Congratulations to all the winners!

If I tagged anyone wrong, please let me know so I can fix it asap!

I ask that when you're reading your reviews, you read the whole thing before asking questions. Sometimes it takes me more than one paragraph to explain what I mean, so your question could be answered later in the review.

I'm one person doing this and trying to be as helpful as I can. If nothing about the review is helpful to you, then just ignore it. I'm not going to be offended. We're all different writers using different styles, so my suggestions may sound outlandish to you while to my style they would fit in perfectly. I always, and I mean always, encourage you to find your own style and don't just blindly listen to my suggestions because I'm the one giving them. I'm not always right, and my opinion is one in a sea of billions. Please keep that in mind while reading your review.

With the new Wattpad guidelines, I am going to be censoring more words than normal just to be safe, so if you see any censored words, that's why.

There are five total winners. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place as well as two honorable mentions.

I am currently judging best original, romance, and mature. Best original will take time as it is a huge category.

And, yes, I have begun judging the fairy night showdown in the background. However, that category is the final showdown, so it will be announced last. But I'm starting it now so then when I release the second-to-last results, I can get the showdown out shortly after.

Let's begin the ongoing category!

Please note that now that there are only 5 categories left, I am no longer allowing backouts.

Last chapter, I posed a challenge for readers to guess how many words the reviews for best fanfic were, and now, I will announce the word count and who got closest!

The total word count for the best fanfic results was 69,309.

The ones who got closest were sugararmy07 and XxFaylinexX, with Honey guessing 67k and Fayline guessing 66k. Congratulations! Honey and Fayline, you earned 10 votes on a story of your choice! You can let me know what story you want me to vote on, or you can save this prize for a future book of yours you're publishing and come back when you publish it so I can vote on it!

To everyone, if you would like to guess the word count of this review (not counting a/ns, just the raw review), you have a chance to win 10 votes on a story of your choice! Please be specific (i.e., 10,000 instead of 10,000 - 20,000).

Leave guesses here ---->

Only guesses made as an inline comment above will count.

SPAG stands for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You will see it throughout the reviews. It's just a shorter way for me to talk about the general technical side of the story since lord knows my reviews are already long enough.

3rd Place

Liberation: Oscar's Story by romance_lover16

Review:

Characters: 8.5/10. The characters throughout the narrative are overall solid and do a good job progressing the plot forward. I'll mention it throughout the review (I do characters last, so I apologize if there's a lot of overlap between what I say here and what I say throughout the review), but I enjoyed how each character played a central role in the narrative. Each character felt like they had their own unique speech patterns and personalities that made them easy to tell apart early in the story, which is important for readers to be able to follow what's happening.

I'd say my personal favorite character was Cai, though I liked the others, like Egon, as well. Egon had the most distinct speech style due to his nervousness and how he was the only one who really stuttered, and that also applies to his body language and how he reacted to situations. It's an overlooked part of characters: body language and diversity in the way they react to things. So I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that.

The characters bounced off each other well and felt like they had real relationships with one another. There were consequences for their actions, and character decisions impacted other characters, which is always great to see. Their physical descriptions were handled well, too.

The only minor deductions come from some dialogue errors and pacing issues that made the story a bit abrupt and hard to follow at times. Another thing is Oscar is a little cliche in terms of his foundation and how he's the misunderstood alpha with a father he doesn't want to be like. That being said, I'm not really someone to take off points for cliches existing in a story since I'm of the belief that cliches can be used in a positive way, like taking cliches and spinning them in a unique way. I think Oscar overall works, though he was my least favorite throughout since he had a foundation I've seen many times before. I don't think that's inherently a bad thing, and it's more personal opinion than anything else, though still worth mentioning. I overall liked the characters, as you can probably tell by the high score, haha.

Plot: 8/10. The plot really kicks off in the second part of chapter 1, and from there, it descends into a murder mystery that's unlike anything Oscar has seen before. It's described in a brutal yet realistic way, and the way the werewolves now have to worry about the human world and interact with it was an interesting twist I don't see often. It's rare to see supernatural books with any of the core creatures (vampires, werewolves, fairies, etc.) go in-depth about the human world and how it interacts with the mystical, so it was refreshing to see this book acknowledge that side in a much deeper sense rather than just saying "Oh the humans can't see the supernatural" or something like that. You take it a lot further and make it a core part of the plot, which was great.

Beyond that, the plot itself is solid and has good foundation. The murder itself is intriguing and shown in a way that makes its presence immediately known. The characters all contribute to the plot in a meaningful way, even in the small bits, like the first investigation. It's good to see all the characters working together and making solid contributions. All in all, the plot is great! I noticed no plot holes or inconsistencies.

The only deductions come from some awkward chapter endings and overall pacing issues that took away from the stakes in the chapters at times because of the chapters often ending anti-climatically or feeling incomplete due to them being split unnaturally; however, I will explain that in the next section. Still, I thought it was important to mention so you know where the points were being taken away from. Otherwise, I thought the plot was great!

Pacing: 6/10. The core of the plot and how it moves along is overall good and does a good job showing the reader what they want to see in an even, understandable pace; however, the part of pacing I think you did really well was the character development. No characters were introduced too fast or too slow. Their changes and decisions came at good spots in the text that didn't feel forced, so pacing for the characters was overall good, and I thought the plot pacing was okay as well since the murder mystery rolled out nicely, I just have a few suggestions for the chapter structures themselves, and also the beginning of the story.

For me personally, I wasn't a fan of splitting it up and giving each chapter parts 1 and 2, especially since the chapters are so short. With a 5-minute read time on Wattpad, I'm guessing that they're no more than 1,200 words long, if even that. They may be 1,000 at most since I wrote a book with exclusively 900-1,100 word long chapters, and they were 5-6 minutes long each, so my best guess is the chapters are anywhere in the 750-1,050 word range, maybe 1,100-1,200 range. That's why it felt unnecessary to me and like you were trying to force short chapters because each part 1 doesn't end in a way where it feels it needs a part 2. The chapters are short enough that if you combine them, they'll still be in the preferred chapter length range the Wattpad algorithm pushes (1,000 - 2,500, and 3,000 in some cases). For me, the chapter endings were, more often than not, really jarring and felt abrupt, and that combined with the chapters being short and the part 2s being the same length made me wonder why split them when combining them would make one standard chapter that isn't a long read and eliminates the jarring problem. But again, that's just my opinion, but for me, it felt like it hurt the pacing unnecessarily. Chapters normally end when a conflict within the chapter is resolved, even if it's not "resolved" in the traditional way. Every chapter has a conflict within it, even if it's small, like the protagonist has to go buy milk at the store, so the chapter could end with the protagonist buying milk, for example. That would make it a complete chapter. Here, the conflicts aren't resolved and are split into two parts, so that's why I recommend considering combining them or at least having more concrete endings since the final paragraphs in the chapters feel incomplete, if that makes sense.

For the chapters that have more than two parts, I still felt it was unnecessary and they could've just been their own chapters instead of parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and even 6.

So, to summarize that long paragraph, it just felt like a lot of chapters ended abruptly, and the pacing of chapter one part one in particular could have been tightened due to there being purple prose present in that part. That being said, I think once the murder happens and you start getting into it, the pacing within the chapters themselves get stronger, and so do the endings, though there are still somce that feel abrupt due to the unnatural split of the chapters. So I think that the overall pacing of the plot itself is pretty good; the chapters and their endings could just use some tweaks. I hope that makes sense.

Creativity: 8.5/10. The creativity throughout the story is great. The story idea is solid and stays that way throughout the entire narrative. The sentence structures are unique and don't feel bland or repetitive at any times I noticed. The word choice, like the structure, is overall diverse and does a good job keeping the reader invested since they aren't reading the same words over and over. Everything feels diverse and interesting to read.

The only minor deductions come from some description issues I'll mention later and what I said before that the foundation of Oscar is a little cliche and could benefit from being a bit unique from other werewolf stories; however, these are very minor things that don't warrant taking off anything substantial since the overall creativity is very good! Good job with this!

Dialogue: 7.5/10. When it comes to the creative side of the dialogue, I think you do a good job. The dialogue fits the characters really well and is different enough to make each line feel unique to the individual, which was great. This is one of the hardest parts of writing dialogue, so good job nailing that. The only critiques I have are minor grammatical critiques.

The main critique I have is consider not using actions as tags. Actions like smiled, chuckled, hissed, etc. I say this because of the very nature of dialogue tags: they're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so the tags describe the way words are being spoken. That's why words are frequently said, asked, whispered, mumbled, etc., but saying something like "he smiled" as a tag is a bit awkward, in my opinion, since it sounds like you're saying the words are smiling, not the person. That's why I recommend avoiding them, especially since there are so many alternatives that are far more natural. For example:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

Those two examples still include the smiling without making it the actual tag, so that's why I recommend considering tweaking the tags.

Sometimes dialogue tags are done incorrectly, like "Why'd you yell at that girl?" He questioned in a daze (chap 1 part 2). When dialogue ends with ? or !, the tag still needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun, so it should be "Why'd you yell at that girl?" he questioned in a daze. I hope that makes sense. This happened a few times throughout the text. Enough to be noticeable, so that's why I pointed it out.

I otherwise thought the dialogue was handled well, and I really liked how it felt individual to the characters. No one character spoke the same way, which was excellently done!

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. The worldbuilding is very good. The werewolf world is fleshed out properly and makes sense for the narrative. I did not notice any inconsistencies with the world or any oddities that would make me question anything, so there was no confusion in that sense.

The descriptions of the world and the locations present throughout are good as well. I liked the set pieces and how they, like the characters, felt diverse from one another. It didn't feel like we were going to a boring location over and over again. The world interacted with the werewolves instead of feeling isolated from them, too, so that was like the cherry on top. The last thing I'll mention is again the plot about the werewolf world interacting with the human one. I thought that was a unique touch that gave the narrative more of a diverse storyline than many other werewolf stories.

The only minor deductions come from some description issues in the first chapter that made the world a bit overstimulating, and also that the link between werewolves and what that was could have benefitted from being made clearer since I only realized what it was after reading the comments, so that element of it could have benefitted from being made clearer earlier in the story. Otherwise, the worldbuilding is great!

Grammar/Spelling: 8/10. The overall grammar and spelling throughout the story is pretty solid and does a good job keeping the flow of the sentences strong. When the grammar is good, I normally don't have too much to say other than good job, so good job! The punctuation in particular was pretty good.

Critique wise, I only have two. There are a couple typos here and there, like sh/t ton being spelled as sh/tton in the beginning of the story. However, typos are no big deal, so it won't factor into the score too much. The other thing was there were the dialogue errors I mentioned before, but since I already explained them, I won't go into detail here about them other than to mention them since they are grammar errors.

Otherwise, the SPAG throughout the story was solid, so it deserves a very high score.

Description: 8/10. After the first chapter, the descriptions settle into place and become really interesting to read. Like I mentioned in the plot section, the introduction of the murder mystery is described really well, and as I described (pun intended) in the worldbuilding section, the world itself has clear rules and locations that are presented to us in easy-to-understand ways that still leave room for our imaginations to interpret things and fill in the blanks.

The character descriptions are also pretty solid, so you're well-rounded with the descriptions and give everyone fair treatment. Every aspect of the story is described and not vague, and the locations are overall clear throughout the narrative.

It's a little tough to have a clear review on this category because the first chapter's descriptions are written differently from the rest. The first chapter is heavy purple prose and often goes over-the-top with its descriptions while the rest of the story is more toned back and the descriptions improve a lot. The first chapter is the hook, though, so it's important to keep readers engaged with a consistent writing style. It felt like chapter 1 part 1 and the rest of the story were written differently, if that makes sense. Not so differently that it feels like two different stories, but enough to be noticeable. That being said, the descriptions improve a lot after that first chapter and tone back a lot in favor of plot progression and keeping readers engaged, so you did a good job after that first chapter. That's why I won't take off much, but it is still something to consider since the first chapter is really important. Other than the purple prose in the first chapter, I thought the descriptions were good.

Themes and Emotions: 8.5/10. The themes and emotions present throughout the narrative are overall solid and do a good job getting the reader invested in what's going on in the storyline. Since every character has their own motivations, that makes their emotions vastly different and unique. For example, Cai is snappy at Oscar at times for overworking himself, and Cai encourages his boss to rest, sometimes in an aggressive way. He's also fiercely protective over his wife, and that influences many of his emotions, and all of said emotions make sense. That means the book is tonally consistent and doesn't have characters pulling 180s for sake of dramatic moments or anything of the sort.

I haven't talked about Ananya throughout the review and decided to save her until now since she is heavily connected to the emotions of the story, seeing as she's so observant she ends up getting information about other characters that others can't. Chapter 21 part 4 is the perfect example of this. I thought Ananya was good, just like the others. Her being observant and being able to pick up on the little details made for an interesting read whenever she was around, and I thought her emotional intelligence was what made her so endearing. That whole conversation between Ananya and Samiya in that chapter was great, especially the line "He's a good Alpha. One day...one day, I think I'll see that." There's a lot of emotional power behind the conversations throughout the story, and a lot of that is rooted with Ananya, which I appreciated.

The only minor deductions come from the other things I pointed out throughout the review, so nothing major or worth panicking over, but still something to factor into this since the emotions can be impacted by these things. By "these things" I mean things like the pacing and the abrupt chapter ends that sometimes brought me out of the moment and the emotion (i.e., chapter 1 part 1's ending was very abrupt, and I thought it didn't end upon first read and my Wattpad was glitching and not showing me the rest of the chapter). But I otherwise really enjoyed the themes and emotions present throughout the book.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7/10. The title being Liberation: Oscar's Story is interesting. I like the word "Liberation" and how it's used here to set up the "Oscar's Story" part of the title. It may sound silly to point out the obvious, but the title is talking about his story being about liberation. I sound like Sherlock Holmes, don't I? But the point is that I like how both parts of the title play into one another, and also how it's unique. I've never seen a title like this one before. No criticisms.

The blurb is overall okay and does a good job letting the reader know about the story they're about to get in to. The first paragraph in particular is strong, and I don't have any suggestions for it. The grammar looks good, as does the structure of the blurb. The second paragraph is solid, too, and I think both the first and second paragraph do a good job setting up the core elements without overstaying their welcome. The last paragraph ties it together and shows the reader how the elements you introduced in the first two paragraphs are going to impact the overall narrative.

The only critique I have is there are two punctuation errors in the final paragraph, but they're not a huge deal since I understand why you used the punctuation you did, it's just that it's more grammatically sound with slight tweaks. By that I mean these two sentences: As their feelings blossom amidst a world where werewolves and humans are meant to live separate lives, the murderer continues to run rampant through Bourdier, threatening the lives of many, but also inviting an underlying danger, one that had laid dormant for many years. The comma after "many" isn't needed since the "murderer" is doing both the threatening and the inviting, so it's technically a compound predicate. I understand why you used the comma, though in my opinion, I think it would work smoother without the comma and instead have a dash after danger. So it'd look like this: As their feelings blossom amidst a world where werewolves and humans are meant to live separate lives, the murderer continues to run rampant through Bourdier, threatening the lives of many but also inviting an underlying danger—one that had laid dormant for many years. I'm not saying it's what you absolutely 100% should go with, but it is worth considering since I felt the "one that had laid dormant for many years" sentence could have benefitted from having a longer pause before it to give it more weight and give the readers a second to breathe after a long sentence.

The second sentence is: And more importantly: will Oscar and Ananya accept each other's love through the drastic changes that affect their lives? Again, another instance where I understand why you used the punctuation you did. The colon after importantly isn't needed and could work stronger as a comma. I understand why you used a colon, though from a grammatical standpoint, it is a bit more sound and smooth to use a comma instead.

But other than those two minor things, I thought the blurb was good.

The cover is overall okay, though I feel you could do more with it. There's a lot of empty space, and while I like the blur effect on the moon and woman behind him, consider lessening it just by a little since it's hard to tell they're in a forest. The trees blend in, and the blur effect makes them borderline invisible. I had to zoom in all the way to find out they were in a forest, so that's why I'm suggesting it. Lessening the effect can also eliminate some of the blank space since we'd be able to see the forest/canvas more clearly, if that makes sense. So the cover is overall okay for the story, though it could use some tweaks to make it pop more.

Total: 78.5/100.

2nd Place

How To Survive Murder by xtaviavalx

Review:

Characters: 7.5/10. The characters in the book are overall good and fit in with the genre and storyline. I particularly like Penny's involvement in the story, same with Everett, and I feel bad for him and what ends up happening to him. So far, I'd say Caleb is my favorite, and I'm curious to know more about his storyline as the book progresses since chapter 8 ends on a cliffhanger about him. I'm excited to see where he goes next as I love his personality. So, all in all, you did a good job with the cast.

I mentioned in my initial review that there were some character inconsistencies, like with Selina not reading over the waiver and trusting someone else to do it despite being paranoid about information just a handful of paragraphs beforehand, and making it clear she doesn't seem to trust easily. Though since I already covered that before, I'll go into something else about Selina: she could use some fleshing out in the future to give her more traits. As is, she does fit the bad girl stereotype, making her a little predictable and not as unique as she could be. She has many of the same traits as the bad girl trope where she's stubborn and stoic, also pretty cautious and skeptical about all those around her. These traits individually aren't a bad thing by any means, it's just that she does fit into the bad girl stereotype based on the way she acts so far throughout the story, and I'd recommending fleshing her out later in the story. This feels a little hard to judge since it's so early in the story, so it's possible she'll have major development and become less like a bad girl and more individual, though I have to judge based on what's there so far. With that being said, I still overall like the characters and think they deserve a high score.

Plot: 8/10. The plot is so far very interesting. It's like a battle royale type of story, only it has far more layers and complications than that. It's not as simple as just a battle royale even though it shares traits with that genre. There's Fiona, Selina's involvement in all this, Penny and her ulterior motives, Delilah, etc. There are more layers than I can count, and I love that about the book. I think it's a good plot with really good pacing that I'll go over in the next section. It's overall an interesting, unique plot that makes the story feel fresh.

The main criticism I have is about Penny. In my initial review of the story, I mentioned how I liked that you had that twist, and I still do. My main criticism is that she feels underutilized right now. I can only judge based on how much is out currently as the story is still ongoing (hence why it's in the ongoing category), and at the time of judging, only up to chapter 8 is published. As of chapter 8, Penny shows up, gets knocked out, and hasn't done much else. So the twist idea is really cool and I like it, I would just suggest expanding on it in the future if you don't already have plans to. It felt a little underwhelming to have this cool twist only for her to get knocked out and sidelined immediately, if that makes sense. She's the reason the plot happens, so I was expecting to see more because of how important she is to the inciting incident and the overall narrative.

