What is your opinion?
Refreshing and humorous!
"This New Adult story is not your typical bad boy meets good girl romance story. It is so refreshingly different than what you would generally find on various online platforms. It has adventure, fun, romance, heartbreak, and most importantly an amazing female protagonist. While the story will take you on a real adventure across the middle Europan landscape, its protagonist Nicole aka Nik will have her own little adventure, finding true love and feeling heartbreak. What made me fall in love with this story is that the author wrote it in such an authentic fashion that I could tell that she had traveled to all those places herself. The descriptions are so real and alive. And most importantly almost in all of the romance novels, I have seen the female lead to be either spineless or too indecisive of what she wants from her life. But I loved Nik. She is smart, beautiful, witty, educated, and has her own mind. So feminine yet so strong-willed. It is something I always admire in any woman. However, there are a few words that could have been replaced with more colloquial English words but if you ignore those minor issues, this book is a treasure. I wish the author would get her due credit and this book gets all the attention and publicity that it very well deserves! Great work!"
Young love is complicated
"**CONTAINS SPOILERS** This New Adult story contains themes so relevant to modern youth and their relationships, I was eager to dive in and learn how Nicole navigated through romance, friendship, family, and the search for her own voice. After a slow start, the story takes a shocking turn and the group of young friends finds themselves fleeing possible legal consequences, after Philip (allegedly) commits a terrible crime. Falling for the troublemaker with a complicated past is a trope to thread carefully, and in this case, I’m afraid the story didn’t accomplish its potential. For this to work (for me, at least) Nicole should have realized how toxic Philip really was and fight for her freedom. Freedom from the emotional attachment; from the guilt of not “saving” Philip; from her own low self-esteem. A heroine with a backbone who shines with her own light would have been a magnificent plot twist. Or, we could have seen Philip grow. Stop sabotaging every healthy relationship in his life and stop destroying his chances of being better than his father. Like so many stories on Inkitt, this book holds a lot of potential, but I recommend the author to spend some time considering what goals these characters should reach. Make sure their actions are in tune with their personalities. They should always be present to move the plot forward, for whatever outcome the author chooses. Note: This is a judge's review written in accordance with the Roadmap Awards writing competition, round three."
Verbose
"I give a lot of weight to first impressions; there were several typos in the blurb and one in the first sentence (even allowing for the 'first sentence' to actually be a quirky chapter title--this is not evident until seeing further chapters as it is not in bold or italics--which does not cite the original source). The first thing I noticed as I was introduced to Nik and her friends is how very well-read they are; the word choices both in dialogue and narration often drew attention to themselves. In the first chapter alone I found: entrails, querulant, unagitated, rattan (misspelled), bohemian, heedlessness, nonsenses, preposterous, provocatively. The writer is without question intelligent and is attempting to set an interesting, idiosyncratic scene with identifiable characters - but the dialogue doesn't always come off as realistic, and any word choices that draw attention to how clever they are...are simultaneously pushing the reader out of the story. Further vocab words noted throughout the manuscript: vagabond, ubiquitous, euphoric, chambermaid, provocateur, culminated, reminiscences, intractable, obnoxious, macerated, crystallized (misspelled), quadrate, stupefied, ejaculate... Overall the technical side of things was pretty good; some minor typos and occasional tense changes. The largest issue I struggled with beyond the slap-in-the-face four dollar words was the plot movement. For the first seven chapters there...basically wasn't any. Very little conflict and zero stakes; I was reading about four people on vacation and their interactions, while excessively intelligent, remained unstimulating. Things do ramp up in Chapter Seven, to be sure - more than one-fifth of the way through the story. Also...the source of said conflict is something that, while worth exploring, needs to be handled extremely carefully and might turn off some readers. (I wasn't a fan at all, if I'm honest. One of the four main characters committed, knowingly or not, a harmful act towards a minor and from what I read received no comeuppance or punishment) The Character Agency of Nicole might benefit from some tweaking; in the first third of the book she seems to stay at a very even keel. She's not being dragged around by the ear, but neither is she doing much to advance the story. She's just...on vacation. Once the mess does hit our heroes, the inherent conflict as they try to untangle it was compelling, if ultimately unsatisfying for me personally. One odd note; there's a Mature Content warning in Chapter 32 that comes after the Mature Content the reader is warned about. And finally the Epilogue reveal feels not like a natural story closer but a rather blatant attempt to interest a reader in a sequel. As though Chapter One of Book Two had slipped in. The writer is definitely talented; that I could be as interested as I was in a largely plotless narrative for seven full chapters speaks to their ability. Lots of potential here!"
