Gracie Qu

Great start

Hi, I'm so sorry for the delay in writing this review! I'm in the middle of moving, so having time to sit down and read had been scarce. This is still an unfinished book, so it's hard for me to give a judgment so solidly when I know it's not even close to completion. That being said, I want to praise you for your descriptions as well as your action sentences. They're well written, and you paint the characters and the world well. However, I do also want to reiterate what others have said in your review: you can slow down the beginning. The plot seems to zoom past me, and often times I would have to go back and reread to make sure I hadn't missed anything that happened in between. I can tell you're very eager for your story and want to get to the better parts, but don't forget that setup is just as important.

An interesting premise that grows

I can tell you've worked hard on this novel, and I still hold true to my original opinion on an interesting premise. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this still might be your first draft? In this case, I think what you can improve on the most is the beginning. While I was reading, I noticed your grammar got consistently better as each chapter went by as did your overall flow and pacing. Which is to be expected. My weak spot in writing had also always been the beginning because it just takes time to know exactly where you want your characters and your story to go. The best advice someone gave me to fix my beginning is to read the first few chapters out loud. You catch mistakes easier by hearing yourself versus reading it inside your head.

One of the biggest things I've noticed is that you like to put multiple dialogue in a paragraph. EX: "It's pretty hot," I said. "It's not too bad," he replied. <-- In a situation like this, it's better to just have separate paragraphs for each character talking as it is not only easier on the eyes but better for the reader to keep track of who's talking. I hope this helps and best of luck on your writing endeavors!

Unique with lots of potential

I am a huge fan of the idea, and I think time is always a good power/theme/center conflict. You clearly have a creative mind and ideas come easy for you. Right now, it's the more technical things you need to get down. For example, your pacing tends to go just a little too quickly. I completely understand that you want to get to the meat of the story, but because the story goes by too quickly, tension doesn't build up enough for readers to feel as in the moment. I think a little more description will help as well, and there are grammatical errors that'll need to be finecombed through. You clearly have the important parts down. Just work on building instead of speeding, and you'll be fine!

Keep up the momentum!

You have less then ten chapters written, but just from that, I can already tell it's going to be a fun ride. Your language is absolutely beautiful, and I'm personally someone who loved every description you wrote in your book. Not only that, your grammar has been impeccable despite the fact that you're not even done writing the novel yet. You've set the stage with an interesting setting and with interesting characters. A small detail I really liked are the Shakespearean names, which I think really adds color and flair to the world as well as the characters.

Honestly, just keep up with what you've already written. Already, your chapters flowed easily into each other, and as long as you don't lose this momentum you have already built up, you're going to have a really good book with very little edits in the end.

Fairies and Vampires

This is an ongoing story still, so I can't say the critiques I'm about to write will pertain to the rest of the story. Usually, fantasy novels regarding vampires often involve werewolves. So it was a very nice surprise to see it is actually FAIRIES vs vampires, and I personally think the writing world haven't given enough attention to these particular creatures in the last few years. That already gives me bonus points to the plot. I can tell that this is a rough draft, so I'm sure the author will likely have these smoothed out by the time she's completed the novel.

I think the biggest critique I have is to add some description! You've got the dialogue down between the characters, which is something that other authors can struggle with, but I would've definitely liked to just see the world around me as well as the people. It really helps paint the world more colorfully. There's also grammatical errors, but that's just something that needs to be finetuned after she's done writing the novel.

A really strong start

Check the box for one of the most important moments for a novel to be successful: an extremely interesting beginning. You had my attention the moment you mentioned "live burial", because no matter how bad of a punishment things can be, "live burial" is not one you often see. Unfortunately, there's not enough written right now for me to give a full review, but I think judging by just one chapter, I would definitely be interested to read more.