However, other than that, I really liked the plot, and that when matched with good pacing makes the plot very solid and deserving of a high score!

Pacing: 10/10. So far, the pacing is very good and flows out at an even rate. Other than the Penny twist being a little underused, in my opinion, the pacing is overall great, and since I already talked about the twist in the plot and it doesn't impact the pacing much if at all, I'm not going to take off points for it here too. I'm sad that the most recent chapter leaves us on a cliffhanger, so I can't comment much on how that twist impacts the rest of the pacing, but based on what's out so far, it's solid! And me being sad about the cliffhanger just means you're doing your job right since you're making me want to do more. Good job! No criticisms for this section!

Creativity: 8/10. Like I said in the plot section, I really love the concept of blending together a few different types of stories to make your own thing, giving different layers to things like the battle royale trope, and also the murder mystery side of the story. It's a cool blend of interesting elements that make the story stand out when compared to other books across the site, and I think the story idea is one of the best parts about the entire novel!

Like I mentioned in my initial review of the story, the telling over showing got a bit much at times and made it hard to focus on the character emotions, and some of the sentences were awkward due to awkward dash placement. Though since I've already gone over those things in detail, I won't dwell on it here, especially when the creativity is otherwise really good. You overall did a great job with this category!

Dialogue: 7.5/10. The dialogue throughout the story is overall good and fits in with the chosen plot and characters. It flows pretty well and makes sense. I only have a handful of critiques.

I don't mean to keep bringing up things I mentioned in my first review, though they do apply here upon rereading since the same things I mentioned are still present, so I have to factor them into the score, and I hope it's understandable why I have to. The two critiques I have of this category are: A) using actions as tags, and B) too many tags.

I already explained using actions as tags and why I suggest not doing it. They're unnatural since they're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so by using actions as tags, you're almost implying the words are doing the actions, not the people. How about smiled, let's use that as an example. If "Dialogue," he smiled were used, it'd be a little awkward, but there are two quick and easy alternatives:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

Those two alternatives keep the action in there without it being awkward, so that's why I suggest considering using those methods if you want to have an action accompanying the dialogue. However, there are plenty of ways to incorporate actions with dialogue, so I encourage you to play around with it.

As for the too many tags, it's the same as I mentioned before in my first review where overusing tags can get repetitive and hard to read, so that's why I suggest downsizing on tags wherever possible. That's not to say never use tags since that's not true at all, it's more a recommendation to downsize wherever you see fit since the more you use, the more telling over showing you're doing, and also the more repetitive the dialogue can get.

So, overall, the dialogue is good, it could just use some tweaks to its presentation.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The world thus far has been consistent and feels like London. You don't give many exposition dumps to really set up the world and instead rely on immersing us through the smaller details and overall consistency, which is good. The English style is consistent and you use all the terms associated with London to make the world feel more realistic. The world is not overpowering but is noticeable at the same time, so it's a core part of the story, but not to the point where you spend paragraphs upon paragraphs info-dumping about the world. All in all, good job with the worldbuilding. I have no criticisms.

Grammar/Spelling: 8/10. The overall SPAG throughout the book is good, and the only suggestion I have is what I mentioned to you before about punctuation errors. We already talked about the comma errors in my review shop, like in the sentence "A correct fact, that I didn't have to learn from a tabloid newspaper." We also already talked about the awkward dashes and how there were many places you put dashes where they felt unnecessary or even wrong. They were somewhat frequent errors, and punctuation is very important, so I suggest being more careful with punctuation in future installments. Otherwise, the SPAG is very good.

Description: 7/10. The overall descriptions are good, and I like the attention to detail present throughout the story. I like how you sometimes incorporate the five senses to give us a more well-rounded look at what's going on, and I like how there were a lot of colors present, too. The descriptions are good and deserve a high score, and I only have a few critiques.

Some of the descriptions feel a little out of order. Like the description in chapter one near the beginning of the story where you explain where the Sunday paper came from and that it piqued both of their interests. I really don't feel that whole paragraph is necessary. You don't need to explain where they got the paper from and why they're reading it. Penny's twist later explains why Penny showed the newspaper to Selina, so I didn't feel that description was needed and also felt a little out of place.

Another thing is to make sure the descriptions make sense. For example: "The air crackles with a palpable sense of excitement, and every heartbeat becomes louder and louder as Miss Mount continues" (chap 6). How does air crackle with a palpable sense of excitement? What does this mean? The last thing I'll talk about below is telling over showing, and this is an example of telling over showing where you're telling us how to feel instead of showing us certain factors and allowing us to draw our own conclusions. So that's what I mean when I say make sure the descriptions make sense.

The last thing I'll mention is there's a lot of telling over showing where you'll tell us exactly everything we need to know about a character's emotions. We know when they're angry, confused, happy, sad, etc. because you're saying "Caleb is angry" and things like that. While there isn't anything inherently wrong with telling, the golden advice is show don't tell. Every writer needs to tell things, so that's not to say never tell, but when it comes to character emotions, consider showing it more often. You of course use showing as well, though I'm recommending for some of those moments where you use telling, consider switching it up and using showing instead. Don't tell us their emotions, show them. Show how they're angry, confused, happy, sad, etc. This also relates to some things I said in the initial review of the story, where I mentioned telling us the same information more than once. We don't need to hear information that many times, especially in the same chapter we're given the information (i.e. the Fiona thing from chapter 1, or Miss Mount repeating Everett's line back to him in chapter 5 and you telling us that was what she was doing when we already knew that).

So all in all, the descriptions are good, they could just use a couple of tweaks.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. The themes and emotions present throughout the book are good so far, though it is a little early to really think too in-depth about them. That being said, I like the chaos of them finding out there's more to the surface about this competition. I like the emotional highs these characters face and how they're very clearly going to go through challenges unlike any other, and I also like the challenge presented so far in the competition. It's unique and unlike any I've seen from anything from these types of stories, so I like how you give your characters unique situations to react to, and the situations evoke a lot of emotions within them.

It's honestly difficult to write a detailed review of this category due to how the themes haven't had time to be fully fleshed out yet, but telling over showing is the big thing here that caused deductions. If there were tweaks to the telling over showing and the descriptions, I think this category would get a perfect score. However, with that being said, the themes and emotions are still good so far, so I think it's still deserving of a high score. Overall, I think the themes and emotions service the plot well and fit in with the characters.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8/10. The title is catchy and immediately got my attention. It rolls off the tongue well and pretty much sums up what the book is going to be about. No criticisms.

The blurb overall sums up what happens in the story well, though it could use some grammar tweaks. This is the blurb:

All Selina wants is to leave her town in London to pursue University in America. Penny, Selina's best friend informs Selina of a snazzy, new competition. Winning prize - £150,000! Could this be the answer to Selina's dilemma?

Caleb hates Jeremey Everest with a burning passion. However, it is important to note that Jeremey Everest is in fact dead. After the tragic murder of Jeremey Everest and his older sister Fiona, last year, the lime light is always on the Everest family. Caleb wants to escape this torture. After entering a mysterious competition, Caleb hopes to leave London for good.

Competition, hmm? Now, what exactly does that entail? A singing competition you may ask. Or maybe even a dance contest. Caleb and Selina manoeuvre this strange competition and discover that everything is not as it seems.

What I'd recommend:

All Selina wants is to leave her town in London to pursue University in America. Penny, Selina's best friend, informs Selina of a snazzy new competition. Winning prize - £150,000! Could this be the answer to Selina's dilemma?

Caleb hates Jeremey Everest with a burning passion. However, it is important to note that Jeremey Everest is, in fact, dead. After the tragic murder of Jeremey Everest and his older sister Fiona last year, the limelight is always on the Everest family. Caleb wants to escape this torture. After entering a mysterious competition, Caleb hopes to leave London for good.

Competition, hmm? Now, what exactly does that entail? A singing competition, you may ask—or maybe even a dance contest. Caleb and Selina manoeuvre this strange competition and discover that everything is not as it seems.

My changes were to the punctuation where I added and removed some commas since there were frequent comma errors throughout the blurb. The blurb overall does a good job detailing what the story is about, though it could use some tweaks to the punctuation for stronger readability.

The cover is very good and stands out. I like the choice to make the murder in red font while the rest is gray, and the files and blood stains was a cool touch, but also not too much that the cover became cluttered. It's overall a good cover I have no criticisms for.

Total: 81/100.

1st Place

Life Within The Halls by reindolfwrites

Review:

Characters: 9/10. Something I really like about the characters is just how different they are from one another. Victoria, Jayden, Sandra, and Gideon are all so unique and have their cool flair to them that sets them apart. Victoria is the more uptight class president, Gideon is the top student with little regard for others, Jayden is... Jayden, and Sandra is bold and jaded (and also very clearly there on a mission...). Them all being so vastly different made for an entertaining core group to follow throughout the narrative. I'd say Victoria was probably my favorite, though all of them served their purposes well and did a good job keeping the momentum of the narrative going. I overall like the characters a lot.

The only deduction comes from some awkwardness in the presentation of the dialogue that, at times, made the emotions not come off as strong as they otherwise could have; however, that's a minor thing, and something I'll explain in the dialogue section, so it's not a big deal and won't warrant many deductions here, but I'm bringing it up to explain where the deductions come from. All in all, the characters are really, really good.

Plot: 10/10. The prologue is actually a prologue, which is something I appreciate. I feel like I give the criticism of "This is not a prologue, it's a first chapter" at least once per category, and that's fine, I'm not complaining about that since I know all the terms of writing and what they mean are complicated, though it is refreshing to see a genuine prologue that fits the definition of what a prologue is.

Prologue aside, the plot follows the main ensemble group I mentioned before as they struggle to get to the bottom of the mysterious occurrences happening around their school. It's a murder mystery plot with more layers than it seems on the surface, and that when matched with good pacing and solid characters makes for an entertaining plot that's easy to get invested in. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies, so I have no criticisms and think this is a good plot.

Pacing: 10/10. The pacing flows out at a great speed, giving us enough time to digest both the plot and characters at a rate that doesn't feel over or underwhelming. You don't give us too much information, but you also don't give us too little. You strike a great balance, and I never felt like you were being vague. There's a big difference between being mysterious and being vague, and I always felt you were mysterious, not vague, which is great. Throughout the entire story, the pacing is great and keeps the plot and characters moving at a steady rate. No criticisms.

Creativity: 8.5/10. The story idea is very interesting and has great word choice and sentence structure. You do a good job keeping everything diverse and interesting, and I really enjoyed reading through it since everything was dynamic. The story idea, the word choice, the sentence structure, the emotions, the world, etc. So you did a great job with this.

The only deductions comes from some issues with descriptions and dialogue that make some things a little repetitive or not as creative as they could be at times, though I will explain those things in their respective sections, I'm only bringing it up here because it impacts the creativity. The overall creativity was very good.

Dialogue: 6.5/10. The dialogue has many moments where it flows well and shows the traits of the characters in a way that's clear and makes sense. I overall think the dialogue does a good job propelling the story forward and making it feel more real. I just have a few suggestions.

The main thing I'll suggest is avoiding using actions as tags. This is a debated topic, though I personally fall on the side of using actions (he smiled, she laughed, he nodded, etc.) as tags looks really weird and is easily avoidable, so I don't see a purpose in doing it. I'm personally very anti-tag in general, but even less so with actions because it goes against the definition of the word we're talking about: dialogue tags. They're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so in my eyes, using actions like he nodded as a tag almost implies the words are nodding, not the people. Words can be said, asked, whispered, etc., but not nodded, if that makes sense. I'm especially against this since there are easy alternatives to go with. Using the nodded example, here are two potential alternatives that keep the action without using it as a tag:

He nodded. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a nod.

Those are two ways to make it more natural without even needing to remove the nod. So that's why I'm against it and why I always suggest to authors to avoid using actions as tags since they don't look natural, and they can also imply that the dialogue is doing the actions, which isn't really personification, it's just a little off, in my opinion.

This is a smaller thing but still noticeable: sometimes you used semicolons in dialogue. Personally, I don't think this is a good idea because as a friend of mine, hopelessroMINtic, said, we don't speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, so it can look really awkward when seen in dialogue. It's hard to imagine semicolons in dialogue, and semicolons are also the punctuation mark that can overcomplicate things real fast, which is why most authors recommend using them sparingly. Some even suggest never using semicolons, which I think is a bit drastic, but that goes to show how people feel about semicolons. That being said, I have no problems with semicolons, though for me, I personally align with the side that semicolons should be avoided in dialogue since dialogue is spoken and choppier than things like description, so semicolons can easily look out of place in dialogue, if that makes sense.

Moving into something else, sometimes you'll have too many tags. This problem lessens a bit as the story goes on, though there were times in the beginning of the story where there'd only be two people talking, and a bunch of lines had tags. I'd suggest downsizing in some areas. When there are more than two people talking, it makes sense to have more tags, but for two people, you can get away with using far less. I'd recommend the 50-30 advice of dialogue for you. This advice says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. This is because dialogue tags are inherently telling over showing, and while telling over showing is okay and sometimes even needed, any place you can downsize is recommended. So if you can downsize on a few tags to help with the flow, I say go for it. The reason it's 30% or more being said or asked is because when you think of dialogue, what is the most important part about it? The dialogue. So if you're putting most of the emotion on your tag through the more unique ones, like the actions I mentioned earlier, it can take away from the dialogue and make the emotions fall flat in some areas. Not always (that's why it's 30% of that 50%, not 50% of that 50%), but overusing the more out there tags can make the dialogue fall flat. I hope that makes sense.

There are occasional editing errors with the dialogue, where the tags will sometimes be awkward or wrong. For example: "Yeah, but he's still not going to be mine," she replied, looking upset, "even after his girlfriend's death." She added, darkly humorous. Did you mean to put the "She added" there? It looks like it wasn't meant to be there, so that's what I mean when I say there are some editing errors in the dialogue where it feels like some dialogue tags didn't belong or they were done wrong, like this one is here. Another example is this from chapter five: "You dared slap me yesterday," he growled, "Do you even know..." See how the do is capitalized? It should be lowercase since it's a continuation.

All in all, the dialogue has great moments that shine through, it could just use some tweaks to its presentation.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The worldbuilding, like the characters, plot, and pacing, is really good. The world of the school feels so alive and well-described. The environments are interesting and matter to the plot, not to mention they deeply impact the characters. It's like the world is a character, which I find fascinating. I really like how you did the worldbuilding here by making it feel like it was extremely prominent, almost like an omniscient eye overseeing all their actions. You did great with the worldbuilding here, so I have no criticisms and think it deserves the perfect score.

Grammar/Spelling: 8/10. The SPAG throughout the story is very strong. You do a good job with your spelling and punctuation, and the overall grammar is good too, which is something I appreciate.

I was just wondering why sometimes Victoria's POV starts with "LIFE WITHIN THE HALL," and other times starts with "LIFE WITHIN THE HALLS." At first I thought it was a typo, but then I saw LIFE WITHIN THE HALL instead of HALLS again for her second POV, but later, it's LIFE WITHIN THE HALLS. Is there a particular reason for it sometimes being hall, and other times being halls? Was it just a typo? I thought at first that because Victoria felt the pressure alone, she had the singular noun instead of the plural, but like I said, since it was later spelled as halls, it threw me off a bit. I'm not taking points off, I'm just curious if I was right about it being purposeful to represent Victoria's solitude, and only spelled with the plural after she lets someone else in. If that was the intended purpose, cool! Glad I figured it out! That's why I'm not taking points off for it (that and it's so minor... why would I take off points for a single s?), though I'm bringing it up because I'm curious to know your thoughts and hear your writing process about why you did it this way.

But that aside, the only points deducted were from the grammatical errors in dialogue. Otherwise, I think the SPAG is very good.

Description: 7.5/10. The descriptions throughout the story are very solid and fit in well with the world you're creating, as I mentioned in the worldbuilding section. Like I mentioned in the creativity section, the word choice and sentence structure is dynamic and fresh, which keeps readers on their toes since they get to see new words or old words used in new ways, keeping the story exciting and engaging. You do a good job getting the reader immersed in the moment, and I think you overall did a great job with your descriptions.

The main critique I have is something that's a common thing you do in the text, and it's director's notes. I call these director's notes little moments of telling over showing that often come after showing to clarify the showing for anyone who didn't pick up on it. Alright, that's a mouthful, but essentially, it's unnecessary telling over showing that often only exists to clarify the showing. Telling over showing is needed at times, though director's notes almost never are, in my opinion. Here's an example from chapter 2: The way he spoke about her made me realize he didn't exactly hold her in high regard, or maybe they just didn't get along. You don't need to tell us this since the dialogue already does. You showed us this via subtext in the dialogue and through the way the characters interacted, that's why that's a director's note: you're directing us to the conclusion you want us to reach instead of letting us reach it on our own. You do this quite often throughout the story, often after dialogue to clarify exactly what the dialogue means when this isn't needed. You have great descriptions and showing over telling, so I encourage you to trust your audience to pick up on that stuff since we will. Like I said, telling over showing isn't inherently a bad thing and it's sometimes even necessary, though these director's notes were, in my opinion, not necessary and took away some of the emotion at times and also made the dialogue not feel as impactful as it could have been since now we're being told exactly what the dialogue meant instead of getting a chance to pick up on it the meaning on our own, if that makes sense. That being said, I still overall liked the descriptions and thought you did a great job with them, so this section still deserves a high score.

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. I really like the themes and emotions throughout the narrative, particularly with Victoria's storyline and the pressures of society along with her desperation to keep her image as perfect as humanly possible. When the anonymous account posts that chicken head video of her, she completely loses it and accuses Jayden of it, and it's clear it deeply impacted her despite it being just an edit and not any actual damning proof against her that she's a bad person or anything of the sort. Simply a distasteful chicken edit had her acting up, which goes to show just how much her image means. I'm not saying she didn't have the right to be angry about that because she absolutely did, but the way she goes about it is good since it shows how much her image matters to the point where even a distasteful edit that will ultimately be forgotten in maybe a week tops is getting to her so much. So that's why I liked Victoria's storyline: seeing how she reacted to anything that could so much as poke her perfect reputation. But even aside from Victoria, there's a lot of emotions and themes dripping from each character, like Gideon and how he's the cold top student thanks to what happened in the prologue. So all of that is to say the emotions are diverse, the themes are clear, and all the characters play into the emotions/themes really well.

