What is your opinion?
Talking To Gravestones
"Incredible and delightful book to read. Congratulations! The errors of narration did not prevent the objectivity of the idea."
Excellent Story
"I actually felt like I could have cried when I read this. It is so devastating when you lose someone when they are so young. Your way of writing the main character's thoughts was excellent and so was the description of how every felt, how angry the main character felt at losing the one she loved, and then there was that mysterious guy who told her she could communicate with the dead. There was even suspense at end that makes you wonder what will happen now that she has accepted this guy's offer. If you plan to continue this, I will definitely keep an eye on it. But even if you don't, I still think it was a great story. Beautifully done."
Exciting Debut
"I thought the opening chapter was tonally perfect: the narration, sentence structure, and even the images and metaphors contributed to a sustained tone of fear, shock, and horror. The author does a marvelous job of making us feel the main character's world spinning out of control as her boyfriend dies--just like that, the body bag swallows him up (good metaphor, by the way). The entire chapter is beautifully written (despite the subject matter) and shows an uncanny ability to capture the moment when life suddenly stops making sense--yet you still have to go about living it. The second, chapter, too, is powerfully oppressive, as she endures the funeral and tries to make sense of it all. Yet here the plot clicks in, as she realizes she has "the gift" and can hear into the world beyond our own. She is about to be recruited into the ranks of a select order, and with a moment's notice, she is meeting fellow necromancers and having her first 'interview,' so to speak. My only criticism of what is a marvelous story is the sheer abruptness of learning her calling. It happens in a quick exchange of dialogue and she never looks back. Since the opening chapters set the scene slowly, with great mood and atmosphere, this gear-shift into the plot proper seems a almost forced. It happens too quickly, and she seems to accept too quickly--even though she does question her sanity. I would accept this more if she went through stages of believing, at first denying it outright, trying to get help, and then slowly succumbing to the understanding that the voices are real--even if she IS insane. This abruptness aside, the story is brilliantly told and the main character's voice and perspective is unique and believable. Perhaps this is why I resisted her giving in so quickly to her fate. If anything, I would just like to see a few chapters between 2 and 3, so we get a more fleshed out story and ultimately the making for a truly compelling novel. I'll definitely be on the look for updates!"
The type of YA novel that will get a movie adaptation
"I'll definitely watch this kind of movie, you know. Reminds me of Mortal Instruments in a way. Anyway, I like how you start the story with grief (I love angst!). Death is a start of something, anyway. Though I have some predictions of how this story would continue, I still want to read more :) Glad that i found that you've posted the third chapter before I write this review now. I have no problem with your writing style and I read your story casually, so i didn't look for grammar mistakes. I'll read more from you here. Anyway, good job :)"
Great start
"You have grabbed the feeling of loss and grief from the start. This is good and I loved the chat between her and the boy. Where the story goes from here I haven't a clue but you made me read on to the end. Your use of the word screamed often and it jarred as I read. Perhaps you can use an alternate word. such as, shout, yell, shriek, cry, screech, bawl, and squeal to break up the repetitive use.. Question, why were the nurses confused? I did not like a pack of nurses it sounds like wolves. on the hunt. My comments are mine and its your story but an another edit will tighten the prose and take this from good to wonderful. If I have the time I will check back now and then to see how this progresses. Well done."
Going to like this!
"I know I'm going to like this! I love your style of writing; it is inviting. There's a few places where the words break the flow of reading slightly, but other than that I can see great potential in the story. A good read-through will fix those misfit errors and some more insight of her thoughts near the end of chapter 2 will bring the first 2 chapters together to lock-in more readers. I could almost feel Rosalie's sorrow in the first chapter, if not for the fact that you made mention that she is a necromancer in the summary, I probably would have felt the impact even more! PS: I'll update my review & ratings as I continue to read more chapters"
Intriguing and full of potential
"I like it how you write the main character's feelings about losing her girlfriend, I think you did a great job with that. And I think the necromancy gift is such an interesting topic for a story. I also really liked the fact that you're narrating in present tense; I know for personal experience that it can be hard. I think this had great potential. I would definetely continue reading the next chapters. You have a couple of mistakes; grammar or sentences that just sound weird to me, but they are not frequent enough to make it un-readable. Also, I found it a little bit force, the way this William guy approached the main character, but that's just my opinion. Keep up the good work!"