A unique story from a unique perspective

I've read some of the other reviews, and I would like to reiterate with them: this is a very unique story. The protagonist is not someone that's typically a protagonist (a much, much older man), and the plot is very different from typical romantic fantasy novels. The one thing that's getting in the way is grammar. It's not so much sentence structure as it is capitalization. I've noticed that you sometimes capitalize the pronoun/noun at the end of a ," dialogue.

For example (not taken from the novel): "This is really good," He said.

The H in he is supposed to be lower cased in this situation. It's not a consistent error though. Sometimes it's correct, and sometimes it's been capitalized incorrectly again. I think that's the biggest thing you'll need to watch out for here.

Vampires done right

I think you had one of THE best first person narrative I've read on the site thus far. I could hear Scarlett's voice and tone, I can imagine her personality, and everything shone through. First person, to me personally, is much harder to write because there's a line of "ranting/describing through everything monotonously through a character" and actual personality, and you CLEARLY see that line and stayed far from it. Bravo!

Here comes the critiques: the beginning I think is your weakest part. Granted, beginnings are also MY weakest when it comes to writing, but it definitely started out a bit cliche, especially with the teasing girl talk between her and Lillian and Nick, Mr. Polite Good Impression Guy. I also wished there was more conflict between Lillian and Nick after the surprise twist of him attacking her. I just thought that was, overall, too quickly resolved and just wanted to see more overall bad blood before the two resolve to work together again.

But I STILL gave you 5 stars regardless of those critiques. Because I freaking love the characters. I love, love, LOVE Scarlett as the protagonist. I root for her wherever and whenever, and I just love her sense of humor, and I'm so curious about her backstory. And Lillian was an absolute treat. I think for a storyline industry that's unfortunately saturated (thanks to Twilight's introduction of vampires), unique characters are so important, and you nail that 100%. I was happy to have read your story!

Here's to the first book and more to come!

I was fascinated by your story. And the critiques I have are honestly so trivial (and mostly to do with formatting), that it honestly doesn't detract anything from what I really care about - the characters and the plotline. I absolutely commend you for the female characters you've written. They're real, they're powerful, and they're independent all in their own unique ways. I honestly haven't seen such good handling of characters in fantasy stories for a while now. But that's not to say the male characters weren't good either. I absolutely loved Jacob as the naive, honorable noble, and surprisingly, Halvar was one of my favorite characters despite the antagonistic situation he finds himself in with Jacob.

My first critique is honestly really mild. You have a longer novel at hand, so I suggest you actually cut some of the chapters up into smaller chapters. Though that doesn't seem to have an actual effect on the storyline, there is a psychological effect on the reader when they're reading and they're like "Wow, the chapter's still going" versus "Whoa, that's the end of the chapter. NEXT!" B/c it can become rather fatiguing when a chapter doesn't seem to end, and it's completely psychological in this case.

My second critique is the dialogue. For me at least, when you cut up a dialogue into paragraphs, I actually lose track of who's speaking and sometimes had to scroll back up to check the conversation hadn't shifted to a new character. I would suggest that either give a single paragraph of dialogue to each character that speaks or find a way to replace the dialogue with narration instead.

However, as I've said before, my things have nothing to do with the actual story written, and I loved every moment of it. Just something to note: the first chapter did start out slightly cliche with a noble boy not excited about the prospect his father had laid out to him etc etc, but that's not an issue with me because I love reading books that start cliche and become something different (which is your novel). However, I know some people not agree with me as happily, so I just thought I'd give you a heads up on that was all.

A gripping story that leaves on a cliffhanger

I have to say I really love the world and plot you set up. Having something as scary as the "unwinding" really kind of messes up your schedule in life, and I keep forgetting that middle school years are considered basically in 30's in these people's minds. I can DEFINITELY tell you got more comfortable in your own writing as the story went on. The writing style got progressively smoother and smoother, and the grammatical errors less and less. I think it's just the first few chapters that needs some rewrites done! My suggestion: reread your last few chapters and compare it to your first few. I think you will see a clear difference in language as well as fluidity. Keep the necessary plot points but apply a new "layer" to the writing like you did in the later chapters. It'll help with keeping the readers sucked in in the beginning, and keep the pacing nice and smooth. Overall, good job!