The only deductions come from things I've mentioned throughout the review about dialogue and descriptions/trusting your audience to pick up on what you're putting down. But since I already explained those things, I won't go into detail here other than to mention them since they impacted the emotions. Otherwise, the themes/emotions are great.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. The title invites mystery into what the story could possibly be about. There's life within the halls? What halls? How can life be in halls? Is this metaphorical or physical? All of those questions will pop into a reader's mind, and I mean that in a good way since it will catch their attention, therefore encouraging them to click on the book. No criticisms for the title.

The blurb, like the title, is overall good. It tells the reader what to expect in a clear way, so that's a great thing. It doesn't overstay its welcome, either. I only have one suggestion, and it's for this sentence: From the death of a student to another's disappearance, and the unexpected return of a former classmate, the four stumble upon a web of lies connected to their own lives. I would suggest removing the first comma. I understand why you put the comma there, but it's still a compound predicate sentence nonetheless, so the comma is unnecessary, making it more grammatically sound to not have one. Like I said, I understand why you did it, but I suggest not having it. Other than that small SPAG thing, the blurb is good.

The cover is something I go back and forth on. On one hand, I like the color scheme, though on the other, it doesn't feel very related to the story. Even after reading the book, I don't see the significance of the cover to the book itself. I can't tell what the background image is. Is it a building? A parking garage? A wall? A texture? It's a bit hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. Maybe you can play around with it a little more to make it more of a reflection of what happens in the book. Otherwise, I think the presentation of the book is good.

Total: 85/100.

Honorable Mention

coalescence by kth_disneyfanatic

Review:

Characters: 7/10. It's a little difficult to judge this category because there are only two chapters out, and the chapters are concept-based, making it difficult to judge much about the characters as, so far, we don't know much about them. That's not really a flaw since the story is just starting out and there's also a clear emphasis on plot and concept, which is perfectly fine, it just means it's hard to judge this category as there's not much to judge yet. Though, of what's there, the characters seem solid so far. They have solid premises. I'll mention it throughout the review, but the concept is probably the best part of the book since the plot is so interesting, and the characters are interacting with it in a way that makes sense, so I overall like them so far despite not knowing much about them.

The deductions come from the critiques I have for the dialogue, which I will explain later, but dialogue is a major part of character building, so it heavily impacts the score here, and I have many critiques for the dialogue. But again, all of this will be explained later. I write the character section last, so I already wrote my dialogue explanation before this one. I'll let all my deductions be explained there, though I'm bringing it up to show why there were points taken off so there's no confusion.

So far, the characters seem good, and I will explain the dialogue later.

Plot: 10/10. The plot is probably my favorite part of the story since the story idea is really good. I love the idea of the Fourth Wall and these different worlds with the Houses, and also how all these different ideas blend together. I think this is a super unique idea that will hook readers in and drive the plot forward. I also really liked your opening section in chapter 1 with the explanation of the story and how it applies to the narrator and what's going on. It immediately set the tone and made the story feel fantastical, which is the genre of the book, so I think it goes without saying that that's a good thing. The plot is overall solid so far, and of the two published chapters, I haven't found any inconsistencies or plot holes, so that's good too. No criticisms.

Pacing: 10/10. So far, the pacing is overall good, offering us an introduction to the book that gives us the concept, but I think you also did a good job not going too exposition-heavy and instead letting the audience see the world before diving into the concepts. The descriptions were well-paced and didn't overstay their welcome, and it didn't feel like there were any imbalances in how the narrative has been presented so far. For that reason, I have no criticisms for the pacing and believe it deserves the top score.

Creativity: 7/10. The story idea is one of the highlights of the book, as I explained in the plot section. The story idea is super creative and keeps me invested throughout both chapters. I think this is a fascinating concept, and I hope you expand on it in the future. I also think the sentence structure is pretty dynamic, which is important for the creativity in the book. I only have three suggestions.

Be careful with some of the word choice, like the word "look" is used a lot in chapter 1, particularly the beginning of the chapter. I believe it was used six times, maybe even seven, in the beginning parts of the story up until the halfway point. It's not too long of a chapter, about the average chapter length, so it's more noticeable when you're repeating words in a short period.

Be careful with exclamation marks and using them randomly. I once had an English teacher say something that stuck with me about ! in creative writing: "You only need them for situations like 'I'm pregnant!'" In the first chapter especially, there were a lot of random ! that I felt weren't needed. In fact, I felt pretty much all of the ! weren't needed (except the ones in dialogue). They're also telling over showing, and while there's nothing wrong with telling over showing or using !, if there are any areas you can limit telling over showing, it's recommended to downsize, and I just felt many of the ! weren't needed.

Lastly, I'll mention it again in the next section, but be careful with overusing semicolons, especially in dialogue. You didn't use them much in the first chapter, at least not enough for me to notice them, though you used them very frequently in the second chapter, which stood out a lot, especially since you were using them in dialogue. Remember that semicolons can overcomplicate sentences, especially in dialogue, so that's why it's recommended to use them sparingly.

All in all, the creativity is good, particularly with the story idea, there could just be some tweaks to the presentation, but it's otherwise very good.

Dialogue: 5/10. The dialogue throughout the story is overall okay and makes sense for what you're trying to do. However, there were frequent errors, and I have a few creative suggestions I will cover below.

First and foremost, I recommend not using actions as tags. Actions like "she shrugged," "she smiled," "she laughed," etc. This is because dialogue tags are called just that: dialogue tags, not people tags, so when you have something like this: "Dialogue," she laughed, it can come off as the words laughing, not the person. So it can look a little unnatural since it can imply the words are the ones doing the laughing, which is, of course, physically impossible. I recommend this because there are easy fixes to this that you can have without even needing to remove the action. Here are two suggestions with the word "laughed":

She laughed. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," she said with a laugh.

Those are two natural alternatives that still keep the laugh, so it's the best of both worlds. There are more alternatives, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for you.

There are frequent errors with editing the tags (sometimes you use a period/full stop before tags, or use a comma even though there's no tag following it). I.e.: Sisu smirked at Namaari. "I told you so,"

See how there's a comma there instead of a period/full stop? That was a frequent error since dialogue can end in anything other than a comma when you're not using a tag. On the opposite end, dialogue can end in anything other than a period/full stop when you are using a dialogue tag. So sometimes you'd do something like this: "Dialogue." She said. It should be: "Dialogue," she said.

There were times the dialogue was split when it didn't feel like it should have been. For example:

"No way," I gasped. Mama had described her to be just like this.

"You're Princess Namaari...".

The same person is speaking, so I didn't see the purpose of splitting them. I would suggest combining them like this: "No way," I gasped. Mama had described her to be just like this. "You're Princess Namaari..."

It looks far neater and doesn't risk confusing the audience since we're conditioned to think that a line break means a new person is speaking. So we will first think the "You're Princess Namaari..." was spoken by someone new instead of the narrator, hence why I'm recommending combining the lines in that case.

On the opposite end, there were times you put lines spoken by different people in the same paragraph. This wasn't frequent, but it did happen a couple of times and was noticeable, so I suggest making sure lines spoken by different people get their own space to speak.

Moving back into something more serious, there were quite a few times you had dialogue tag errors with capitalization. Whenever you had special punctuation (? or !) at the end of dialogue, you often capitalized the tag when it wasn't a proper noun. For example, from chapter two: "What house?" He replied. It should be: "What house?" he replied. Dialogue tags are never capitalized unless they are proper nouns, so even when you have dialogue ending with ? or !, the tag must be lowercase, hence why I made He he.

Lastly, I would recommend not using semicolons in dialogue since they're really awkward. You don't in the first chapter, but you do in the second one, and it looks very awkward. A wise friend of mine, hopelessroMINtic, once said we don't speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, and I agree. It's also, in general, recommended to downsize on semicolon usage since they overcomplicate sentences and are the most difficult punctuation, so the more they're used, the more risks of grammar errors there are. Some authors say not to use semicolons at all. I don't agree with that, but downsizing is something I agree with and recommend since they can easily make sentences awkward, especially in dialogue since we don't speak in a way where semicolons are obvious and things like that.

As a side note, I was also confused by the occasional usage of ( ) in dialogue and why that was present, though I won't dwell on it too much here other than to say I wasn't a fan of using ( ) in dialogue since it doesn't really make much sense grammatically, but it didn't happen often, so it's not a big deal, just a little awkward.

So all in all, the dialogue was okay, it could just use some tweaks to its grammar and presentation.

Worldbuilding: 7.5/10. I believe this is the third time I've mentioned it now, but the concept is really good, and that's a major part of the worldbuilding since it directly impacts the rules and descriptions of said world. The concepts here are fleshed out well so far, which is great considering there are only two chapters out as of the time of reviewing this, and I think the world is already pretty neat and developed, so that's why this section has a strong score. Along with that, there are some really good location descriptions as well, making the environments feel realistic and cool to read about.

The only deductions come from some of the descriptions throughout the story and also the way the dialogue is formatted making it hard to follow some of the worldbuilding (since a lot of exposition is given through dialogue). It got a little distracting at times with the frequent dialogue errors, semicolons in dialogue, awkward splitting of some dialogue, etc. I already explained the dialogue, but I'll explain the descriptions in their respective section.

However, even with those critiques, I still overall like the worldbuilding and think it deserves a high score.

Grammar/Spelling: 8/10. The overall SPAG is solid, and I didn't notice many errors, only smaller things, and the majority of those things were in dialogue. The spelling is great, and I don't think I noticed a single typo. The overall grammar was good. The only deductions come from the frequent grammar errors with the dialogue and how it was formatted since there were the dialogue tags and the end punctuation errors there. Otherwise, the SPAG was very good.

Description: 7/10. The descriptions throughout the story are overall good and have many interesting concepts and ideas that are presented through the unique sentences. It's a fantastical story, and I think you do a good job bringing that fantasy to life through intriguing descriptions that give us many cool colors and sights to imagine, so I overall think you did great. I just have a few suggestions.

This is a small thing but it is worth noting since it impacts the reader's imagination, but in chapter 1, the garden and the place she gets transported to don't really seem different at all, so when she exclaims that it isn't anything like her garden, I was a little confused. They both have the vibrant flowers, they're both calm and peaceful with the green grass, and they both have stone, the only main difference being that the new place has the stone as an archway. What I'd recommend is considering focusing on different details rather than the things the two have in common if your goal is to make them look completely different, since while reading, I thought they were very similar if not the same. Again, it's not a big deal, but it's still something to keep in mind when the core part of that description was saying it was completely different from the garden when it wasn't really described that way, making it a bit contradictory.

There were some what I like to call "director's notes" in the story, where you'll have a thought-provoking or showing over telling moment, and then you'll immediately having telling over showing right after it as if to explain the thought-provoking moment and showing over telling. For example, from chapter two, there's this: I frowned. How could an uncle I never knew of know what I looked like? Things were getting slightly more out of the ordinary.

The "Things were getting slightly more out of the ordinary" is the director's note here. Considering the context of this scene and the line prior to that line, I didn't see a purpose for including that line. We can already tell things are out of the ordinary based on the context of the scene with all the strange events happening to her, and also, the "How could an uncle I never knew of know what I looked like?" is a cool, thought-provoking line that I like, so that's another reason I felt the "Things were getting slightly more out of the ordinary" was unnecessary: it took away from the thought-provoking line before it since it felt like you were trying to directly tell us how to feel. That's why I call them director's notes: they direct the audience to the conclusion or feelings the writer wants them to feel in that moment. There's nothing inherently wrong with telling over showing. In fact, there are times it's needed and even recommended. However, those director's notes felt like unnecessary moments of telling over showing, which is why I'm bringing them up.

Lastly, the ! in descriptions felt a little unneeded, as I mentioned earlier, though I won't dwell on it here since I already explained that earlier, I'm just bringing it up since the ! I was talking about were the ones in the descriptions, not the dialogue, so it impacts this category.

All in all, the descriptions were pretty good and made sense for the book, and I overall liked them and think they deserve a good score.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. It's a little difficult to judge this category since the story only has two chapters out, and it's more concept-based than emotion-based, as I mentioned before in the characters section. Still, based on what's here so far, I like the themes/emotions present, and I think I can make some guesses as for what the themes will be moving forward, though it is a little early to tell and make confident guesses.

The deductions come from things I've stated throughout the review, so I won't dwell on them too much other than to list some of the things. Most notably, the dialogue and the tweaks it could use there, but also some of the descriptions and word choice factor into this score as well. I think I'll be able to give a more accurate judgment of the emotions/themes later in the story when more of the plot unwinds and we get to see more sides of this fantastical world, though for what's out so far, I think the themes/emotions are overall heading in the right direction and should get a good score.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. Coalescence as a title reminds me of the Moira ultimate from Overwatch, so maybe I'm biased when I say I like this word, but I like this word, and I also like what it implies about the story. Using just one word, you capture the reader's attention and make them curious to know what the book could possibly be about. No criticisms.

The blurb is overall good and tells us what we need to know about the story. It tells us world information, what the plot is, who the characters are, and even hints at possible themes with how good interacts with the world and what's going on with it. So I overall like the blurb and think it works for the book.

There are just a few things. This sentence: Now it's up to the new generation to forge a new path, or continue a legacy. The comma isn't needed. I understand why you put the comma there, and in some ways I almost want to say it sounds fine with the comma, though it is a compound predicate sentence where the "new generation" is doing both of the actions, therefore the comma is grammatically incorrect there, so that's why I'm pointing it out. There's also this sentence: The journey starts with Faith Fa, lost daughter of Fa Mulan from the House of Li. I would suggest putting "the" before "lost" based on how you're using it. Again, this is something where I understand why you did it (omitting the "the"), though I would still recommend it to make it more grammatically sound. Other than those two minor grammar errors, the blurb is good.

The cover is overall good. I like the choice to make it more artistic with varying drawings, and I also like the contrast between the real hand and the drawn hand. The only thing I'd say is while on the topic of that juxtaposition, while I do like it, I was a little confused by the choice to have one side clearly be the more "realistic" side and the other to be the more "drawn" and "fantastical" side, yet the realistic side with the real hand still has many drawings and fantastical elements. It's not a big deal since the overall cover is nice, though with the real hand, I was expecting maybe there to be more realistic depictions of things like the castle that's on that side, which would lead to more clear juxtaposition between the drawn and real hand, where the drawn hand's side of the cover is all hand-drawn things while the real hand's side of the cover is realism, if that makes sense. Again, it's not a big deal, though I was wondering why the realistic side still had a bunch of drawings, if that made sense. But it's still an overall cute, appealing cover, so it's not a big deal or anything like that, but still worth mentioning since those were my thoughts while looking at it.

Total: 76/100.

Honorable Mention

The Nameless King by BellOfSilence

Review:

Characters: 7.5/10. The characters throughout the story do a good job supporting the narrative and all have their own roles that make them all feel important and necessary for the story to take place. Arabella works well as the protagonist, and I like how her being a female foreigner in Egypt is addressed but also not over-the-top in any way. The focus is still on the core plot, but the time period and the social norm of that time and country are there to give Arabella obstacles and things to overcome without taking away from the main storyline, which made for good worldbuilding and a natural conflict for Arabella.

The only deductions come from things I'm going to explain throughout the review (I do the character section last, so everything has already been written prior to this); however, I will still say where the deductions come from so you know. Deductions were given for some overuse of exposition that made it hard to focus on the characters and their traits/development/personalities at times, and there were also many dialogue and description errors that also made it difficult to focus on characters at times. But other than those three things, I think the characters throughout the narrative are solid and deserve an equally solid score.

Plot: 8.5/10. The plot revolves around archaeology and main character Arabella at an Egyptian excavation site, which is already a pretty cool idea that's very unique from other things I see on Wattpad, so you're off to a good start there. But beyond that, the plot ends up growing into something even more interesting the longer it goes on. I would say the second half of what's published so far is stronger than the first half since it does a solid job keeping the reader hooked in with overall good pacing that finds its footing after around the fourth chapter, and the way the characters interact with the world around them (matched with said world being solidly built) makes for an intriguing plot that I enjoyed.

The only deductions come from some pacing issues, particularly in the beginning of the story, that made the plot feel a little hard to follow at times, especially with the overuse of exposition in chapter 1 that I will explain in the next section. Since chapter 1 is the hook and is arguably one of the most important chapters in your story, it is important to bring up and take majorly into consideration here, though I'll leave most of my critiques in the next section. I'm just bringing it up here so you know where the deductions came from. Otherwise, I enjoyed the plot.

Pacing: 7/10. The pacing finds its footing later in the story, and I would say the last four chapters of what is posted as of writing this review (chapter 12) are where the pacing gets really solid and has the plot flowing out much smoother and in a way that makes sense, so good job with the second half of the story in particular. The deductions come from some things in the beginning of the story.

I already explained it in the upcoming descriptions section (I tend to write those before the overall pacing), but there were times your descriptions dragged on a little and could have benefitted from being condensed, even just by a few words. However, I will get into that in the descriptions section. There were also times the paragraphs were a bit too long unnecessarily (where they contained more than one main idea) and could have benefitted from being split up more to prevent some walls of text, though I will get into that in the grammar section.

The opening journal entry in chapter one is another example of a place where the text started to drag a little. A twenty-minute first chapter is already asking a lot of a reader (which is fine—I personally write longer chapters and think there's nothing inherently wrong with them), though the journal entry is an exposition dump, and it's a 14-minute-long exposition dump, which is way too long, especially for a first chapter. It mostly exists to tell us what's going on in the world, inform us about the uncle, and establish character names and their roles in the story. I think the journal is a good way to give exposition more naturally, so I like that you did that, though consider trimming some of it to only what we really need to know in that moment. Do we need to know every piece of information that journal gives in order to understand chapter 1? If not, consider removing some of that information. Remember you have the entire story to give exposition, so don't feel pressured to put so much of it in chapter 1. I personally was also not a fan of the alternative font used, so to have it go on for so long was something I was not a personal fan of, and I feel simply italics could work better (especially since the alternative font led to spacing errors where it looked like separate sentences were put together—i.e., about five minutes in during the "Only someone who has spent..." paragraph, there's no space between "mass" and "First").

That being said, I think your pacing gets better from chapter 4 onward. It feels like you find your footing and really start honing in now that all the characters are at play and the plot is really swinging into motion.

Creativity: 8/10. As I mentioned in the plot section and will likely continue to say throughout the review, the premise is really good and is super creative. I can think of one other story off the top of my head that has archaeology playing a major role in it, and I've reviewed probably over a thousand stories by this point. It's a super unique idea that makes the narrative side of the creativity section really solid.

When it comes to the sentence structure and word choice, that's also good. You don't use the same sentence types over and over again, which is really good! The same applies to the word choice. I didn't notice you repeating the same words over and over again, which is good for engagement.