You're off to a good start
"This is my first critique on this site. It's not a good site for critiquing because you can't do inline critiques, which I find the most helpful. I did an inline critique on MS Word which has my specific suggestions so that you can see exactly what I'm referring to. I'd be happy to email it if you think that would be helpful to you. Furthermore, pay no attention to the stars, I don't like them and don't use them. I made a few suggestions. Take them all with a grain of salt and ignore anything you don’t agree with. You know best how you want your story to read. You’re off to a solid start with Chapter 1. It’s technically pretty clean. It’s mostly free of passive voice, adverbs, and unnecessary adjectives. The first chapter is not too long. It does its job of introducing us to the main character. Although nothing else happens, it’s enough. You can do several things to make Chapter 1 even better than it already is. First, eliminate some of the unnecessary or repetitive words and phrases. This will sharpen your prose and give the story more weight by keeping your readers focused on the important elements of the story. For example, the paragraph at the beginning the starts with "Everything screamed at me." I struck out about half of that paragraph to streamline it and give it what I felt was more punch. - Everything screamed inside my head as soon as I realized I was holding a dead person’s hand. I turned to look at the heart monitor and my stomach lurched when I saw the flat line ., Also, I noted how you used the word screamed too much. I wish I could point out the areas where I made suggestions, but it's just not possible in this crude format. Second, some of the situations didn’t quite make logical sense. Cleaning up those small areas will also improve the quality of the story. Anytime you read something that doesn’t quite add up it takes you out of the story because you have to think about it. As writers, we don’t want to do anything to “break the spell.” These small gaps in logic are easy fixes. For example, "The way he held my hand was like his love had died too" Since he’s dead, he can’t hold your hand, you’re holding his hand. There’s a big difference. "I turned to look at it, and my stomach lurched when I saw the line dropping to the bottom of the display and running flat." If he’s dead, then the line wouldn’t be dropping, it would already be flat. " his fingers still, stiff, ashen." Since he just died would they be stiff and ashen already? You mention Rosalie running and she hears a mother in labor. In a hospital, Maternity would be on a separate floor, so she wouldn't be able to hear that. There are many more instances where I pointed out things like that for you to consider, but I can't list them all. Furthermore, if I'm wrong about them being gaps in logic, then they're written in such a way so that it's not clear, so either way those areas need to be ironed out for the sake of continuity. Third, it would help your readers identify with Max and Rosalie more if you gave us a brief description of Max. We know nothing about him other than that, he’s dead. What were some of the qualities that made Rosalie love him? Knowing this would make her grief more powerful. For example, "He always looked so beautiful when he was sleeping," Consider describing what he looks like. How old is he? - He always looked so beautiful when he was sleeping. I loved the way his brown hair fell across his forehead and his dimpled cheeks almost seem to smile as though he was dreaming something wonderful. Etc. You know your characters so you'll knock it out of the ballpark. I'm just giving you a rough idea. Fourth, Chapter 1 ends on a rather bland note, try to end the chapter with a question that needs answering, or with an unexpected twist or with a cliffhanger of some sort. You want to give readers as much motivation as possible to turn the page and find out what happens next. For example, "Nobody knows grief like I do." - I look up and see someone in the back of the crowd. My heart stopped, it can’t be, you’re … Try to end with a surprise of a twist. You’ll be able to think of something a lot better than that, but you get the idea. Since Rosalie can talk to the dead, I’m going to guess that we haven’t “seen” the last of Max. Now I wondering what the story’s conflict is and who’s going to be the protagonist. Thanks for sharing your story. I enjoyed reading chapter 1 and once you’ve revised it, it will be that much stronger. Good luck and keep on writing."
Morbid fairytale
"I read over the first chapter because really I feel like first impressions are the most reliable when it comes to inkitt. The first chapter is where you decide to read on or not. I like the start, it's nice and steady with a great deal of emotion and it really pushed that feeling of lose and melancholy onto me. That feeling of wishing that nothing was real and I really enjoyed that. Other than that, not a lot happens in the first chapter, it's quite short so I didn't expect any great developments and the first person narrative is notorious for focusing on emotions and subjective interpretations over actual substantive events. The writing style is very emotive, I liked it a great deal, very easy to read and not a cringe so far. A lot of the time stories like this get lost in the angst and become very cringe worthy but this kept a level timbre of it's cringe. The reason I called it a morbid fairytale is because of the description of the body bag swallowing her boyfriend up, I really liked that imagery. Put me in her mind for a minute, made it all feel dreamlike, as if he wasn't really dead and this was just the start of a really messed up fairytale. Kind of makes you think whether anything she's experiencing from then on is really real or if her mind is so shattered from the loss that she's creating a world where she can see her boyfriend again in a fantasy. There were a few errors and sentences that sort of tripped me up but overall I thought it was very competent and I would recommend it."