A lot of Potential

Before anything, I apologize in advance if I sound brutal. I try my best to remain as honest as possible with critiques. The story has potential, but it still has some distance to travel before it's ready. The biggest reasoning is the pacing. I often find myself unable to concentrate on the story because I get so distracted by what had just happened before and something has happened again, leaving me no time to catch up. Give time for transitions and time for things to calm down a bit. I also think the first chapter could hit the readers with a bigger punch. Even though the first few paragraphs intrigued me, when it immediately cut to two girls doing laundry, the questions and excitement that had built up died down. My biggest suggestion for you is to actually read your story out loud. I think that'll flesh out all the areas that goes too quickly, and you can quickly edit them to pace smoother.

Intense Erotica

Keep everything I write here with skepticism because I'm going to be honest - I'm not a huge fan of erotica. I rarely - if ever - read erotica stories. As a result, I'm not as well versed in understanding what makes a good erotica and what makes a bad erotica. What I do know, however, is that your descriptions are incredibly spot on. And for a short read like this, descriptions are absolutely necessary to make the story alive. I didn't catch any grammatical errors either. However, this just isn't my kind of genre. The official first chapter made me think it was rape, and that tends to elicit an immediate "no" from me in any of these stories. But once again, I am not well versed in this genre, so I could be completely wrong in my complaint.

Ironically funny with sarcasm on top

This isn't a complete story yet, but from what I've seen so far, this is definitely going to be a fun novel from start to finish. I commend the author for her ability to write something that's so morbid and dark with comedic/sarcastic tone that stays and works throughout the entirety of the plot. I think first person narrative really works for her and the protagonist because I don't think the sarcasm could really come through in any other way. The dialogue is snappy and funny, and there's a lot of intrigue at the moment that the story hasn't explored completely. The only thing I've noticed for you to be careful of is that dialogue can sometimes drag out a bit too long. The conversation becomes mundane and somewhat unimportant, and that's usually when I find myself skimming through the story. But that's a very minor critique that only shows up once in a while, and I think it's an easy fix too once you read out your novel out loud. All in all, I had a lot of fun!

A historical love story

This was a very lovely story with an ending made to make you feel warm. I would like to point out that I am pickier than most people when it comes to romance stories, so please take all my critiques with a grain of salt. I really only have two things that I really want to talk about. The first one is Alan. Unfortunately, I didn't like Alan for a long time before he finally started to warm up to me. Probably because I have always been particularly annoyed with characters and people in real life who are unwilling to let someone go even after the girl or boy has very clearly rejected them multiple times. In the end, he does finally grow on me, and I was able to see what a good person he was. But at the beginning, he could be extremely possessive over a girl who he has no right to be possessive over, and that just bothered me for a long time. The second one is that I think you need more significant characters to be the protagonist's ally. The ones who do support her generally do not show up too often in the actual story, and I just wish we had that one very consistent best friend to help her out or just have her allies do show up in the story more often.

But like I said, I've always been harsher when it comes to romantic stories, so keep everything I wrote with a grain of salt!

An Enjoyable Sci-fi Ride

I'm going to be very blunt here and say that the areas I think you need work on has nothing to do with the plot or the characters but rather writing style. Because in all honesty, I think you have the plot and the world down. The characters were colorful, the sci-fi world was rich, even the technology and cultures and different species were intriguing and well thought out. It's a good story with good character development, and the areas you're stronger in is actually the thing many people are weaker in.