The only deductions come from some description errors and awkward sentences that could benefit from being tweaked, but I'll explain that later. Still, it's worth mentioning now to explain where the minor deductions came from. Otherwise, the creativity is solid throughout the story! Especially with that awesome story idea!

Dialogue: 6/10. When it comes to the dialogue itself, it's good and fits the characters. It's unique enough to the characters to give it more weight and the characters more individuality, so the creative side of the dialogue works. The deductions come from the grammatical side of the dialogue and its structuring, and I'll get into that below.

When it comes to the dialogue tags, they are done correctly a lot, though there are other times where they are done incorrectly, or you use too many at once. For example, this from chapter 3: Clearing his throat, he began, "If the passages or possible chambers were cleared out, it was by construction workers or men who already knew about them," Thorten said, turning the ushabti over in his hands, "Perhaps it got lost...". There are a few issues here. The first is you don't need both the "he began" and the "Thorten said" because that's doubling up the dialogue tag unnecessarily, so I would recommend going with one or the other. The second error is the p in Perhaps should be lowercase because you are continuing the dialogue using a comma; however, that leads me to the third error: the comma would be far more natural as a period/full stop because the "Perhaps it got lost" is like its own thing, so it doesn't make much sense to have a comma there. You do this many times where you'll have a comma connecting two completely different lines of dialogue, but it'd be far more natural as a period/full stop, so I would recommend using a period/full stop instead in many of those cases. I'll provide another example below.

"They told you?" he grumbled as his gaze slid to the men in question, who had already approached shortly after his niece. "Some of the rock has come loose, and the workers need to see if more is in danger of collapse first," the professor explained, addressing her and the other two, "It's not safe here." With that, he turned his gaze back to her (chap 2).

When connecting dialogue using a comma, the second part must be lowercase unless it is a proper noun because it is no longer a new line of dialogue, regardless of if you're intending it to be a new sentence or line of dialogue. The comma implies it is a continuation, so if you're intending it to be a new sentence, therefore capitalized, that's fine and works well! But then it needs to be a period/full stop at the end. So instead of "...about them," Thorten said, turning the ushabti over in his hands, "Perhaps it got lost...", consider: "...about them," Thorten said, turning the ushabti over in his hands. "Perhaps it got lost..." It's a tiny change but is far more grammatically sound and makes more sense for what you're trying to do by making the sentences more individual, if that makes sense.

I would recommend not having actions as tags, like hissed, smiled, looked, chuckled, etc. I say this because of the very nature of tags being called dialogue tags, not people tags, so that's why most tags are thing like said, asked, whispered, shouted, etc. since they describe how words are spoken. Words can't really be smiled or looked, and hissed is kinda up for debate. It's a little awkward to imagine. So I'm talking about tags like "Dialogue," he chuckled. That, for me, doesn't look natural since it sounds like you're saying the words are chuckling when that's not really possible. Especially when there are alternatives. Here are two alternatives:

He chuckled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a chuckle.

Those are two a little more natural, if that makes sense. I also say this because sometimes you'd use full sentences as tags when that isn't really how tags are supposed to be. For example, "the American took pity on the young woman to enlighten her" (chap 2). You use that full sentence as a tag, which doesn't really make sense, and that's why I suggest simply making it its own sentence by ending the dialogue with a period/full stop and capitalizing the t in the.

There were also some general grammar errors that slipped into the dialogue itself, but I will get into that in the SPAG section. Overall, the dialogue works for the story, it could just use some tweaks to the grammatical side of things. I hope that makes sense!

Worldbuilding: 8/10. I very briefly touched upon the worldbuilding throughout the review thus far, though I want to emphasize here now that I have a chance to talk about it directly how the world was really cool. The time period is handled well and is a great setting. I don't see many stories taking place in Egypt nowadays. I thought the location and time period were great choices, and you did a good job bringing the setting to life! The world plays an essential role in the story, making the worldbuilding feel a lot more impactful and entertaining to read about. It genuinely impacts the characters in a meaningful way, which is great and often an overlooked part of writing nowadays.

The only deductions come from some confusing descriptions that were partially due to some grammar errors and sometimes due to some overstuffing errors where there was too much description all at once. Other than those two things, I thought the worldbuilding was good, and I will explain both of those critiques in their respective sections since I wrote explanations for them prior to writing this section's score.

Grammar/Spelling: 7/10. The SPAG throughout the story is pretty solid, particularly the spelling. I don't think I noticed any spelling errors, so that means there either weren't any or they were so minor that they slipped under the radar for me, which is the most important part. Typos happen to everyone, but if they're minor enough to go unnoticed, that's really important. The punctuation is overall good. The deductions come from some general grammar errors I will explain below.

There were some times where the paragraphs could have benefitted from being split up to help with readability and also to give the main ideas more room to stand on their own. For example, from the prologue, there's the paragraph that starts with "In a jerky motion..." that could be trimmed. The sentence starting with "Groaning" could be split from it, for example, since it's a new action and idea that's separate from the rest of the paragraph that's about dreaming and smells. My recommendation would be to search for any times paragraphs are getting really long and see if you can split them, but only if you see two or more main ideas in a single paragraph that can be split up.

There were also a few dialogue errors (in terms of the grammar), but since I already explained that in the dialogue section, I won't go over it again here other than to mention it since those were grammatical errors.

Points were also taken off for some sentences that were awkward or extremely hard to understand. For example, from chapter one, "The desert wind made the fabric of her tent slightly to the small, square yurt flutter, and the first rays of morning sunlight felt inside through the entrance." What does this sentence mean? I think there are some missing words here that got lost in editing or something, so I would recommend tweaking this. Did you mean "fell" instead of "felt," and did you mean to have a verb like "move" somewhere in the first clause? Did you mean something like: "The desert wind made the fabric of the small, square yurt flutter, and the first rays of morning sunlight fell through the entrance." There were a few sentences like that throughout that made it confusing at times, which is why I always recommend reading out loud since that sentence is really difficult to understand. Reading out loud helps catch errors reading in your mind otherwise wouldn't, so that's why I recommend it.

Like I mentioned before in the pacing section, there were spacing errors throughout, which isn't a big deal, but it does get noticeable after a while. I won't take off much for it since it's not a big deal, but still something worth considering tweaking. I gave that example earlier about the journal entry, but there's more throughout the story, like "...Please, what happened?"How many times... (chapter 2). There are a few more spacing errors in chapter 2, but they're present throughout the entire story.

So, overall, the SPAG in the story is solid, it could just use some tweaks in certain areas and some changes to some sentences that were hard to understand. I hope all of that made sense!

Description: 6/10. The descriptions throughout the story overall do a good job setting the scene and overall mood. Like the worldbuilding is pretty cool, especially with how you describe the sand dunes and how they flow. I thought those descriptions were solid and did a good job to set the scene. You handle the descriptions of Egypt with care, and I enjoyed reading them very much. I just have a few suggestions I'll leave below.

I agree with what a couple commenters said about tightening your descriptions. Be careful not to do descriptions just for sake of having descriptions or sounding pretty since sometimes they did drag on too long. The perfect example that another commenter pointed out is the same paragraph I mentioned in the previous section. The "In a jerky motion..." paragraph from the prologue has really long last two sentences just to describe him getting his canteen to drink. I like the general idea you have in those sentences, though those last two sentences could benefit from being tightened. I actually really like the rewrite MichaelHoliday gave for those last two sentences since they're still pretty and do a good job giving the reader a sensory experience while getting to the point a bit faster.

The same applies to forcing adverbs. Adverbs are already telling over showing, and while that's not inherently a bad thing by any means (sometimes telling over showing is even essential, so it's not a big deal to use adverbs and telling over showing depending on circumstance), but be careful with putting them where they're unnecessary or even confusing for sake of having an extra word in there. For example: "...clearing his throat softly" (chap 2). I didn't feel the "softly" was needed for two reasons. One, it doesn't really do anything to enhance the sentence, in my opinion. Two, how does one clear their throat softly? It's just a little awkward to imagine, if that makes sense. If you try to act out a soft clearing of the throat, what happens? It isn't really soft just by nature of what clearing your throat means, so that's why I recommend being careful with adverbs and making sure they make sense and are needed for the sentence. I always recommend acting out actions if you're ever unsure about how natural they are in the moment. I also say this because there were times this redundancy was also in the main text, not just the adverbs, like "...that nervous trepidation stirred in her stomach again" (chap 3). Trepidation is similar to nervous to the point where it's considered a synonym, so you're essentially saying "that nervous nervousness stirred in her stomach again." See why that isn't necessary? I recommend removing nervous and keeping the trepidation since it's the stronger word, though either one works. I hope all of what I just said made sense!

Like I mentioned in the grammar section, there were also some sentences that were hard to understand that made me have to reread multiple times to get, and that hurt the descriptions at times, but it's nothing I'll dwell on or take off too much for since I already talked about it in the grammar section, though it's still something to consider since it impacts descriptions and how they're presented.

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. The themes and emotions presented throughout the story are overall solid and do a good job portraying the mental state of Arabella and the weight of her discoveries along with the pressure she's under considering the circumstances. You do a good job portraying her thoughts and giving us a good look at her motivations and her determination to find adventure. It's refreshing to see a daring protagonist who isn't over-the-top about it and just genuinely really loves the adventure, almost Lara Croft style. The emotions are pretty diverse and don't feel stale.

The only deductions come from the things I've mentioned before that could impact the fluidity of the story and therefore the emotions, like the description and dialogue errors I mentioned along with the confusing sentences that appeared here and there. But other than those few things, the themes and emotions are good, so I think you did a great job with this section!

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8.5/10. I overall like the title here since it provides a unique spin on what it means to be king. The use of the "nameless" adjective is what really sells the title here, and for probably obvious reasons, it sets up what the story is going to be about in only three words without needing to go over-the-top with it. You overall do a good job with it. No criticisms.

The blurb is overall good and does a good job getting the reader ready to, well, read! The grammar is solid throughout the blurb, which is imperative to keeping readers interested. The only critique I have is about this part of the blurb: The men and women of the archaeological excavation stumble upon a still-sealed burial chamber. But not only its condition and location raise questions. Who was buried here, why was his name erased from all records and reliefs, and why were many grave goods wantonly desecrated? The critique I have is regarding the second sentence since it feels a bit awkward, and on my first read through I straight up thought it was a sentence fragment and got really confused. I had to read it out loud to understand, and once I did understand, it felt less awkward, but I feel there are ways to maybe make this less awkward so the first read through is still smooth. For example, maybe connect it to the first sentence, or tweak it to be something like "However, it is not only its conditions and location that raise questions." Or you can connect the "But" sentence and the third sentence. There are many ways to connect them to make them feel a bit more fluid, but that's just my opinion based on my read through, so that's just something to consider and not something I'm saying you absolutely have to do. I otherwise like the blurb and think you did a good job with it.

The cover is overall good, like the title. It paints the atmosphere very well and does a good job establishing what the book is going to be about. It's simple yet it shows what the book is going to entail and gives us the immediate vibe of the narrative. For that reason, I have no criticisms.

Total: 74.5/100.

ALL REVIEWS

Even If It Hurts by LAJoyner

Review:

Characters: 7/10. I was pleasantly surprised by the roles of the other members during this story. I don't think enough readers/writers understand how difficult it is to juggle three characters at once, let alone 10+, and that's what you're doing here. You have Jinah, the seven boys, Yuna, Agust, Seok, Mark, etc. That's a lot of characters to juggle, especially in such a short amount of time. For example, I was happy you gave Namjoon his leader role, and he took charge with Yuna and handled that situation. Jin being with Yoongi makes the most sense, and the Yoonjin dynamic is good. Taehyung's the one who found the evidence and kickstarted the BTS side of the plot. All of them have things they do without feeling like they're overstaying their welcomes. The simplest way I can explain this is you don't overinflate their importance to the story by trying to shove them in everywhere and instead sprinkle the BTS members where they need to be, which shows good discipline.

You know I have to mention him: Jimin. I was surprised by his role in the story. It seemed he grew more into a main character than a side character, and the way he treated Agust made perfect sense. Obviously it's fiction and not to be confused with real life, but I do have a soft spot for fanfics that include real life traits of the members and give them roles that make sense to their real life personalities. Jimin being the one to take care of the kid makes perfect sense considering his adoration of kids and how he's kindergarten teacher coded, and this was seen even more in recent times with how Jimin reacted to the kids during his MUSE videos. So I liked his involvement in the story a lot.

The characters overall work for the narrative, though I have one question and a few critiques. Let's start with the question.

This isn't going to factor into the score in any way, this is just my curiosity since I've seen this in a few stories before, and I've always been curious to know why: why is Jinah referred to as "you" despite not being a Y/n? She's not in the story often, so I was a little puzzled by the decision to use second person only a handful of times throughout the otherwise exclusively third-person story. I've seen this a few times but never understood the purpose of using second person for an original character with her own appearance and name, so I'm genuinely curious to know why this decision was made, if you wouldn't mind explaining.

Moving away from the question and into the critiques, let's start small and work our way up. For starters, just a small thing that confused me was when Mark found out Jinah was pregnant, his reaction was to glare at her, which I found very inconsistent with how he was characterized, and also how he reacted one paragraph later. It's just a small moment and no big deal, maybe more of a nitpick than anything, but Mark was characterized as soft and caring, but then he glares at her when he finds the test, and after she says one thing, he goes back to being soft and the same character before with no real mention of that kind of sudden anger again. So it just felt a little inconsistent with his characterization as someone who would drop anything and be super supportive and kind to his sister to suddenly glare at her over a pregnancy test while he knows she's in the middle of likely one of the hardest events in her life. It just didn't feel like how he was characterized before, if that makes sense. It's a very small thing, I know, though still worth mentioning. And the only reason I'm bringing it up is because the same thing happens to Yoongi in the Biff thith umff meff! chapter, where he, who's been characterized as serious and willing to do anything for Jinah, even if it hurts, takes a moment to blush in front of Mrs. Choi and have a laugh with her and Jimin before he remembers Jinah, the person he was established as willing to do anything for, is in grave danger. I'll talk more about this in the plot section when I talk about tone (the next section), but I'm bringing it up here as a prelude to what I'll say and why this moment is important to the flow/tone of the narrative, so you'll see a better explanation in the next section.

The last suggestion I have has to do with telling over showing, though that's something I'll cover in far more detail in the descriptions section, I just wanted to bring it up here to mention where else the deductions come from. There were many times the emotions were told instead of shown. And, hey, I don't want to give the wrong impression here: telling over showing is honestly fine and even necessary at times, it's just there were some moments where I felt the telling over showing wasn't necessary, or that you repeated the character emotions twice in a row. I'll give examples of the telling over showing later, but I will give an example of repeated emotions now. In the most recent chapter (Little Agust, Sugar, and Mr. Jimin), there's this: Taken entirely by surprise, Jimin is shocked. You see how you're repeating the emotion there? Surprise and shock are synonyms to one another, so you're almost saying "Taken entirely by surprise, Jimin is surprised." That's why I'd suggest downsizing on those repeated emotions and also the telling over showing, but I'll get into that second thing later. I hope all that made sense.

With all that being said, I overall think the characters work for the story and deserve a high score.

Plot: 8/10. The plot follows BTS, but Yoongi in particular, through a journey to find out what's going on after Yoongi suddenly gets aggressive with his lover, Jinah. After investigating, they discover Yoongi is in deep sh*t and needs help, so BTS rush off to get to the bottom of what's happening and save Yoongi and Jinah from the terrible situations they're in. The plot is pretty cool, and I'll mention it again in the title section, but I like the repetition of "Even if it hurts" throughout the narrative to act as the core phrase leading the story from point A to point B. It's a cool plot that has elements of mystery in it but also plenty of other emotions to get invested in.

The main critique I have is there is a moment where there's major tonal whiplash. I normally wouldn't bring up just one moment of tonal whiplash, but this one is more severe since it happens during the core of the plot. In the chapter Biff thith umff meff!, Jimin finds Yoongi kidnapped, and Yoongi has knowledge that Seok is going after his beloved, Jinah. Instead of treating the situation seriously, they take a moment to laugh and curse, and this is how it looks:

She smiles at him," I was married to a sailor. Hell, I've learned some pretty colorful words in my younger days. I don't get to use them much anymore." They join her in laughing.

He grabs Jimin by the shoulders, "Jinah, he's going after Jinah!"

Now that I laid it out like that, do you see how sudden it is to go from laughing and humor to suddenly Yoongi's beloved might be getting hurt or killed? It also doesn't really make sense in this context considering what I said before about characterization. I don't believe Yoongi would waste a second in this scenario, especially after he himself was just hurt and tied up, and I feel it'd be far more consistent with his characterization if he was so caught in the moment that he didn't even care that he cursed in front of Mrs. Choi and instead ran out shouting about how Jinah was in danger. So that's why I suggest considering tweaking this moment and keeping the humor to a low level, and also not putting it in a moment where Yoongi would be panicking and wanting to move quickly otherwise. I hope that makes sense.

However, with that being said, I still enjoyed the plot a lot and thought it was entertaining to read about. Wait, does that make me sound psychopathic cause the story is all about angst and manipulation? Okay, okay, you know what I mean by "entertaining," right? Right???

Pacing: 7/10. Something I was surprised by was how much I enjoyed the quick pace of the story. Normally I'm more of a slow burn kind of gal, but I enjoyed how the speed kept the plot moving every chapter. I think the overall pacing is good, I just have a couple of suggestions.

The pacing in the first chapter could be tightened. It happens very fast, and while I actually do like the fast pace like I just said, be careful it's not too fast that it's overwhelming. Most notably, the ending of that chapter got a little confusing for me. The ending of that chapter has this:

He knocks on the door checking up and down the hallway as he waits. As the door starts to open he pushes his way in.

"What do you want to leave her alone?"

She smiles at him and runs her hands down his chest to the belt of his jeans, "You."

This ending is a good cliffhanger, so it's not the ending itself that has anything wrong with it, it's more that on my first read through, this part made me really confused. The last "she" we were aware of was Jinah, so consider setting this new woman up by stating there's a new woman there. You don't have to say the name, that's not what I'm suggesting, just as a first time reader, I genuinely thought the she was Jinah for a second there since Yoongi starts talking really quickly without giving us as readers a second to process what's going on. This entire first chapter is quick, which I'm overall okay with, but that's why I'd suggest taking this moment to add just a couple more words and say something like "...he pushes his way in past the woman who caused all this" or "...he pushes his way in past the woman he hates" or something similar that you think would work! Just something so we know we're dealing with a new woman, and it gives us an extra few words to process what's happening, if that makes sense. It doesn't have to be what I said, but consider adding an indicator to set up this new woman's presence since the "she" feels a bit sudden.

