Review of The Change by Anna Y. White

Book:  The Change
Author:  Anna Y. White
Publisher:  Amazon and Smashwords (e-formats)
Pages:  317
Source:  Author


From Author:  This is a story of a teenage girl, Natalya Orlova, who moves to Hungary to get a university degree. Unknown definition of 'cultural shock' becomes central shortly after she finds herself completely alone in foreign Budapest with no parents, friends and no language. Can she keep up with such a radical change? Can she trust those people around her? What is the price of wanting something badly?

I really like the concept of this story.  Often times in our lives we encounter bad times and just want a chance to start over, isn't that part of the reason for out of town colleges?  When Natalya first gets to her new university she feels lost and alone.  I felt this way too when I went to college.  I didn't know anyone and I also didn't know the city.  I can't image going through what she did. 

The author did a great job at letting us get to know Natalya and her feelings.  You could really relate to Natalya and what she was going through.  There were a lot of characters introduced in the novel, but White did a good job at only describing the main characters in detail so you knew which ones to pay attention to.  Her characters were realistic and could easily be people you would encounter in your everyday life.

As for the writing itself, it needs quite a bit of work.  There were often typos, grammatical errors, and rough patches.  I believe this was not the final edit of the novel and  that English isn't the author's first language so that could be the reason for the poor editing.  These mistakes made this a slower and harder read than normal.  I enjoyed the storyline of this novel and I would have scored it higher if not for the writing errors.


Overall I'd give this book ★★★

I'd like to thank Anna for giving me a copy of her novel for review.