In regards to my critique to the writing style, I think there's just two big problems plaguing the story. And if you can fix those two areas, you've got a set novel. The first is that you have a tendency to "character hop" as it's coined. In fact, it is a problem that I've struggled with. It means that you switch between characters' focus/view a little too quickly that it leaves the reader slightly confused. I understand that you might've been going for the "omnipresent third person" style, but at the same time, even novels with that style has slight transitions between their characters. My second critique is actually really simple to fix: break up your paragraphs. The length can be distracting to the reader, especially reading online versus actual paper, and I think you can keep people's attention with the novel better with just some shorter paragraphs.

Overall, I clearly enjoyed the story, and I think the writing style edits are fairly quickly to apply. Hope it helps!

Dude Smith

This was really different from what I usually read - mainly because it's rare to actually follow a protagonist from when he starts off as young to much older. The relationships are complicated and dark, and I think the point of this story is to not celebrate the beauty of romance but the struggles that it brings along the way. The protagonist is definitely very unique, and I think it will take some time for some readers to get used to him, but I'm assuming that is what you were originally going for. Aside from a few grammatical errors here and there (we can never seem to catch ALL of them), I can see you put a lot of work and effort into it.

A Dark Twist on a Dark Theme

I really enjoyed the premise and the narration of the protagonist. There were a few grammatical errors here and there, but I think that's just fine comb editing (annoying editing) you need to go through. The only critique I have, and this is personal preference, is that sometimes Diana's thoughts could go a little too trippy. I know there's a particular effect you're going for, but at a certain point, it became hard for me to concentrate on exactly what was going on. However, as I said, this is just personal preference so take it with a grain of salt.

An Excellent Piece on an Important Subject

This was an awesome read. The subject is so, so hard and often so rarely talked about, but it's so important to be discussed. I can tell the author put a lot of work and time into this story researching the legalities behind it, histories, and maybe even personal stories to make it as authentic as possible. Grey moral areas were introduced everywhere, and it left me even unable to pick a side to go with. The only thing I wished I could've seen more of was Adam's interactions in his foster home, and maybe less of Micah in the beginning when he was first getting into the subject. I was much more absorbed when Adam and Roger showed up in the novel, and I think it'd help the readers too if Micah's focus came more in the middle. Other than that, it was absolutely incredible reading this novel.

Even Better than the First

At first I was shocked to see it was in first person, but much to my delight, I actually preferred first person over third! I think it does a much better job of getting into your protagonists' heads and seeing the description from their eyes. I only wished you could've put "Sophie" or "Suzette" at the very beginning of each chapter to reflect whose POV we were going to read. Yes, it was obvious enough to figure out, but just in case people get confused, I think that'll solve the problem. I have one suggestion that might...be drastic, so feel free to completely ignore it if you don't agree! SPOILERS (for anyone else who's reading this): I would have preferred it if you didn't hint there was more to Hertha. I think the shock factor of how evil she (or "she") is becomes a lot more impactful if the readers are led to believe the entire time, even by Sophie, how nice and welcoming she was without any suspicion. But other than that, bravo!

Fascinating premise and fascinating worlds

I love, love, LOVED the fantastical element of your novel. Just thinking about diving into paintings and discovering new worlds sent a chill up my spine (and the good kind). I can't wait to read about the different worlds still to come in this series, and it's just overall such a good premise to a story. I only have a few teensy critiques that could be seen as nitpicking, but I want this story to go FAR, so here it comes! 1. I think you can actually cut down on the descriptions. No, the worlds are perfectly described and I basked in being able to picture them. The descriptions I'm thinking are "Caleb saw them as little sisters" - little things that readers can infer without being told about it. It'll make the novel less wordy and even easier to read than it is now. 2. I almost wished you had a prologue of some sort. The first chapter was pretty slow until the end, and from my own experience of editors and agents (my mom actually being one when she was younger), if the first few sentences don't catch your attention - they scrap it. I'd hate for that to happen here, so I wish to get some oomph for the first few sentences or even paragraphs. 3. Very small grammatical errors. I can tell that you've edited this before, and that they were likely small things that missed your eye (which are annoying of course). Overall, great job!