There were also a few chapters that ended very abruptly. For example, the chapter "From the Beginning" in particular has a very abrupt ending. Typically chapters end when the conflicts within those chapters end. For example, if two characters are having a conversation, the chapter might end after that conversation does. Not always, but it's typically more satisfying that way. For the chapter From the Beginning, it felt like the chapter had far more to say but then ended. It picks up in the next chapter, though it made me question why split the chapters in the middle of the same conversation instead of just combining them? You have longer chapters that are 7-9 pages long, and if you combined those two chapters, I believe it'd be about 7-8 pages, and it'd eliminate the awkward ending. I brought that chapter up in particular because it's an important one that explains the entire premise of the story, so that's why I'm spending time on it since it does majorly impact the narrative. I hope that makes sense.

But the overall pacing is good, like I said before!

Creativity: 7.5/10. The creativity is overall pretty good. The story idea is nice, as I explained in the plot section, and I think the concept behind the emotions is cool. I like the repetition of the "even if it hurts" throughout the novel and how it relates to the themes. I actually think one of my favorite parts of the story is the "even if it hurts" part, and you'll see me praise it again in the title/blurb/cover section as I think it's very interesting.

The main critique I have is there's a lot of telling over showing, though this is something I'll cover in detail later. I already wrote a description about it in the description section, so I'll save my main explanation for there, though I'm bringing it up here to explain where some of the deductions came from. The telling over showing sometimes made the emotions not as diverse as they otherwise could have been, but again, that's something I'll explain later with examples and suggestions for how to tweak it.

The main thing is something that happens in the beginning parts of the story, but not as much later on: sometimes you fall into a habit of writing the same type of sentence over and over, and this is the start then stop kind of sentence where there's no punctuation and the sentences are similar in length. So there are no commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, interruptions, or anything else of the sort. They also often start with names. Here's an example from the chapter "I Stole Her From Him":

The next day after dance practice the guys head out for the apartment. Jin went with Yoongi back to the house. Jin wanted to start prepping for their next meal and Yoongi said he had some work to do. So the others rode together to the apartment. Taehyung remembered the gate code from the paper he found.

Do you see how the sentences all read the same and often start with character names? Consider combining some of these sentences or diversifying them, like the sentence starting with "so" can be combined to the previous sentence. It's not a big deal since it dials down later in the book, but it's still something worth mentioning.

Dialogue: 6/10. Something I like about this dialogue is how you don't only do letter stuttering, like the I-I stutter. You use other stuttering methods and secondary symptoms with body language to show a character's stutter rather than relying solely on the letter stutter method. Not only does that make the dialogue more attractive and realistic, it also provides a refreshing take on stuttering in dialogue since most stuttering I see is just the repeated letter stutter over and over again, which gets extremely hard to read and, to put it bluntly, annoying after a while. But your dialogue doesn't have this problem as it utilizes different techniques to make the stuttering believable and interesting, and I just wanted to take a moment to point that out since I think it's really important, and it also made me like your dialogue.

The deductions come from the various grammar errors revolving around specifically the dialogue. The other SPAG errors I'll cover later, so they don't apply here. I'll start with the non-grammar stuff and then move into the grammar, mostly because I only have one thing to say that's not really related to grammar.

In the beginning parts of the story (though this does dial down later on), it can get really confusing to know who's speaking because of how the dialogue is formatted. What I mean by this is sometimes you'll have two lines spoken by the same character separated, which looks like this:

"Line one."

"Line two."

But both of them are spoken by one character. This is what you're intending:

"Line one." Spoken by character A.

"Line two." Also spoken by character A.

But this is what readers see:

"Line one." Spoken by character A.

"Line two." Spoken by character B.

Because we're so used to the back and forth speech pattern, if you're breaking dialogue up like that, it makes it confusing to the audience. Here's an example from your book, from the chapter "DNA" near the end of it:

"He may look like his daddy, but he doesn't look like me!"

He runs his hand through his hair and then asks, "What did you use to get a DNA test done?"

Both of those lines are spoken by Yoongi, so that's why I suggest instead of splitting them up, try combining them. It'd look like this:

"He may look like his daddy, but he doesn't look like me!" He runs his hand through his hair and then asks, "What did you use to get a DNA test done?"

You see how much easier that is to read, and how it clears confusion? I didn't see a clear purpose for splitting up the dialogue, which is why it got confusing very quickly, especially since this happened quite a lot in the beginning of the story. I hope that makes sense.

Now let's move into the grammar side of things. Dialogue tags are often done incorrectly where you end the dialogue with a period/full stop when you're using a tag, which is incorrect. For example: "About Yoongi." says J Hope. The period/full stop needs to be a comma. Whenever you're using a dialogue tag, the dialogue can end in anything other than a period/full stop.

This is more of a personal suggestion, but I would suggest not using the comma introduction method since it's redundant. By that I mean, you'll often have dialogue like this: She blushes, "Hush Agust." You don't need the comma. By saying "she" here, we know Yuna's the one talking, so the comma is rendered redundant and also a little awkward since you're implying the blush is the dialogue tag, which is very awkward for a reason I'll explain in a minute. Unless you're doing something like Jimin says, "Dialogue," I'd suggest not having the comma method after actions, and I'll explain why not to use actions as tags in the next paragraph.

Actions as tags is something I always advise against because it's really unnatural. They're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so by saying things like "he smiles" or "she blushes," you're almost implying the words are the thing smiling/blushing. That's why many authors advise against using them, especially since there are a couple alternatives. Let's use smiles as an example. Here are two alternatives:

He smiles. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he says with a smile.

So now you have the "smile," only there's no risk of it being awkward since you're not using it as the tag anymore. Of course there are many alternatives to choose from, though those two are the most common and good for getting in the habit of not solely using actions as tags. I hope that makes sense.

Worldbuilding: 7.5/10. The world is interesting, and I like the usage of money to tell the story, like Yuna being after money and living in a low-income area. The environments are interesting as well, so I think the overall world is engaging and fun to read about. I only have a few recommendations.

The worldbuilding could use some minor tweaks. For starters, a minor thing, earlier in the story, when Taehyung finds all the notes and the plot is unraveling, we see the threats and how Seok/Yuna asked Yoongi to meet at "(name of apartment high rise)." This is one of my worldbuilding pet peeves where, instead of giving a name, it's either that or blacked out with xxxx or something of the sort, and I very, very strongly suggest not doing this. Not only does it completely break immersion almost immediately, but it's also really unnecessary. Even making up a silly name is a better option, in my opinion. Using brackets to say "name of apartment high rise" instead of just giving it a name (maybe base it on an apartment high rise actually in Korea, if you'd like) really pulls readers out of the moment since it's like that's an author's note and not part of the story. Like I said, you could also make something up, even if it's based on real life. Like Stranger Things made up Hawkins, but now that's an iconic location, so feel free to make something up instead of being vague about it, that way you keep your reader's attention. That's a smaller thing, so I'll get into the larger thing now.

You'll hear me repeat throughout the review that the telling over showing could use some tweaks, and that also applies to the worldbuilding as there were a few times the world felt a little vague because we were told things about it instead of shown. For example, in the You Will Pay For What You've Done! chapter, the beginning paragraph says "They decide to go to the new address located in the lower income side of town." This is telling, though consider showing it's lower-income instead. And by the way, I'm not saying give mountains of paragraphs to describe it. In fact, I don't think that's a good idea, and I don't think that would fit in with the pacing and style of the book; however, maybe just a handful of sentences here and there, or one new paragraph to set the scene. Instead of telling us it's low income, have the boys walk by overflowing dumpsters with dumpster divers there looking ashamed when BTS catch them. Maybe show cracked sidewalks, boarded up windows, graffiti, doors with broken hinges that squeak loudly when you open them. That last example would be especially easy to add because Yuna opens the door in that opening paragraph, so you can consider adding a squeaky description as she opens the door, therefore keeping the plot moving but also taking a second to incorporate one of the five senses more: sound.

So those were my suggestions, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for you and your style!

Grammar/Spelling: 6.5/10. The overall SPAG is okay, I just have a few suggestions for the SPAG throughout the story, so I'll start with the smaller things and then work my way up to the larger things, just to keep things more organized and easier to read.

To begin with something really small, I'd suggest spelling out numbers at least from 1-10 if not 1-100. It flows stronger with the text and is less distracting. If you were to say 1 month, the 1 stands out, but one month flows far smoother. You see what I mean since I put them right next to each other? The "one" blends in far smoother and keeps the flow, but the 1 can be a little awkward. It's no big deal at all and not something you need to jump to change or anything, but it is something worth considering in future stories.

There were the dialogue errors I mentioned, but since I already explained them, I'm not going to go into detail again here other than to just mention them.

Another small thing, but consider downsizing on the all caps usage. I typically recommend never using all caps, but I guess it's alright if used very sparingly, though sometimes I felt it was overused here. For example, it was used in three chapters back-to-back, sometimes multiple times per chapter. The three chapters I'm referring to are "Some Choices Are Made For Us," "You Sniffing After Her?", and "Useless." So I'd suggest downsizing on how many you use since all caps are telling over showing, and, depending on how often/how they're used, they can come off as overdramatic at times. That's a smaller thing since you don't do it too often, but it's still something worth mentioning.

There are some minor typos throughout the story. Nothing too major but still noticeable. That's another small thing. An example would be from chapter 3, "It's Yours If You Want It" where you spell suitcase as suite case. But again, that's something minor and not going to factor too much into the score. It's more to just bring it to your attention.

Moving into a more core issue, I mentioned the pronoun thing earlier with calling Jinah you despite her not being a Y/n and being confused by that, and one of the reasons is because you have moments where the text gets confusing because "you" is being used to describe someone who isn't Jinah, making it really hard to follow the scene. For example, from the chapter Let Me Introduce Myself, there's this:

"Just listen." She hands him her phone, and in puzzlement, he does as she says and puts the phone to his ear.

You use his phone to call the police and let them know you think your friend's house is being broken into and that you heard her screaming.
Your husband is in shock. "Baby, what the hell is going on? It's Jinah. I recognize her voice. There is a ma..."

See how the "you" is used confusingly in the second part there? We were just using "she" and referring to Hobi's sister, so how is "You," or Jinah, using Hobi's phone to call the police? I think you just meant "she" here, but it is a little confusing to suddenly go from Hobi's sister's she/her pronouns to now the you we're used to for Jinah.

The last thing I'm going to mention is something I'm not sure I want to get into because you fix this later in the story. Even in the chapter I just mentioned, Let Me Introduce Myself, this error is fixed; however, since it happens throughout the beginning parts of the book, it's important to mention: commas. Your commas get far better later in the book, like around the second half, but there's still a good chunk of the first part of the story that has many comma errors. They were very frequent. For example, from the chapter I Stole Her From Him, there's this: The boys show up at the apartment and the door is partially open, cautiously they enter, J Hope and Namjoon in the lead.

What I recommend: The boys show up at the apartment, and the door is partially open. Cautiously, they enter, J Hope and Namjoon in the lead.

I just broke up the sentence and tweaked the comma usage, but otherwise kept the word choice the same. So those were where some of the comma issues were. Sometimes you needed commas before conjunctions and didn't include them, sometimes there were introductory clauses that needed commas and didn't get them, etc. But again, the comma errors lessened in the later parts of the story, so it's not a huge deal, but since it took up a big chunk of the beginning chapters, it's still something I have to factor into this score.

All in all, the SPAG is okay and improves later in the story, there were just a few things to consider in the future.

Description: 7/10. The descriptions overall fit into the story well. I'm very glad you never went over-the-top with them or tried to do too much that it became hard to focus. I didn't notice any problems with walls of text, or shoving too much into one paragraph, so that was good. I think you did a good job with them, and they're deserving of a high score.

I only have a few suggestions for the descriptions. As always, I'll start small and work my way up. To begin, be careful with redundancy. For example, sometimes you'll say glare angrily, but that's redundant. The definition of a glare is to "stare in an angry or fierce way" (Oxford). So by saying "glare angrily," you're essentially saying "angry stare angrily." You see why that's redundant? That's why I always suggest being careful with adverbs because I see this kind of thing in a lot of books where the adverb means the same thing as the word it's trying to modify, so that's why I recommend considering downsizing on adverbs and being sure the ones you use don't repeat the meaning of the word it's modifying, if that makes sense.

Moving into different critiques, be careful with descriptions making sense. There were a handful of descriptions that made me stop and try to execute them for real, and it didn't work. For example, from the chapter Yuna and Agust, there's the description about Jimin where his chin is slightly quivering. His chin? Did you mean his lower lip? How does a chin slightly quiver? If you try this for real, it's really awkward and also not really noticeable either way, so that's why the description had me pausing for a second. So that's what I mean by some of the descriptions being a little confusing at times. When in doubt, act it out. If there are any character actions you're describing that you're not sure of, acting it out for real is a great way to go about it and what I'd recommend doing.

Telling over showing is the main thing, though. You often tell us exactly what characters are feeling, and I suggest giving more nuance. Not all the time; it's perfectly okay and sometimes even recommended to tell over show at times. Sometimes you need to tell, so there's nothing inherently wrong with telling over showing. I'm not telling (pun intended) you to never tell. I use a lot of telling over showing depending on the book/scene I'm writing too, and I think some people overreact about the show don't tell thing at times. However, with a story like this, deeply rooted in complex moral dilemmas and emotions, I'd suggest considering incorporating more nuance and subtext into the dialogue and character emotions. I wrote a lot more about this in the themes/emotions section with specific examples and suggestions for how to do this, so I'll let future me explain that part, but I'm bringing it up here since it does factor into the descriptions and where there were times I felt you could have described and showed more instead of told. But like I said, the next section will give specific suggestions and examples, so I'll give the specific suggestions in a minute.

Overall, the descriptions work for the book, and I'm glad you never went overboard with them to keep up the fast pace. All I recommend are a few tweaks to tighten them a bit. I'll explain a little more in the next section, too.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. I think the themes of love and how one person can do unspeakable things for love, even if it hurts, are interesting and great themes. I also like the emotions present throughout the book and how they interact with one another. I think the core story idea in itself is like a theme, where it only starts because of Yoongi's love for Jinah driving him to do things he otherwise wouldn't, so I think that's really cool. I like these kinds of stories where the character decisions and emotions are what drive the plot and even cause it to start. So good job there.

I have only a handful of suggestions, and all of them are things I stated before. For one, tweaking that tonal inconsistency I mentioned earlier so the emotions flow stronger and feel more connected, though since I explained it earlier, I won't go into detail here other than to mention that that factors into the score as that scene does impact the emotions and tension. The second thing is another thing I mentioned before about making sure the descriptions are consistent and clear, and not repeating the same emotion in a slightly different way in the same sentence (like the example I gave in the character section), but since that's something I also explained earlier, I won't go into too much detail again here, either.

The main tweak I have is what I already suggested in the descriptions section: considering downsizing on telling over showing. While telling isn't inherently a bad thing and is even necessary in some cases, I felt there were some scenes you did too much and could benefit from showing. Not only to diversify the presentation of the emotions, but also so the readers can take a break to process the feelings with the characters. The more you tell us "Jimin is shocked," "Yoongi is angry," "Jinah is scared," etc., the less time we have to really think and break down what's happening since you're telling us exactly what to know, so we don't have that room to think, if that makes sense. This story is very emotional and is driven by its themes of what someone would do for love, which is a great theme as I mentioned before, and that's why I'd especially suggest considering incorporating more showing. Instead of telling us they're shocked, angry, scared, etc., consider showing that via subtext within the dialogue, body language, eyes, and other non-verbal communication methods. I'm not saying always use things like non-verbal communication since that can get repetitive depending on how it's written, but what I am saying is consider diversifying at times, especially in emotional moments. I have an awesome resource you might like about non-verbal communication, and it's an article by Writer Unboxed talking about the different non-verbal communication methods and explaining certain body postures, like standing too close can be considered aggressive while standing too far could be a sign of fear, so maybe you can incorporate something like into your scenes, especially the ones with Jinah since she's in a constant state of fear. The article is called "Non-Verbal Communication in Writing" by Jeanne Kisacky, and it's available on Writer Unboxed. If you're interested in seeing it, if you type that into Google, it should be the first thing that comes up!

Overall, the themes/emotions are good and drive the plot forward. They closely intertwine with how the plot and characters act, making them feel more interesting and complex. All in all, I think they're good, they could just use some tweaks here and there.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7/10. The title is overall very good. The SPAG is good, so from a technical perspective, I don't see any issues with it. What I like most about it is how it's repeated throughout the story as this essential line that the reader should brand into their brain. So I like how the title connects with the story, and also how it connects with the blurb to make the overall presentation look neater. No criticisms.

The blurb is overall okay. The SPAG is overall okay too other than a small thing I'll get into in a minute. It tells us what happens in the story, and the quote excerpts aren't too long that they're distracting or over-the-top.

The last sentence has a spelling error in it. This is the last sentence: Answers to these questions are more await you inside the story. . . The "are" should be "and." Other than that, I don't think I noticed any SPAG errors, so the technical side of the blurb is overall good, as is the creative side.

I like the color scheme for the cover being that gold-ish and black/gray. I think it's an interesting color scheme where the gold almost looks like chalk and the black like a blackboard, so it's creative in that sense. My main criticism is I feel like it could be altered to fit in more with the book. It kind of feels casual, if that makes sense? Not as angsty as it could be, is probably the better way to describe it. For example, maybe consider having a darker, grittier cover where it has more of a black and red color scheme to fit in with the violence against women present throughout the book. Even though I like the gold and black here, maybe black and red could fit in more with the narrative. Like, for example, maybe it's a closer-up picture of Yoongi and it's bloodier and grittier, and he looks desperate and/or angry. That could be a way to make the cover more related to the narrative inside, or maybe there's a faceless woman (Jinah) trapped out of reach, and Yoongi's desperately reaching for her but not quite touching her. Maybe you can even have blood on the woman's chest to foreshadow what happens later. However, those are just a couple of suggestions, and I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for you!

Total: 70.5/100.

Baby In The Box by writer_tee

Review:

Characters: 7.5/10. I'll mention it throughout the review, but the characters are fun, as is the plot idea. The characters have a lot of fun banter and moments, and I like how they each have their own roles in their schemes, like Jimin's role is uh... to put it simply... being... Jimin, while Jungkook is more of a foot soldier who does a lot of the brute force stuff, and Jin is more of a planner and almost like a babysitter for whenever things go wrong, etc. All of them have their own roles within their schemes, which I thought was cool to see, especially since their roles reflected their personalities really well! I overall liked the characters and how they fit in with the narrative.

