Katelyn15

Review swap

This story reminded me so much of the type of things and the way I would write when I first started writing. It was a cute little story (though it feels weird to say that when it is in the horror genre) and I could see it being fleshed out into a novel or novella someday with more backstory about the characters early on and a longer stay in the apartment, etc.

I thought the plot was the best part of the entire thing because it kept me reading, wanting to know what was going to happen. Next was the author's spelling and sentence structure, which was quite good. The thing I struggled with the most was the lack of paragraph breaks and thus the dialogue being all jumbled together. I often accidentally skipped lines or read the same line over again since the prose was so dense. I think making a new paragraph every time someone new is talking would help that a lot.

One reason I called this story cute is because, while I did enjoy it, parts of it were unrealistic and sounded a bit childish. For example, the whole university having a day off on Wednesday and calling fire fighters and EMT "fire people" and "ambulance people" and the process of the boys getting the new apartment and leaving the old one just showed a lack of real-world experience or research from the writer. I'm not trying to be mean at all, just trying to help this story reach its potential!

Trapped in a Online Game

The idea of the story is great. The author clearly put a lot of time into it and into creating the world. The characters are likable and relatable and the plot is interesting.

However, I had a hard time reading it because there are no periods and a lot of run-on sentences. The dialogue is not separated from the narration so, if I'm reading at my normal pace, it is difficult to discern who is speaking, or even sometimes when someone is speaking. If the grammar and punctuation and spacing were fixed, it would be an easier read and it would be easier to enjoy the other good things going on!

Phoenix

First, I'd just like to say that I was so glad that Phoenix got his happy ending. I'd also like to say that your cover is very cute, though I would recommend changing the title to "Phoenix in the In-Between" because the word "is" just feels extra.
Here are a few picky little things: writing stuff is called "stationery" while something that is not moving is "stationary." A few times in your book you say Phoenix is ten, and a few times you say he's eleven going on twelve, so which is it? I also personally thought that letters 1-5 were quite repetitive and so you could either decrease the number of letters or find a little bit more plot to put into those first few.
There are a few things that need to be adjusted IF Phoenix is American, like the "President's House" being called the White House, no prefects in schools, no reserves on the soccer team, Phoenix's height being measured in feet and inches instead of centimeters, etc.
I thought it was a little strange that the letters were very letter-y until letter 7, where there starts to be more dialogue in the letters, which is kind of unrealistic for letters. I also thought that the letters to the fake doctor were a little bit of a weird way for Phoenix's parents to figure out how to understand him, and it honestly played into my thoughts about him being a rich kid before his dad became president, because it sounded exactly like something that rich people who didn't know how to talk to their own kid would do. Maybe set it up in the prologue so that Phoenix just feels he can't talk to his parents about these things so that the letters are more justified?
Anyway, I really liked how Phoenix didn't feel like he was weird for being trans, because I feel like that's how a lot of people get represented and I never thought it was quite fair. On a personal note, I'm not trans but I fought the battle against girly clothes and make up for my entire childhood, so I really related to Phoenix and, again, I'm just glad that he got his happy ending

Sorry this took so long

I really liked this book! You did so many things well that I think it's best just to say the one thing I wish would improve is using dialogue more often instead of summarizing things that were said. I think that, at some points like when characters are being introduced, slowing the pace of the story by writing out the actual dialogue instead of summarizing like "he said he was lonely and that he had never had friends so I told him I'd be his friend and then we got along just fine after that" can be beneficial for the reader, giving them time to learn a little bit about the characters while also getting their name down before moving on to the next character that has to be introduced. I jus think when everything is summarized like that it's easier to get the characters mixed up later on. Keep writing!

Review swap

First, I just want to say that even though the cover of the book is quite simple, I really like it. I also just love the title, it's clever and funny and just really fits the story so well. I loved the voice of the main character and I enjoyed the style of the writing overall, though there were some weaker moments, like when Savvy was telling herself to chill around Officer Stone in her head. Something about it just felt kinda forced to me because she did it so often. There were also some punctuation problems, and the biggest one that I remember was when there was kind of a monologue from Officer Stone and the quotations should have been used like this:

"najfhkafhfihijaiosj. fjksdfihuihwe.

"sfnknsdlkfnl. sdufkwfnwekjnwe!"

But instead were used like this:

"fdsnlfoewihroenewlknir"

sdlkfnweljrewilgn,wefnewi"

I hope the difference is clear. I enjoyed the story, it really was very unique, and I wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing from you on one of my stories!

