User: IcyMist_
Title: Away

I guess the title makes sense, but I don’t think it does the story justice since you’re actually focusing on your characters settling down. Maybe it ties in later, but the way you have it, it doesn’t really fit.

Cover: I like the colors and the font, but the image is a little confusing. It’s so blue at the bottom, I can’t really tell if the person is a boy or a girl and what exactly they’re looking at. Also, it feels more like sci fi than mystery, again because of the blue. So, while it’s a really nice cover, I don’t feel like it fits your genre very well.

Summary: Your first two paragraphs seem a little repetitive. You’re going to tension, and it works mostly, but by the end of the second paragraph, I feel like you’re overstating things. Then, when we hit paragraph number three, you lost me. And it’s because of the typos and bad punctuation. My suggestion would be to shorten the second paragraph and actually integrate it in the first, and fix your last paragraph.

Put it into context: the people where seem nice? Why does he think they have secrets? And what rooms is he talking about? Stuff like that,
Story: You need a lot of basic editing. For one, your tenses are all over the place. Then, you use italics incorrectly. When you’re in first person, everything is basically inner thought except actual talking to yourself, so you need very little italics.
With the basics out of the way, I found the relationship between Miles and his mom really weird. Their dialogue is stilted and Miles seemed to be in a perpetual ‘yeah, whatever’ mood. I feel like you don’t focus enough on his tragic past and how that affected him. He doesn’t think much of anything and it makes it hard to know him.
The story itself is interesting. I was instantly curious to find out what Dad did that made him such a bad man. Miles doesn’t know anything except what his mother tells him, but his mother seems a little psychotic which makes me wonder who’s actually right or wrong. The mystery is good.
You also have short chapters which makes the story easy to read.
Overall, focus a little more on your grammar and punctuation and on Miles’ personality, and you’re good to go.

Overall rating: 6/10

By : Wimbug