The deductions come from two things: 1) pacing, 2) dialogue. For pacing, a lot happens all at once, and there are a lot of characters introduced, and a lot of names to get accustomed to in a short amount of time, though I'll explain this and the dialogue more throughout the review. The dialogue had some formatting issues that led to pacing issues. However, I will explain all this throughout the review, I'm just bringing it up here to explain where the deductions came from and to act as a prelude for what I'll be talking about throughout the review. All in all, I still think the characters are overall good.

Plot: 8/10. The plot is honestly my favorite part of the book. I really love this idea that these thieves are stuck with a baby all because of one mishap while on a mission. It's a cute, fun plot idea that's really whacky and creative. Your goal is to be fun, and you did a good job with that, giving the story a lot of life and intrigue that made it an interesting read. All in all, I think the plot is cute, creative, and engaging, and you did a good job with it.

The only deductions come from the pacing being very fast and making the scenes/plot hard to follow at times, though I will explain this in the next section, I'm only mentioning it here to explain why there were points deducted.

Pacing: 6/10. The pacing is the thing I believe could use the most improvement. The pacing gets better in I'd say chapters 9 and 10, though the pacing in the beginning of the story especially is very, very fast, giving us little time to understand what's going on and process who's who. You introduce a lot of characters very quickly, like the seven members of BTS, Uncle Bang, Jae-hyuk, Han Su, Sooho, and Sungmin. I'm not sure if I'm missing anyone, but I believe those were all the characters introduced within two chapters, and that's without factoring in how we also had to learn two sets of names for the BTS members since they also had their codenames, which were luckily their stage names, making it easier, but it's still a lot to keep up with. That's 19 names we learned within 2 chapters. Do you see why that's a lot? Especially since the plot moves very fast in the beginning where it's all action and dialogue, and not much time to slow down for description, pauses in the action, etc. Consider including more of those things to help slow down the story at times to give us enough time to process what's happening.

The dialogue is formatted in a way where it also impacts the pacing since it's hard to tell who's who when they're speaking. You often bunch up the dialogue all in one paragraph, so 2-5 people could be speaking all in one paragraph, which makes it hard to follow, and makes the story feel like it's moving faster artificially since we're zooming through the dialogue instead of letting the dialogue have its own space to stand on its own, though I'll explain this (with examples and suggestions for how to fix it) later, I'm just bringing it up here since it contributed to the plot and characters being hard to follow at times, particularly in the beginning when we don't know the characters and we're just getting introduced to them.

So my recommendations for dialogue will come later, but in general, the pacing is extremely fast, especially in the beginning, and could use some time to slow down to give us more descriptions, more space for dialogue so we can process it, more time to see what's going on and to see more about the characters, etc. I'll have a specific suggestion in the worldbuilding and description sections, as well as the dialogue section.

Creativity: 7.5/10. Like I mentioned in the plot section, the story idea is really cool, whacky, and creative. It's a fun story with a fun idea, and seeing as that's what you were going for, you did that part really well, so good job with that. My only criticisms for the creativity come down to some repetition issues I'll mention below.

The main critique I have is the overuse of semicolons, particularly in dialogue. As a friend of mine, hopelessroMINtic, once said, we don't speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, so seeing it in dialogue can be really awkward, especially when you use them a lot, and almost exclusively in dialogue. You use semicolons outside of dialogue too, but the majority of them are in dialogue, which made it a bit strange for me to read since description warrants semicolon usage far more than dialogue. Keep in mind semicolons overcomplicate sentences, so that's why many authors recommend using them sparingly if at all. I personally don't mind semicolon usage as long as it's not too often, though you often used semicolons 5-10+ times a chapter, often in dialogue where it looks unnatural. I would suggest just using periods/full stops and breaking up the sentences more instead of using that many semicolons, let alone in dialogue. They were overused a lot, so that's why I advise against it, especially in dialogue.

The overall creativity with the story idea is good, though the semicolons got distracting and often looked unnatural since they were in dialogue frequently, a place where it's a little unnatural to see semicolons. I hope that makes sense.

Dialogue: 6/10. The dialogue throughout the story is overall okay, and it often has funny moments and cute banter that make it engaging to read. The criticisms I have for the dialogue are all about grammar and presentation, not style, so that's good since that kinda stuff is the easiest to fix, though there are frequent errors I will go over below.

The main issue with the dialogue is you often put all the dialogue together in one paragraph instead of splitting it up. There are times, like the first half of chapter 2, where you give each new character their own space to speak, but you also often put every line of dialogue in one paragraph. What I mean by that is you write it like this: "Hi," Raven said. "Hey," Jimin said." "What's up?" Jungkook asked. It should be:

"Hi," Raven said.

"Hey," Jimin said.

"What's up?" Jungkook asked.

Every time a new person is speaking, give them their own space to talk. Not only is this grammatically correct, but it's also so much easier on the reader's eyes, and it adheres to the natural way readers read dialogue. We see it as a back and forth between different characters, so when you put all the dialogue in one paragraph, it implies that entire paragraph is one person speaking, not more than one. So for every new person speaking, I recommend giving them their own space.

That's the main issue, but another thing to mention is that dialogue tags are inconsistent and often done incorrectly. It gets a little better later in the story, though they're still a little inconsistent. Sometimes you'll write tags like this: "Dialogue." She said. It should be: "Dialogue," she said. You do the correct tag more often later in the book, though in the early stages of the book, you often will end dialogue with a period/full stop when using a tag, but you can end dialogue with anything other than a period/full stop when you are using a tag. Same with this: "Are you okay?" He asked. It should be: "Are you okay?" he asked. Here, dialogue tags always need to be lowercase unless they are proper nouns. However, this too gets better later in the story, but since there are frequent errors during the beginning parts of the story, it's still something I need to factor into the score as I'm judging the entire book, not just the most recent chapters. That being said, the dialogue being all in one paragraph instead of given its own space is a frequent error that happens even in the most recent chapters, and since that's the main error, that's my main critique of the category and where many of the deductions come from. The last thing is the semicolons in dialogue since they feel very unnatural, but I already covered that in the creativity section, so I won't go into detail about it here too other than to mention it.

All in all, the dialogue has many cute, fun moments, so the creative side of the dialogue is good, it could just use some tweaks to its presentation.

Worldbuilding: 7/10. All in all, the worldbuilding throughout the story is okay and works for what it needs to do for the story. The main part of the worldbuilding that's good is the world surrounding BTS themselves with their thief background and the hierarchy there since that's a huge factor of the worldbuilding, and I think that was overall good. The codenames added an interesting layer to it, and I liked the different tensions between different people depending on their positions in their respective worlds. I have a few critiques, and I'll leave them below, but I all in all liked the world.

I wasn't sure if I should put this here, pacing, or descriptions, but I opted to put it here because it impacts the worldbuilding most of all: in the first chapter of the story, it opens without any descriptions of where we are. It isn't until the section header after the first scene says "outside of the medical room" that we get any clue where we are, though that still is a little vague since "medical room" can mean a lot of things. Since it's the very beginning of the story, I would suggest establishing the setting right off the bat since that's our first look at the book. It's okay if you have like a line of dialogue or some gripping line to start and things like that, but my suggestion is to interweave small descriptions about the environment so we know what's going on. Since this is the very first look, we have no idea what your world looks like, so when the characters are talking, it's impossible to imagine them. What we're imagining is them floating in a white void because we don't know where they are. Most writers recommend establishing setting as early as possible in a scene. That also contributed to the pacing with a bunch of characters being given to us at once. If you slow down during that part and incorporate more descriptions, it may help with the pacing since it'll give us more time to process the opening and the characters you're introducing.

This is a nitpick, but a worldbuilding pet peeve of mine is when locations are blurred out using things like (insert location here) or things like xxxx. In chapter two, there's this: "Kim Jin-haw, 1 billion worth, xxxx street." At that point, I suggest not even including the street since the presence of the xxxx pulls the reader completely out of the story. It breaks immersion immediately since you're reminding us of the real world instead of the fiction world. What I recommend is considering one of the following:

- Not including the street at all, thus removing the xxxx altogether

- Consider making it an apartment complex instead of a street name, so you can just say the name of a random building

- Consider making up a random street name

- Consider researching the location you're writing in and making the street name something based on the real world place

All of these options are far more immersive than putting xxxx there since it keeps the reader grounded in your book's world, and that's why I recommend it.

The last thing I'll mention is how there weren't too many descriptions in the beginning of the story surrounding the environments, which also impacted the pacing going very quickly, as I mentioned before. I would suggest considering doing more scene setting in the beginning of the book, that way readers have an easier time imagining what's going on, if that makes sense. So the overall worldbuilding was okay, it could just use some tweaks.

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The overall SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) is okay. The English style is consistently in UK English, which is good since that's a common error I see. I have a few suggestions I will leave below.

There were the grammar errors with the dialogue formatting, but since I already went over that previously, I won't get into those again.

There are minor tense issues where sometimes you'll slip into present tense incorrectly. You're writing this book in past tense, but sometimes, not during things like dialogue or character thoughts (where present tense is okay in past tense writing), you'll put present tense words like he's or has. I suggest staying more consistent with the tense since that can impact pacing if the readers are confused with the timeline.

There are capitalization errors where sometimes you capitalize words that don't need to be capitalized, and on the opposite end, sometimes you don't capitalize proper nouns. For example, from chapter two, you spell do as "Do" near the end of the chapter, and Sungmin as "sungmin," also near the end of the chapter. When a word isn't a proper noun, it doesn't need to be capitalized unless it's starting a sentence. When it is a proper noun, it needs to be capitalized.

While on the topic of smaller errors that were still noticeable, there were a few times throughout the story where you forgot opening quotes. Like from chapter 3, right in the first paragraph: Oh, we are fine here," they said. See how there's no " in front of the oh? There needs to be an opening quotation mark so we know it's dialogue, otherwise we don't think it's dialogue, and it becomes hard to tell what you're intending to be part of the dialogue. It's not a huge deal, but it did happen quite a few times throughout the story.

There are some spelling errors throughout the story as well. For example, also in chapter three, you say "Bang tried to convict them," but convict doesn't make sense in that context. I think you meant "convince" there. Another example is in the beginning of chapter ten, you spell guards as "gaurds."

The last thing I'll bring up is I recommend avoiding using all caps (unless it's a name spelled in all caps, like BTS), and if you're going to use them, I suggest using them very sparingly and more for one or two words rather than full sentences. They can be very immersion-breaking and distracting, and they're also harder to read and can slow reading speed unnaturally and unnecessarily. In certain cases, they can also come off as overdramatic. So that's why I recommend avoiding them as much as possible.

All in all, the SPAG is overall okay, it could just use some tweaks.

Description: 6.5/10. The descriptions later in the story are stronger than in the beginning, though there is still a heavy emphasis on dialogue and short action descriptions rather than full descriptions. However, there is improvement. Like in chapter 10, you start by giving us the location to ground us in where we are, which is good progress and shows improvement in the descriptions. There still isn't much description for the location and environments, though there is more description for character emotions, which is, again, improvement and good. So the overall descriptions show improvement throughout the book, which is, in my opinion, really important.

Like I mentioned throughout the review, there aren't many descriptions outside of short action descriptions and general descriptions in the beginning of the story, and the opening scene doesn't have any indication of where the characters are at all, which can hurt reader immersion and make it hard to follow what's going on. That does improve as the narrative continues, as I mentioned above, though since there weren't as many descriptions in the beginning and many locations left vague and hard to decipher, that's something that needs to majorly factor into the score. I would recommend making sure to clearly establish location. And when I say descriptions, I'm not saying stop and take twenty paragraphs to describe things and stuff like that. Sometimes just one sentence can do more than entire novels, so what I'm suggesting is considering incorporating more of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, etc.) to stimulate more of the reader's senses. Consider spending more time on the locations. Even if it's just one sentence here and there to give more depth to where the characters are, that could be very beneficial.

All in all, the descriptions showed improvement and have strong moments throughout the narrative, they could just use some tweaks and consistency, particularly with location description.

Themes and Emotions: 7.5/10. The themes and emotions throughout the story are fun and interesting, and I like the baby's involvement in the story and how that impacts the characters and their dynamics with one another. I like the banter and how their emotions come out a lot via dialogue and their bickering. In a way, it almost reminds me of The Umbrella Academy, where they often bicker but also show their emotions for each other in unique ways, so I thought that was pretty cool, and I all in all liked the themes/emotions.

My critiques for the themes/emotions are all things I've stated before throughout the review, so I won't go too too far into detail about it here other than to mention where the deductions come from. The deductions come from the dialogue not flowing as well as it could due to the formatting, which can hinder the emotions at times. There was also the issue with pacing and how it was hard to focus on the plot/characters in the beginning of the book due to how much was going on all at once and the lack of moments to slow down to give readers a chance to pace themselves. So those were the main things since that impacted the emotions, but the overall themes/emotions were good and deserve a high score.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7/10. The title is overall good, though I'm not a huge fan of the formatting of the official title. I can't copy paste it because it's alternative font, but I mean it's in boxes, both red and black boxes. I understand the purpose of putting the text in boxes (baby in a box, after all), though I was a little confused with the choice to use both red and black. The letters Babbo are in red while yinthe are in black, and it felt like the placement of the different colors was a little random. Was there a specific reason you chose those letters to be the colors they were that I didn't pick up on? Other than the different colors on the boxes feeling a little randomly placed, I like the title. It's unique and stands out.

The blurb overall tells the reader exactly what they're getting into. You tell us what the general plot is in a short manner, and even give some details about the backstories and how BTS ended up in the situation they did. So it's overall good, I just have some recommendations for the presentation. There were minor SPAG errors, and I also wasn't a big fan of the usage of all caps. It felt a little random and distracting to me. Here's one alternative:

"Life" is like a box packed with memories. When we open it, we see a lot of memories, both happy and sad, but that box sometimes changes. Not everyone who opens the box can see the memories; sometimes something unexpected may occur. There will also be boxes in our lives that we either obtain or take by accident. But the box Bangtan (or whatever else you want to put here) got was beyond their expectations...

(consider having some divider here)

Seven boys who wanted to be wealthy became thieves at a young age thanks to a young man's assistance. Their lives were transformed by one unplanned encounter and one box. What's inside the box? How did they even get that box? What happened in their past? Why did they choose this path? Will they become wealthy, or will their lives become miserable?

I tweaked the SPAG and some of the sentence formatting to flow a bit more, though I tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. That's just one alternative, but I encourage you to play around with it!

I actually really like the unconventional-ness of the cover, and how it plays around with different formats to make itself stand out. It has many different logos and elements without feeling like it's too much, and I liked that about it. It gave it charm, in my opinion. I also can respect and admire the experimentation to play around with different styles to create a cover that reflects the plot of the book while also standing out creatively. I only have minor criticisms, one being that I wasn't a huge fan of the two things on the bottom with the Wattpad mark and the text with BTS on the left. For the Wattpad mark, I feel you could either remove it or shorten it to just the Wattpad W logo, and for the left side, my issue with it is that it's spelled wrong. The spelling is Staring with BTS. It should have two r's, and you also don't need the "with," so it can simply be: Starring BTS. Still, I felt that was a little unnecessary and didn't add much, if anything, to the cover, though I'm far from a cover designer, so it may be best to get another opinion before making any changes. All in all, I think the cover has a cute, unconventional style that has a lot of charm and pulls readers in.

Total: 69/100.

Traitor's Song by 4everSherlocked

Review:

Characters: 8/10. I know I may be biased, but I think Jimin is good in this story, which makes sense considering he's the emotional center, and I also overall like the concept of what the characters are, like the relationship between Henley and Jimin and how they're connected, but also how Hobi grows to bond with Jimin and get buddy-buddy with him despite Hobi's initial hesitation due to Jimin's species. Though I would say Jimin takes the crown as my favorite, but it's not because he's Jimin: it's because he has a relatable story and is thrown into a confusing world and forced to figure it out. He's a relatable character with real struggles that impact him throughout the entire runtime of the story, making him consistent and entertaining to read about. I overall like Jimin, and seeing as he's the protagonist, that's really important for the book.

The only deductions come from dialogue issues that were prominent throughout the story. Some of the dialogue got repetitive and not as interesting to read because of how it was presented to us, though I will go over that in the dialogue section, I just wanted to bring it up here to begin to explain why there were deductions. I otherwise like the characters.

Plot: 9/10. The plot follows BTS member Park Jimin after he drowns and wakes up in a whole new body. Well, not literally—he's still Park Jimin, only changed from a human to... something else. During this event, he meets Henley and Jung Hoseok, and he forms a magical connection with Henley as they attempt to figure out their world together. I think this plot has both elements of simplicity and complexity that give it a good balance. It has contemporary elements but also fantasy, which is neat.

The only deduction comes from some pacing and clarity issues with your hook, though I will explain that in the next section. Otherwise, I liked the plot.

Pacing: 7.5/10. The pacing later on, once Jimin learns more about what he is and we see more of the world, evens out and becomes smoother, almost like you found your footing (no pun about merpeople intended) after the first few chapters, though the first few chapters could use some pacing tweaks to hook more readers in. I'll leave my thoughts below.

Consider revealing Jimin's name earlier in the first chapter so readers aren't as confused. There wasn't really any purpose to concealing his name, it seemed. It wasn't a cinematic reveal or anything of the sort, it was just kind of casually mentioned about halfway through chapter 1, so I didn't see the purpose hiding it and only referring to Jimin as he. All it does is confuse the audience. If there was a specific reason you hid it, it didn't come off that way. Remember it's important to establish who's doing what as early as possible, and there's a difference between being mysterious and being vague. For me, that was vague, and you could benefit from making that known right away, that way readers aren't confused by what's happening.

The second thing I wanted to bring up is chapter 3. There's a lot of exposition about Henley at the beginning, which I'm okay with since it's no longer the hook and we're moving more into the meat of the story, but what confused me was the decision to switch back to Jimin's POV just for a page at the end of the chapter when the rest of the chapter was in Henley's POV. Online writing is an awesome thing that I love, but the one thing I don't care for about it is just how many books switch POVs in the middle of chapters nowadays. Personally, I dislike this choice and think that, more often than not, it doesn't work too well. However, I'm not one to take off points for personal preferences, but I still want to mention them in the reviews because, I mean, it's still my opinion. However, that's not why points were deducted. The reason is because we already got Jimin's POV and confusion in the previous chapter and also in chapter 4, so was it necessary to switch back to Jimin's POV after dumping all that info on us about Henley? What did we gain from it that chapters 2 and 4 didn't give us? I feel it would have been more beneficial to instead transition from that exposition to the current scene, and maybe interweave the exposition with the current action, that way it's not just one long exposition section, and there's also no need for the section break since it would be the current scene. Maybe if you do it through Henley's eyes, you can mix the exposition with descriptions of Jimin since now his appearance is drastically changed, and getting an outsider's description of him early on in the story could be extremely beneficial and emphasize the changes from Jimin's initial state to how he is now.