Review swap

I think there were a lot of run-on sentences, lack of punctuation, things being spelled wrong, and plurals/possessives being messed up in this story, which is distracting from anything in the plot to me as a reader. Overall, I enjoy many stories about music and I don't know how close to music this author is themselves, but most of the parts about music seemed pretty authentic. The one thing that I would change in regards to the music parts is that, when the narrator met up with the street musicians you said they played "their piece" for an hour. From my experience, if a bunch of musicians get together without sheet music they don't just play "a piece," they just do more of a jam session where someone lays down a beat and then someone else puts chords over it and then others take turns improvising melodies. So maybe instead of saying they played a piece, just say they had a jam sesh. Makes it sound more realistic.

Review swap

I liked how the beginning of this story balanced information given to the reader and mystery. The balance really helped me keep reading when the plot wasn't as interesting, as I felt that the plot kind of lost its way for a little bit in the first chapter and I wasn't sure how the information I was reading was going to come back later. I really thought that the second chapter had nice direction, though, and I really loved the fairies' accents, haha.
Originally I was going to give this story 5 stars on punctuation and grammar and stuff, but I felt like the standard slipped a little as the story went on and I was running into more and more errors. But overall it was pretty solid, and I thought that this author has a nice way of writing prose. I think the weakest point may be dialogue. That being said, some of it isn't bad at all -- I actually quite enjoyed some of it and loved how realistic it seemed. But those super realistic moments clashed with the moments that I felt weren't as good, and I would just love to see how the story pops with consistent quality in the dialogue. This author has something good started here and I look forward to seeing more!

Just As You Are

It took me awhile to really understand who everyone was and what was going on, but as it went on and I settled into the story I liked it better. I think the style of the writing could be more clear and thus leave the reader less confused in the beginning but I thought the characters were interesting and that they all had distinct things about them that eventually helped me tell them apart nicely. The writer’s grammar and sentence structuring skills are great, it’s just the clarity within the plot that was somewhat lacking.

Review swap

Let me just start by saying that I was never bored by the plot and I think it's a really good rough draft. However, since it is a first draft, there are a lot of grammar/punctuation errors that I think could be avoided with just a quick proofread before posting, but I don't think the author actually has real issues with grammar/punc. otherwise.
Second, I found some of the characters a little flat. Actually most of them were decently flat and many scenes that could have stole the show for their drama and pacing seemed rushed, mostly because of the way that the dialogue was written out with few periods and fewer pauses. I think that the dialogue in general in the story could be unconvincing, though there were some really good moments as well.
All in all, the biggest thing that bothered me while reading was that many of the dialogue tags that contained information that would have been good to know at the beginning of a paragraph were pasted onto the end of the dialogue and I found it to be something that pulled me out of the story every time. Sometimes the dialogue tags were also kind of extra, such as using too many adverbs. In the last couple chapters, there were also a few sentences in there that kind of took the story into another character's POV because it said things that I didn't think Rose would be able to know just by watching the other character.
Congrats on a good start, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out!

Late Review Swap

This book was good! I liked the way the characters interacted and how they all had such different relationships.

I Hear You

To start off, I love the idea of the story and the main characters are good ones. I like their personalities and their relationships and all that stuff.
As far as writing goes, there are some issues. One is tense confusion. I think that it is primarily in present tense, but sometimes some past tense slips in there and it gets a little confusing for the reader. Second, there are some words that are switched around. Many times when it says "out," as in people being out or being outed, it says "oust." Sometimes, instead of saying "while" it says "well." There are other words confusions similar to that because the words are homophones and the writer just has the wrong spelling. There are also some awkward paragraph breaks that kind of ruin the flow of the story.
The plot is a little basic and predictable at some points, like every time the mean guy shows up, it gets a little worse and more information about Porter and Ryker has been discovered. Sometimes the dialogue and the characters' narration is a little too tell-y (as in more telling than showing) and I would like it if some of Ryker's past came up more organically instead of being shoved out into the open. Along the lines of dialogue, the dialogue tags are varied, but the variation is actually distracting at some points. As a reader, I would rather see something like. "'Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked, his eyes searching mine." than something like "Why didn't you tell me that before? he demanded to know." It's nicer to be able to visualize what the character is doing rather than telling their verbal inflections with dialogue tag words like "state" and "demand" and "comment."
All of that being said, I did enjoy the book, and I'm glad it's not over yet!