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“You might be right. But I can’t help but think I got a bit of PTSD from the violation. I still have nightmares and haven’t been able to sleep through the night since it happened. I wake up at the slightest sound. I expect someone to be standing in the shadows of my bedroom. I worry that next time I might not get off with just a warning, you know?”
Mirandadidknow—and understood. But she hated that Steve had sworn her to secrecy. His rejection of Connor might have been easier if her dad had knownwhyand not some flimsy “we’ve changed” excuse. But Steve was almost desperate as he begged, “Please don’t tell Connor. I don’t want him worrying.”
“Did you at least call the cops?” Miranda had asked.
“And what would they do? I mean, there’s nothing to go on. No evidence. I stupidly left the door unlocked and the alarm not set. So I can’t even truthfully say this creep broke in. Cops have more important things to worry about, right?”
“I don’t know,” Miranda had said, but deep down, she knew Steve was right. Even at their most honest and dedicated, the police operated on evidence and not supposition and fear.
Bottom line was that her father was at his loneliest and most depressed since Steve had suddenly dumped him the prior Thanksgiving. He had no interest in friends, certainly no appetite for dating, and barely any interest in fulfilling basic life necessities like eating and sleeping.
It was why, when the term ended at school, she decided to pack up and leave her cozy home near campus and move back in with her father. She was determined to bring him out of his shell again, to help him embrace what life had to offer, to no longer be afraid. She knew she was about the only person who was up to the task, and even she doubted her abilities on that score.
It was an uphill battle, which was why she was on Goodreads right now. She wanted to be able to bring him a bunch of positive snippets from the reviews of his latest, along with even some highlights from his backlist.
But when she started looking, she wasn’t prepared for the shock. Sure, there were always one-star reviews. Their saving grace was that they were mostly inarticulate, ungrammatical, and consisting of fewer than a dozen words. Miranda knew many of these stabs were from disgruntled wannabes, jealous of her dad’s success.
Yet now, she found herself with a sinking heart and lack of hope, jumping from one book to another on the site. A few days ago, a reviewer dubbing himself or herself the “Divine Ms. Parker” had gone through every one of her father’s forty-three books and one-starred all of them, dragging his ratings down. Some were just that, a star rating and no explanation. But others had reviews. All were short, Twitter-sized mostly, but all acidic and just plain cruel.
She’d never be able to rid herself of some of the plain meanness of some of the comments, things like:
“Too puerile for even a child.”
“Makes Dan Brown look like James Joyce in comparison.”
“Seriously, what editor gave the okay to publish this crap? There are real writers out there struggling to get by, and this hack’s making millions. Where’s the justice?”
“Drivel.”
“Pablum.”
“Derivative.”
“Boring.”
“About as original as the inside of a fortune cookie.”
“This guy must know people.”
“SMH.”
“Don’t waste your money.”
“NOT recommended.”
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
And on and on, Miranda was numb from the assault. All of these reviews had been posted in a two-day period and all by the “Divine Ms. Parker.” Was the reviewer aligning himself with Dorothy Parker, who’d been known for her acidic wit? If so, he or she had missed the mark, because he or she had only the acid and none of the wit in the reviews.
Still what really struck and stung Miranda was that someone had taken time out to go through and spread this hate. Obviously, this person hadn’t really read her dad. And if he or she had, why continue to read this particular author if the prose, plotting, and characterization were so horrible?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply move on? There were at least a jillion books published every day. So it wasn’t like there were no options.
She sighed and thought it was just too easy these days to attack someone online.
She closed out of Goodreads when it occurred to her that maybe the Divine Ms. Parker had also hopped on Amazon, Goodreads’s parent company.
Sure enough, all of the Alfred Knox books had dropped in their overall ranking because every review from Goodreads had been cut and pasted to their Amazon product pages.