I know these may not seem like big deals, but they happen right at the beginning of the story when the audience is still getting hooked in, and it's important to hook them in as soon as possible, so that's why I'm emphasizing these points so much: those are two moments where your readers might get confused or unengaged and decide to click off before they get a chance to see the rest of the story. Capturing a reader's attention early with strong pacing is essential to keeping readers around for later bits, and that's why I recommend keeping everything consistent and clear in the beginning. I hope that makes sense. The overall pacing is good, it was just those beginning parts that could use some tweaks.

Creativity: 7/10. As I mentioned in the plot section, the story idea is neat, and I like the blend of the fantastical with the contemporary. I love those types of story ideas, and I think it was overall executed well other than the pacing issues with the overuse of exposition in chapter 3. The fantastical concepts feel mysterious and fun to learn about, and I enjoyed reading about them.

Be careful with sentence structure. There were many times you fell into the pronoun structure where you'd have 3-4 sentences in a row starting with "He," and in the first chapter especially you had several sentences back-to-back starting with "He had." Consider diversifying the sentence structure since the first chapter is crucial for hooking readers in, so giving them fresh sentence structures is important.

The same applies to the dialogue and how it's presented. It's often presented in the same way, leading to the structure getting repetitive, though I will go over that in far more detail in the next section.

The overall story idea and creativity is good, it could just use some minor tweaks.

Dialogue: 6/10. The dialogue is overall okay for the book, and I actually really like Hoseok's dialogue in particular; however, it could use some tweaks to the presentation to enhance it. I'll leave my explanations below.

All the errors I mentioned in past reviews are the same here. Remember that when continuing dialogue with a comma, the second part of the dialogue should be lowercase unless it's a proper noun. For example, from chapter 6: "Well, I'm twenty-five," said Hobi, "So I can be your sage elder." The "so" needs to be lowercase, not capitalized. It's not a proper noun and is a continuation of the first sentence, therefore this is a grammar error.

The second thing is the actions as tags I mentioned before, where you sometimes use an action as a dialogue tag when actions as tags are pretty awkward and imply the words are doing the actions, not the people. That's why I suggest not using them and instead using different methods. For example, if you want to use "smile," instead of using it as a tag, consider this:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

So then you wouldn't have to do this: "Dialogue," he smiled. That would be using an action as a tag, and it's a little awkward, hence why I'm recommending avoiding doing things like that for tags.

Lastly, the overuse of dialogue tags. I noticed you overuse dialogue tags a lot more in this story than some others. For example, chapter 6 again, in the beginning first page of that story, every single line of dialogue has a tag. That's 16 tags in a row before we finally get a line without a tag, but even then, we get two lines of dialogue without tags, and then it's right back to the tags. Then there's 14 tags in a row before we get another line without a tag. The final part of the story has more lines without tags, but there's still 45 dialogue tags. 45 out of 56 lines of dialogue. That means over 80% of your dialogue has tags. In general, I've noticed you write your dialogue identically, and I encourage you to play around with your style since the dialogue introductions can get repetitive because of how you do it in the same style. You often do this:

"Dialogue?" asked Jimin.

"Dialogue," said Henley.

"Dialogue," remarked Hoseok.

Or you'll do it that way, just without the dialogue tags.

It can get repetitive when all the dialogue is like this, especially when you gave 56 lines of dialogue, and about 44 of them are written that way. See why that can get repetitive and unengaging fast? There's nothing inherently wrong with using tags or even using the same style repeatedly, but when almost the entire chapter is dialogue, and 44 of the lines are written identically, it isn't as engaging to read. Consider spicing it up more. Include more body language, movements, voice descriptions, style in the words, etc. Feel free to introduce using actions, too. You don't need to use tags all the time. Maybe instead of saying said Hobi, try this:

Hobi chuckled. "Dialogue."

Or you can do something like this to show who's speaking without saying it:

"Dialogue." Hoseok paused to meet Jimin's eyes, his hands shaking as he held the fork. "More dialogue."

Feel free to include more actions and descriptions and give the dialogue more weight that way. You don't have to do it all the time, and that's also not the only way to spice up dialogue, but instead of giving us 45 dialogue tags, consider diversifying it and making it more engaging, that way so we aren't reading the same tags over and over. I hope that makes sense.

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. Like I've mentioned throughout the review, I really like the world and how it blends contemporary with the fantastical, and how there are clear differences between all of them. I like the concept of the mermaids and how there are different mythological creatures with their own backstories. As much as I had my critiques of the pacing in that one section with Henley, I did like that lore and how it gave them an interesting backstory, so I overall liked the worldbuilding.

The only deduction comes from the descriptions being redundant and conflicting at times, but I will explain that in the descriptions section. The fantasy world mixed with the contemporary world is still cool regardless of that, so I think this section deserves a high score.

Grammar/Spelling: 7.5/10. The overall SPAG is pretty good throughout the story. The sentence structure flows overall pretty well aside from a few things I'll mention in the descriptions section.

The grammar errors are the same things I've brought up in past reviews, so I won't dwell over them too much here. Like I've mentioned before, there are punctuation errors, like semicolons are used incorrectly. Be careful not to use them as replacements for commas as they're not interchangeable. The same applies to US and UK English and keeping it consistently in US English. All things I've mentioned before. However, the semicolon errors aren't as consistent as before, so I won't take off as much. I didn't notice as many semicolons as I did in other stories, like Pretty Boy. There were still enough to have noticeable errors, though. There was also the dialogue formatting error that's a grammar error, but I won't mention it again here other than to say those types of errors were consistent and noticeable throughout the text.

However, the spelling is very good. I don't think I noticed any typos. The overall grammar is good, it could just use some tweaks, especially to punctuation. The spelling is likely borderline perfect since I didn't notice any mistypes. I could be wrong since sometimes we naturally read typos correctly instead of as errors, but that just means the typo wasn't big enough to distract me, therefore making it great. Overall, good job.

Description: 6/10. The descriptions have their moments where they stand out, and the overall word choice is normally nice and helps make the world around them feel more realistic. Like I've mentioned throughout the review, I like the blend of contemporary with the fantastical, and I think the descriptions help elevate that concept and give it more depth. So, overall, the descriptions are okay, I just have a few suggestions to strengthen them.

Be careful with repetition and redundancy. I mentioned it in the Detach review, but the same problem is here, too. For example: "He blinked his eyes a few times, bringing up a hand to wipe the sand away from his face so it wouldn't get in his eyes" (chap 2). Not only is this repetitive because you're using "eyes" twice (and you used it a few times beforehand), but it's redundant because you don't need half of the words here. You can simply say: "He blinked a few times, wiping the sand away from his face so it wouldn't get in his eyes." I cut out the "his eyes" because what else would he be blinking? It's the same as the "she nodded her head" example from Detach (which also happens in this story) where you don't need to tell us what they're nodding. A nod means the head. Blinking means the eyes. I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but as an audience member, it makes us stop and think "What... what else would be blinking/nodding???" It's a small thing that can completely derail our immersion because you're essentially saying "eyes" twice by saying "He blinked his eyes." We already know that blinking refers to eyes, so you don't need to spoonfeed us that information. The same applies to the "bringing up a hand to wipe" phrase that I removed from the alternative. We know that if he's wiping his face, it's with his hands. What else would it be with? And even if it is something else, like his arm, we don't need to know that. That's the kind of info that's okay to omit. When I put it like that, I hope it makes sense why this redundancy and repetition was so noticeable and distracting.

Also be careful with descriptions that feel contradictory to the information we just got, and also hard to believe. Also in chapter 2, Jimin is convinced he is hallucinating and is desperate for the stranger to come out and help him. When she does come out, it's clear she's close by because he can clearly make out her face, and it was also said that the rocks were behind him. So she was extremely close to him. Then why does the description say later "Within a few minutes, she was by his side." She came out of hiding to go to him, so why did it take her a few minutes to get there when she was just close enough that Jimin could make out the minute details of her face and clothing? I can't imagine it'd take her more than a few seconds, let alone more than a minute, let alone a few minutes when she was right behind him before. See why that's contradictory and hard to believe? If there's a specific reason why she needed a few minutes to get there (like she kept hesitating and going back behind the rocks), then I suggest making that clear since the description all made it sound like she was on her way to him, which shouldn't have taken longer than a few seconds tops even with the slippery descent she made. I live on a hill in New York; I know rain and slippery surfaces. Still, it doesn't take me longer than five minutes to walk down the giant hill in pouring rain, and it's a giant hill with three paths I have to take. So that's what my point is: consider making sure the descriptions all make sense and line up with what information we were just given about the geography of the scene.

The last thing I want to focus on is the paragraphs and how you could benefit from breaking some of them up. Not necessarily because of length but because sometimes you'll have two main ideas in the same paragraph, so it feels like two paragraphs forced together, making it a little awkward to read. I'll give you two examples from chapter 4. The first is the paragraph that starts with "Jimin moved to free a hand from Henley's grasp...". The sentence "The light of Hobi flashed about..." feels like a new topic that should have its own paragraph to separate it from Jimin's emotions, which was the initial main idea. The next example is the paragraph starting with "Hobi walked alongside Jimin...". The sentence "After another minute or two..." could be its own paragraph since it starts a new main idea.

Themes and Emotions: 7.5/10. Jimin is the emotional center of the book, with him drowning being the inciting incident that immediately kicks off the plot and the mysterious things happening to him. I think that works well for the narrative, and he overall does a good job with the heavy weight put on him. Maybe I'm biased since all my books are the same way where Jimin is absolutely traumatized, but I think it works well, and I think Jimin shows a diverse range of emotions here that make him more well-rounded. He doesn't just stick to one emotion and cycles through many, making him more complex and interesting.

The only deductions come from things I've mentioned before throughout the review, so I won't dwell on them too much here. All of my deductions have to do with pretty much everything I mentioned in the dialogue and description sections: considering making sure the descriptions are less redundant/make sense and tweaking the repetition within how dialogue is presented and formatted. However, other than those things, I think the themes and emotions are overall good.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 6.5/10. The title works for the story and makes sense. Considering the parallels to sirens, having the title be "Traitor's Song" fits in perfectly with the theme. No criticisms.

While the blurb is, on a technical level, good, it's extremely vague. It doesn't say much about the story and leaves me more confused than curious. I feel like I knew more about the story before reading the blurb than I did afterwards. Like I mentioned earlier, remember there's a line between being mysterious and being vague, and this blurb definitely leaned more toward vague for me. I would suggest giving more information about what the story is going to be about specifically and giving us more to work with in that sense. I hope that makes sense.

The cover is overall good, though I would suggest tweaking Jin's placement on the cover. Consider moving him to the right a little more to fill that large gap between him and the giant face of Jimin. It felt like there was an unnatural gap there. However, I otherwise like the cover.

Total: 73.5/100.

It's A Love, Hate Kinda Thing by AuthorSadieWaldon

Review:

Characters: 7/10. I overall like the characters throughout the narrative, as you can probably tell based on the good score for this category. I'll mention it throughout the review, but one of my favorite parts about this story is the idea, and a lot of that is executed through the characters, particularly the character of Lee and her grief. I think her grief following her dad's untimely death made for an interesting story, watching her pick up the pieces of her life and engage with older parts of her life, like the reunion. I thought it was clever to have this take place around the time of the reunion, thus giving her a reminder of the past in a way that feels natural and intriguing. Jason is another good addition to the book that propels the plot forward and gives Lee someone to really bounce off of and get her feelings out to. I thought they had an engaging relationship, and I think you overall did a good job with the two main characters, and the supporting characters did their job to, well, support them, haha.

The deductions come from some of the emotions not being as strong as they otherwise could be because of the frequent SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) errors disrupting the flow of dialogue, the lack of descriptions in some vital areas, the dialogue needing some tweaks, and some fast pacing in the beginning segments that made it hard to focus on what was going on inside the characters' minds. However, all of these things will be explained later throughout the review, I just wanted to mention them here so you know where the deductions come from. I will explain everything with examples and suggestions for going about fixing them later!

Plot: 7/10. This is a character-driven story, so there isn't much plot, but that isn't a bad thing by any means. Not all stories need to be plot-driven; in fact, I personally prefer character-driven, character-focused narratives, so I have no problem with the plot being around Jason and Lee and their relationship, which is all character and theme right there. You know from the previous section that I liked the characters of Jason and Lee, particularly Lee, so that means that, by extension, I enjoyed the plot, particularly as it got moving more and more later in the book published thus far.

My main critiques of the plot boil down to the pacing and how the pacing goes very, very fast in the beginning, not giving us much time to focus on the moment and be there with the characters. Seeing as the characters are the plot, this is essential to our understanding of what's going on, and there are also many moments with the emotions not being as fleshed out as they could be because of the fast pacing and lack of descriptions. This is something I'll explain both next section and in the descriptions section. Otherwise, I liked the plot and thought it was interesting.

Pacing: 7/10. The pacing throughout the story, particularly as the story keeps going (the later it gets in the book, the better the pacing), is overall solid, as you can tell based on the strong score. The plot events and character information is normally revealed at a good rate, but there were many moments where the plot was hard to understand due to how fast the story went, particularly in the beginning, and I'll explain that below.

My main critique of the pacing is that it goes very fast due to the lack of descriptions throughout the beginning parts of the story. There's an emphasis on dialogue, and there's not much going on around the dialogue, making for fast scenes where we don't get much time to process the character emotions because we don't get much insight into their thoughts. Keep in mind that the vast majority of human communication is nonverbal, so I suggest adding more nonverbal communication to the story via things like body language, subtext in dialogue with words said without being directly said (this is a complicated subject I'd suggest looking into whenever you have free time; YouTube has some good videos on it, and Google has some good articles), posture, habits (i.e., fiddling with fingers, biting on nails, pacing, etc.), and more. Consider slowing down and showing that more. You're writing about a character with PTSD. I'll talk about the reunion scene again later, but consider having Lee show some of those signs. She adjusts to this overwhelming environment with constant reminders of her past seamlessly, but I don't think she realistically would. That's why I suggest slowing this moment down and focusing less on dialogue and more on Lee and her reactions to this overwhelming situation.

The pacing is overall good, particularly later in the story and in the 2024 sections, I just suggest some tweaks to the first few chapters to make them more hooking for the audience. I hope that makes sense.

Creativity: 7/10. The story idea is very interesting. I'll mention it again in the title section, but I really like the title and how it ties into the story, and that includes the story idea since the title reflects it perfectly. I love how there's this cool concept with what love and hate feel like, and how someone's emotions change during a period of grief. I'll mention it throughout the review, but I love the concept of grief, and also how you have it here. I think the story idea is one of the strongest parts of this book, which, I think it goes without saying, is awesome since that's what's going to draw readers to the book to begin with. So, overall, you did a great job with the idea.

My main critique of the creativity is that there isn't much experimentation in the language in terms of word choice and sentence structure, at least for the beginning half of the story up until the 2024 chapters, which makes it a bit difficult to judge this category as a lot of this category is reliant on word choice and sentence structure. There aren't many descriptions in the 2023 parts of the book, which make up most of the book. Without a lot of descriptions, it's hard to see the word choice and sentence structure, and there are many grammar errors interrupting the flow of the sentence structure. So my main suggestion would be to consider diversifying the word choice and experimenting more with the sentence structure, though I also want to point out that the word choice and sentence structure become far stronger in the 2024 chapters. It's just that because most of the book was the 2023 chapters, I have to judge a lot based on that since that's the majority of the story, and I hope that's understandable, and also that all my critiques made sense.

Dialogue: 6/10. The dialogue is overall okay and has interesting moments, particularly when Jason and Lee are talking, and when Lee mentions her dad as that is the emotional core of the story right there. So there is strong potential here, and I think as the story develops, we will get a bunch of memorable moments in the dialogue.

There are some dialogue errors throughout the story, both ones that get solved in the 2024 sections and ones that don't get solved later and are consistent errors. For that reason, I'll list all of them regardless of if they disappear in the 2024 sections or not.

To begin, dialogue tags are done incorrectly for almost the entire book, both the standard tags and the "special" ones (for lack of a better term). Whenever you're using a dialogue tag, even if the dialogue ends with ? or !, the tag must be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. By that I mean, here is what you do:

"Dialogue?" He asked.

"Dialogue." He said.

"Dialogue" he said.

"Dialogue!" He shouted.

All of these are wrong. Here is the correct way to write dialogue tags:

"Dialogue?" he asked.

"Dialogue," he said.

"Dialogue!" he shouted.

The he is always lowercase, and when using a tag, the dialogue can end in anything except a period/full stop, and when not using a tag, the dialogue can end in anything other than a comma. So that was the main error of the dialogue: the tags were done incorrectly.

There were also frequent SPAG errors, especially with punctuation, in the dialogue itself, though I'll get into that in the grammar/spelling section, I just needed to bring it up here since it impacts the flow of the dialogue and can hinder it at times. I'll explain with examples later.

Another thing is to try not to use actions as tags. Actions like smiled. Smiled is not a proper dialogue tag, therefore smiled, and other actions like it, shouldn't be used as such. The reason is because of the name of what tags are. What do tags tag? Dialogue, that's why they're called dialogue tags, not people tags. So when you say "he smiled" as a tag, it's almost implying the words are smiling, not the person. That's why most authors recommend straying away from things like "he smiled" or "he laughed" as tags since they sound unnatural, not to mention there are easy fixes. Here are two easy fixes:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

So you're keeping the "smile" in there, just not as the direct tag, therefore making it more natural and giving you the smile, making it the best of both worlds. I hope that makes sense.

Lastly, there is an overuse of dialogue tags. I believe almost every line of dialogue in the entire story has a tag. This happens throughout the entire book, not just the 2023 segments. For example, in chapter 12, I believe every single line has a tag. For that reason, I'm going to give you the 50-30 advice of dialogue tags. This advice states that of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. Not only can dialogue tags get repetitive if overused, but it can make the emotions repetitive as well because you're putting more emphasis on tags, which are inherently telling over showing (the sole purpose of tags is to tell the audience who is speaking, therefore making all tags telling over showing). There's nothing inherently wrong with telling over showing, it's just that the more you do it, especially if you're doing it the same way with tags, the more distracting it becomes. That's why it's recommended to keep 30% or more of your tags as said or asked: they're the tags that stand out the least, therefore giving the dialogue more weight and room to stand on its own. The 50-30 advice isn't for everyone, but it's a good starting point for practicing using less tags. Consider introducing who's speaking in different ways, such as using actions (i.e., something like this: He smiled. "Dialogue."), relying on the back and forth speech pattern, relying on interesting speech styles where you can tell who's speaking without needing tags, etc. There are many ways to introduce who's speaking without needing to directly tell us, and I encourage you to play around with it and do what works best for you!

