is, a stinker! If someone told me that a twelve year old wrote this, I would believe them. I know that no author can possibly please everyone, even Stephen King gets bad reviews but mostly because they didn't enjoy the story, Reining In has technical issues ( spell check anyone?) language issues ( comma overload) character issues ( klutz that's hard to like) the writing style is overtly simplistic and feels like I'm reading a script, phrases and individual modes of speaking for each character melt together, no one really stands out as an individual and the oldest person in the book talks and acts like a teenager, gah!!

The book was very amateurish and had a heavy home made feel to it. Personally I would never put a book out like this and charge people money; this needs a complete re-write or extensive heavy duty editing. Apparently anyone these days can call themselves an author and put their little book on a shelf and feel like they accomplished something, good for you but please read the negative reviews and learn something from them instead of shrugging it off as difference of opinion and not being able to please everyone, because that's not the case here and I would suggest reading Stephen King's On Writing if you really want to follow your passions and produce something great. I read sixty seven books so far this year and this has got to be the weirdest one of them all, it doesn't feel like a real book. I do not believe that the author sat down and read her own book cover to cover before it was published or at any point in the process. Typos start on page one, they continue sprinkled though out the book to the point where I started to question normal spelling. Another annoyance was the amount of commas in the novel, almost every single sentence had them even when they weren't needed and that drove me nuts! It completely broke the momentum of the bogus action and the syntax was clumsy. Chapters ended strangely and I often had a feeling that there was missing content, at first I thought that the publisher messed up but after reading more than half of the book I realized that this is the way the author works, chapters should end with me wanting to turn the page, not leave me feeling puzzled and wondering if a page is missing.

Perhaps I could overlook some of the unrefined literary crimes here but I had issues with Kahlida; she has got to be the weakest, whiniest and most pathetic vampire ever written. For someone who has been around for over five thousand years she has the intelligence and instinct of a toddler, naming the characters exotic names is as far as the character development goes here and calling her a vampire in the first place is sullying the myth. Just because you throw in the words "Egypt" and "pyramids" twice into the story, it doesn't add depth, strength and power to your Khalida. I read Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned a few months ago and she would have wiped the floor with Khalida and her Network. She's an expert at getting her friends killed and she's great at falling, crying and being clumsy, her actions were comedic. The book makes fun of what we know about vampires but gives you nothing new, nothing with substance but seems to rely on everyone's knowledge from reading vampire books and watching the movies, the author put absolutely no effort into bulking her up. If you're jumping on the vamp bandwagon then make her strong, mysterious, powerful by writing that in her actions, not because you said she is and end of story. Show me, don't tell me that she's powerful and then spend 200 pages proving the opposite. In the beginning I would laugh out loud while reading but it got to the point where the writing was just ridiculous and it felt like the story had no real plot, random people who were suddenly bad and evil and of course every one had a dark secret and the very beginning of the book simply did not make sense, too many crazy coincidences that supported the rest of the story, don't build your castle on shaky foundation.

If you enjoy the below examples (written exactly as they were on my copy) then this book is for you;

"Heading straight for the door, the minute his tires hit the hospital driveway, I practically ran over some old lady standing outside her car."
Say what?

"He was the reason I was sitting here now, bleeding and bruised. If he had come back like had said he would, she would've never known, and I would be gone by now."

Again I wanted to rip hair out of my head, besides the scrambled order of actual words, how many "would" does it take to paint the picture here? The story itself was semi decent but after countless bumps on the road you can't get far and enjoy what you're reading, there are too many amateurish distractions to call this a complete and finished book, I have a feeling that most of the positive reviews must have been solicited by the author and people are just too nice to say the truth but I'm not her friend and I'm not on her payroll so I wont lie. I think that Dawn can write but she needs to put more effort and not type like a robot, bring some blood, sweat and tears into it, make it your baby and nurture it, make Khalida a bad azz and don't let her trip over lazy typos and weird grammar. I don't enjoy writing negative reviews and this almost took a life of its own but when I see an atrocity in print such as this piece I have to say something. In the end the book didn't move me; it pissed me off big time.

- Kasia S.

I feel like a big meanie beating on poor, sweet, Khallie, the 5000 year old vampire heroine of "Reining In." After all, she's really a nice gal who just wants to love and be loved by her "family;" a network of people who protect her secret. It's not her fault she gets her best friend killed in the opening act of the book; she just picked an unfortunate place to stop and hunt. It's not her fault she caused a fatal breach with her only son; after all, a girl's got to eat, right? She didn't plan on alienating her fiance, but even she admits that the whole vampire thing might be a bit hard on a guy, you know?

The biggest problem with the book is that the main character is supposed to be 5000 years old, powerful and a real survivor, yet she acts like a ditzy, self-absorped teenager. She constantly lets others make decisions for her and appears to fear conflict. Additionally, some of the writing errors are funny, as when she confuses "infinitesimal" with "infinite." Others are just annoying, like using the word "drug" for "dragged."

I yawned my way through the ending and while I do wish sweet Khallie and her author all the best, I won't be following her further adventures.

I really enjoyed this story. It was a little slow to start but once it did- I did not want to put it down. HOWEVER, a few little things got to me. Editing was great until about the sixty percent mark. Examples of this are missing words right at key points in dramatic scenes- it happened several times. And they weren't articles or prepositions that they eye can easily pass over. Random extra letters - ex: "tturned" and "pI"; the pI took me six reads to figure out who the subject of the sentance was. If you name your character Darren, don't call him Darrin for a good 10 pages. Its stupid little details like that which suck you right back out of the story. Like a cement brick in a wood chipper.

In the end I had to give it 3 stars-- because it WAS a good story.

Rare it seems is a vampire story that doesn't involve sappy storylines redone with new names and city locations, but identical in too many other ways. The originality grasps my mystery thriller soul and the touches of sci fi keep me begging for more. I was so addicted I immediately bought the second book after the first was done and devoured it promptly. That is the problem with great books....they end too quickly and the sequels never come out fast enough!!!!

I downloaded this book because it was free. I read the other reviews and figured it would be a really good book. I now wonder what the other reviewers read because it simply could not have been this book. I found the book to be rather boring. There were gaps in the story that were never fully explained. There were lots of typos and duplication of words. Hope the editing is better on the author's next book but I dont think I will read it.

I really liked this book! I had very low expectations because it was free, but I am adding the next one to my to read list!

I thought it was a very good storyline although there were some cheesy parts that could have been a little better. Very good ending. (The editing wasn't done very well)