Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After a trip to Italy, I wanted to read an Italian mystery. I thought this book seemed expensive for a paperback, but I figured I'd give it a go anyway; it sounded like great fun. Just to be clear: I read a lot of mysteries, most often in paperback, and this book costs twice as much as a paperback by any of my favorite authors. It didn't take long to realize what a dreadful writer this author is. She has stylistic quirks that I found irritating. But I put up with those, as the story was working and I didn't have anything else to read. Here's my complaint: the author doesn't seem to know what good writing and good English are, and her editor clearly didn't help. I wrote to the author to point out that it's actually bad English to say, "Frankie hired my brother and I to solve the mystery," and that proper English would be, "Frankie hired my brother and me to solve the mystery." English can be tricky, and I don't always know what's proper either, but this is perhaps the easiest of all to figure out. (Take the words "my brother and" out of the sentence to test it: Frankie hired me to solve the mystery. Easy as pie.) I give the author credit for writing back to me, and she agreed that she's using bad English; however, she then told me that it's a matter of choice, and she plans to stick with what she prefers. REALLY??? She also uses "myself" as a direct object, rather than the correct "me," which is a common enough mistake nowadays. "Sophia threw a party for myself." Ugh. When I was in high school, it was an automatic F on any paper if we wrote such bad English. I'll also add that I have never written a bad review for any book on Amazon, but I'm motivated by someone else's willful ignorance. So go ahead and buy this book if you have lots of money to throw away on painfully bad writing.