Worldbuilding: 6/10. Like I'll mention throughout the story, it improves in the 2024 section, so I don't really have as much to say about the world in the 2024 area. I actually really like how both the 2023 and 2024 sections give us specific names for things. For example, you name what car Lee drives. You give some small details about certain places, like the old house having weeds and overgrown grass to show its age and how it hasn't been visited and taken care of. I love those details and think they're great, and I recommend including more of that. I'll explain more in the description section, though it felt like many of the locations were vague and not described too much. For example, when Jason takes Lee to her room, we don't get the description of it until after she's already settled in, and it's a small description that's more general, giving general descriptions about the colors of the room instead of being more specific about more inside the room outside of some pictures. So I suggest giving more specific descriptions instead of the general ones, and I also recommend establishing setting earlier. Remember that we as readers only know what you tell us, so if you withhold the setting until a bit after the characters are there, in our minds, during all that time the characters are there without the location being described, we're imagining the characters in a white void since we don't know where we are. That's why a lot of authors recommend establishing the setting first and foremost, that way readers immediately know where the characters are. I don't know if I agree with always establishing the setting first, but it is a good practice to get into. And just to be clear, I'm not recommending adding paragraphs upon paragraphs of description, but consider adding more here and there and rearranging where they go to ensure the reader is still gripped on the scene. So the overall worldbuilding is interesting and good, it could just use some tweaks to the frequency of the descriptions, the vagueness of some of the descriptions, and the placement of some of the descriptions.

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) improves in the 2024 chapters, though since the vast majority of the published parts so far are in 2023, I have to judge accordingly, and there are still errors in the 2024 parts as well. The overall SPAG could use some improvements. I'll start small, and then I'll get into the more core errors.

To begin, you have capitalization errors where sometimes you'll capitalize words that don't need it. From chapter 12: "Jason, It's 9:30." The it's needs to be lowercase.

While on the topic of small things, I would strongly suggest not using more than one ! or ? at a time. Sometimes you'll use !!!, !?!, ???, etc. There is nothing more than one ! or ? can do that one doesn't already do, so that's why I advise against it. Not to mention ! is telling over showing. There's nothing wrong with using telling over showing or !, and sometimes it's even necessary, but any area you can downsize means you're making future ! more impactful. The more you use them, the less impact they have moving forward, so anywhere you can downsize without losing any emotional value is recommended. And, again, there's really nothing more than one ? or ! can do that one can't do, so that's the main reason I suggest it. It can come off as a little overdramatic at times if they're overused. I hope that makes sense.

One more small thing: I'd recommend spelling out numbers at least from 1-9 if not 1-99. The reason is because it looks more natural within the text. So what I'm recommending is instead of having 2 months, consider putting two months. See how it blends in more and feels more fluid? The number stands out like a sore thumb, which is why I recommend spelling out at least 1-9, if not 1-99.

There are times you forget end punctuation, like periods/full stops. For example, from chapter 6: "Hey Lee how was it?" My boss Brielle Engleman asked

See how there's no period/full stop after "asked?" That's where you need a period/full stop.

The last thing I'll cover in this review is comma placement. You have frequent comma errors, particularly when using -ing verbs. For example:

"Heyyyy Lee, I didn't know you'd be here," she said scratching her head embarrassingly."Well that's obvious" I chuckled shaking my head.

There needs to be a comma after said and before scratching, and also a comma after chuckled and before shaking. Here's what I'd recommend:

"Heyyyy, Lee, I didn't know you'd be here," she said, scratching her head embarrassingly.

"Well, that's obvious." I chuckled, shaking my head.

I added a bunch of commas and spaced out the dialogue so each new person has their own space to speak, which is what I recommend. Every time you have a new person speaking, I suggest giving them their own line break so they have their own space to speak. It's also easier for the readers to identify what's going on that way.

If you're ever unsure about comma placement, I suggest reading sentences out loud to help find the natural pauses, or you can use grammar editing software like Grammarly, QuillBot, and/or ProWritingAid. Grammar checkers aren't always right, but they're pretty good with commas. And if you're ever unsure even after running it through a grammar checker, I recommend plugging it through more than one. Normally if multiple grammar checkers give you the same corrections, it's safe to say they're right.

All in all, the SPAG is okay, it could just use some tweaks for stronger readability.

Description: 6/10. Like the SPAG, the descriptions improve in the 2024 sections, but since the 2023 sections make up most of what's published, I have to judge more based on those sections than the 2024 sections. There are interesting descriptions, particularly in the 2024 sections, though I feel you could benefit from having more descriptions, and more specific descriptions, as I mentioned in the worldbuilding section. At the reunion, for example. There's a heavy emphasis on the dialogue during that scene, but I feel there was missed potential for some emotional, tense moments. This is your opportunity to really show the PTSD. Those with PTSD are often overwhelmed by loud noises and things that overstimulate their senses, and a reunion is a really, really perfect opportunity to show that. Maybe show Lee's PTSD by having her dissociate and need to count her senses and hone in on them to try and re-establish herself within the conversation. Maybe she misses vital pieces of information because of it. Maybe you incorporate the five senses into your descriptions by mentioning the flashing lights, the smell of the food (be specific about what it smells like), the sound of the music (be specific about what the music sounds like, whether that be a specific song, the music sounds distant and almost like a ringing in her ears, etc.), the touch of the tablecloth under her fingers as she plays with it to try and bring herself back in the moment, etc.

You have the chance to show her PTSD really early in the book through that reunion scene. One of the most common symptoms of PTSD is the dissociation, so that could be an area you show it, even if no one else at the reunion notices Lee going through it and it's something she has to battle on her own. So that's what I mean when I say consider adding more descriptions. It's a very dialogue-focused book, which is okay, though I'd recommend incorporating more descriptions in the earlier parts of the story. As for the 2024 parts, keep that up since the descriptions there are pretty good. Overall, the 2024 parts are good and include more body language, posture, descriptions of the environments, descriptions of the emotions, etc., it's just that the 2023 parts don't have nearly as much, and they make up the majority of the story, so I have to judge mostly based on that. I hope that makes sense.

Themes and Emotions: 6/10. I really, really like the concept behind Lee and her dad. Okay, I'll admit, I am a little biased here. As soon as she mentioned playing softball with her dad, it made me emotional since I spent ten years of my life traveling around the North East of the United States, playing softball while my dad either watched from the stands or was directly my coach. Ten years of my life to the point where my dad used to joke he spent more time with me in the car than he did with my mom. So I am personally attached to this kind of storyline, especially when you mention a dad and daughter bonding over softball, but personal bias aside, I still think this whole concept is just... good. I love the idea of grief and how it comes to play for Lee. That makes the themes and emotions interesting, particularly in the most recently published chapters.

My critiques are all the things I mentioned throughout the review with tweaking the grammar so sentences/dialogue flows more naturally, tweaking descriptions and adding descriptions, considering slowing down during some moments to flesh them out more, etc. However, since I already covered those topics in detail, I won't go over them again here. The themes and emotions are overall good, particularly the theme surrounding grief, I just recommend some tweaks so they're executed even stronger and get the readers really in the feels, if that makes sense.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. I really like the title, to be honest. I think it's a cute little title, and I love the comma placements to make the reader pause and break it up more. It's a cute title that I think deserves the max points possible. No criticisms.

The blurb tells the reader exactly what they're getting into, meaning they have no confusion about what the story is going to be about and have no doubts about what they're clicking on, which is great. However, it could use some tweaks to the SPAG since there are numerous punctuation errors here.

What I recommend:

Nearly a year after the tragic death of her father, 23-year-old Annalee Hunter is finally loosening her reigns a bit and getting back into the dating scene when she reunites with her high school sweetheart, Jason McGregor, at their class reunion. Will Annalee come to terms with her father's death and live a little, or will the painful memories and nightmares hold her back? They broke up on good terms in senior year, but it seems they still have a thing for each other—the same love, hate kinda thing.

I didn't change anything about the core of the blurb and instead just changed the punctuation to make it flow stronger. So those are the SPAG suggestions I have, but the blurb otherwise tells the reader what they're getting into, which is the most important thing.

The cover is overall really cute and good. I like the color scheme and the font choice, and I like the background image. The entire cover is of high quality, too. The only minor criticism I have is the difference between the official title and what's on the cover. The official title is It's a Love, Hate Kinda Thing. On the cover, it's It's a Love, Hate, Kinda Thing. It's a minor thing and not a big deal, but I was a little confused with why the cover has a second comma but the title doesn't. It's not a big deal and nothing I'll take off much for, though it was a little confusing. Otherwise, I like the cover.

Total: 65.5/100.

In Search Of Heaven by Cool_Summer29

Review:

Characters: 6/10. So far, we've only gotten a brief look into the Vminkook trio, with Jungkook being the lead, and Seora. Seora hasn't had a chance to really show character traits yet, so for sake of the review, I'm going to focus on Vminkook, but specifically Jungkook as he's the protagonist. He's the typical angry mafia boss who overreacts to everything, so he is a little cliche and stereotypical, especially since he's Jungkook. Almost every mafia Jungkook story I read writes him this way. I actually don't think I can name a single mafia Jungkook fic where he wasn't written this way off the top of my head, and I read a lot of mafia JK fics. That being said, just because something is cliche doesn't mean it's inherently a bad thing, I would just suggest branching out and giving him more to work with later in the book; however, this is also a little unfair since there are only three chapters out (at the time of writing this review), so it's hard to make any definitive opinions about Jungkook as of yet. With all that being said, he does have a commanding presence over the book, which is good considering A) his character being mafia, and B) him being the protagonist.

The highlights for me were Vmin with their bantering and opposite personalities, where Jimin is flirtier and less serious and Taehyung is more passive and serious, making for many bickerings and Taehyung mentally scolding Jimin for interrupting Jungkook and other things like that. Their traits are very clear. Even of Jungkook and Seora, their traits are made clear by their dialogue and actions, and I can appreciate that. The characters overall have potential to grow as the story progresses. It's too early to go too in-depth about them as of yet, but those are my developing thoughts from what I've seen.

The deductions come from some telling over showing issues and clunky character descriptions. Both of these things will be described in more detail in the descriptions section, though they do heavily factor in here since character descriptions impacts how we view the characters, and telling over showing impacts the effectiveness of the emotions present within the characters. So I'll explain more later, but I just wanted to bring it up to give an explanation for why points were taken off.

The only character moment that made me a little confused was the hospital in chapter 3, where Taehyung and Jimin are bickering. Taehyung is more passive when Jimin talks romantically about the girl, but then snaps at Jimin to knock it off because she's seriously ill. Then, right after, Taehyung is also joking and shipping her with Jungkook, which feels like a complete 180 from him yelling at Jimin to stay serious because she's sick. It's not a big deal, but it did confuse me a little, and I feel it'd make far more sense for Jimin to be more Cupid considering he's the established flirt. Just because Jimin acknowledges this point by saying "Somebody just said she's sick and now shamelessly shipping her with our Boss?" doesn't change that it's confusing. Characters acknowledging the problem doesn't take away the problem. It felt more like something Jimin would say (the shipping), not Taehyung, who was passive and serious for the entire scene up until that point. Again, it's a small thing, but still worth mentioning since I don't think it came off the way you wanted it to, in my opinion.

Otherwise, the characters are good so far.

Plot: 10/10. So far, the plot is interesting, featuring Jungkook as the mafia king, but that changes when, by chance, he meets Seora, who believes Jungkook is her boyfriend, who died three years prior. Jungkook looks very similar to her deceased beloved, and that leads Seora into practically going crazy, dragging Jungkook into her life despite his initial disinterest. But initial is the key word there. Jungkook begins to grow more curious about her, and as of chapter 3, the most recently-published chapter, Jungkook clearly has a plan for her, but it doesn't seem to be in good faith. It seems like he's about to manipulate her for his own benefit.

I think this plot idea is really interesting and will do a good job keeping the reader hooked. It's waaay too early in the story to make a more comprehensive breakdown of the plot other than to say that so far, it's intriguing, and I'm sure it'll continue to be that way. I think the idea that Jungkook, a mafia king, looks identical to an innocent girl's dead boyfriend is certainly going to lead to many moral dilemmas about romance and manipulation, so there's strong potential here. So far, I haven't noticed any plot holes or inconsistencies, and I overall don't have any criticisms as of what I've seen in the three published chapters.

Pacing: 10/10. With only three chapters out, it's a little difficult to judge this category, but there's still 40 minutes of read time, which is a pretty good sample size, even if we're not really in the meat of the plot yet and still in the hook phase. The chapters are all pretty much identical in length, and all of them end in a way that makes sense and doesn't feel jarring, which makes for a smooth transition into the next chapters. They also begin well and typically immediately establish scene to give us a location before diving into the conflict within that chapter. It doesn't feel like there's any fluff or unnecessary plot/character information given so far in the three chapters released. For all those reasons, I think the pacing is good so far and does a good job propelling the story forward. No criticisms.

Creativity: 7/10. Like I mentioned earlier, the plot is interesting and unique. I don't think I've seen a mafia story like this before. Although Jungkook is the typical mafia Jungkook stereotype so far, that doesn't change that the plot idea is very creative and makes for an engaging read. The sentence structure is normally pretty diverse, too, so that's two areas of the creativity you did well on.

There is some repetitive word choice here and there, like "walked" is used often throughout the text. It's not a huge deal or anything, but it is noticeable with only three chapters out, so it's a small sample size to judge.

Also, be careful with some redundancy and repeating the meaning of words twice. In chapter three: Taehyung replied back. You don't need the "back." The definition of replied is "say something in response to something someone has said." It's already said with the word "replied" that he is answering Jimin's words, so there's no need for the "back," especially when you use "back" again in the same paragraph. It's almost like saying "he said back back" since replied essentially means "back" in the context of speech, if that makes sense.

Overall, the creativity is good.

Dialogue: 7/10. The dialogue is overall so far good and does a good job showing character traits through it. Jungkook is an angry mafia boss with a softer side for his mom, Seora is going crazy, Jimin is flirty, and Taehyung is more passive and serious but also willing to partake in banter with Jimin as they are besties. All the character traits were shown well through dialogue, I just have some suggestions for the presentation of said dialogue.

Dialogue tags are always done incorrectly. For example, from chapter 2: "Got that." The handsome man replied. It should be: "Got that," the handsome man replied. When using a dialogue tag, dialogue should never end with a period/full stop, and the dialogue tag should never be capitalized unless it is a proper noun, like Jungkook. But for things like he/she said and, in this case, "the," they all need to be lowercase because they aren't proper nouns. They are continuations of the dialogue and not new sentences, therefore they should be lowercase. You wouldn't capitalize a random Word in the middle of a sentence. It looks weird that I capitalized word there, right? The same applies to dialogue tags. By capitalizing the first letter, it's like "word" being capitalized in that sentence. It's not a proper noun, so no reason to capitalize it. I suggest editing this whenever you have a chance since dialogue tags are a pretty major part of dialogue.

There are consistent comma errors within the dialogue that makes it a little awkward at times, but I'll go over comma errors in the grammar/spelling section. The same applies to the all caps usage since that was used exclusively in dialogue, but that is also something I'll explain in the grammar/spelling section.

Otherwise, the dialogue is good.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The world is all about Jungkook's mafia and how he runs it, making for an interesting world since every author is going to write the underworld at least a little differently, and I think it was handled in an engaging way here, with chapter 2 featuring the most exposition while chapters 1 and 3 were more about the immediate actions and Jungkook himself, so I thought the exposition was overall handled in a way that was easy to digest, so the world is overall good.

The only deductions come from some of the descriptions being difficult to comprehend or a little clunky, and that impacts the presentation of the world. Clear descriptions are vital for good worldbuilding. I'll explain this soon in the descriptions section, though like in the characters section, I'm bringing it up here to explain where the points came off.

The worldbuilding is otherwise interesting so far.

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) throughout the narrative is overall okay, though there are some consistent errors that I will get into below.

There are tense issues where you'll slip into present tense incorrectly. Of course it's okay to use present tense in past tense and vice versa, though there were times you slipped into it incorrectly. The tense is really inconsistent and frequently flip flops between past and present tense, which is why I recommend more grounding. I think you're writing in past tense, though it's hard to tell since there's so much present tense. For example, from chapter 1: Jungkook closed his eyes for a second trying his best to calm himself, he's crazily urging to k/ll that one person.

The "he's" is the tense slip since it is not one of the exceptions (like dialogue or direct and typically italicized character thoughts) for using present tense in past tense, and I also used this sentence to lead into the major grammar error: punctuation. There were times you were either A) missing commas, or B) using commas when you needed either a semicolon/em dash or to split the sentence. In this sentence, you're missing a comma, and the comma present is incorrect. What I'd recommend:

Jungkook closed his eyes for a second, trying his best to calm down—he had a crazy urge to k/ll that one person.

So that's one alternative with an em dash and fixed comma error, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works best for you.

I would advise against using all caps. I can maybe understand using all caps for one word here and there, but not for full sentences. It can drain scenes of any seriousness and come off as overdramatic, not to mention excessive all caps slows reading speed, and all caps are inherently telling over showing. There's nothing all caps can do that showing over telling and other methods, even other telling over showing methods (like exclamation marks), can't. That's why I suggest avoiding them unless it's for a name spelled in all caps (like BTS or HYBE).

There are some spelling errors here and there, like "piece" is spelled as "peice" in chapter one, about 3/4th into the chapter.

There are also some occasional editing errors where you'll forget spaces between punctuation and words, like multiple times in chapter one you forgot the space between Mr. and the second word, like Mr.Kang instead of Mr. Kang, shortly after the piece typo, and Mr.Jeon instead of Mr. Jeon, also shortly after the typo.

Otherwise, the SPAG works for the story.

Description: 6/10. The descriptions overall serve the narrative well, particularly when it comes to sound. I noticed in chapters 2 and 3 especially that there was an emphasis on describing sounds, which I found pretty interesting. I always encourage writers to include more of the five senses in their writing, and I think this was a great way to do it, especially in a hospital of all places, a place where sound is of high importance. So I think there were many good parts of the descriptions, I just have a few suggestions.

Be careful with overstuffing your descriptions, especially early in the story. You don't have to do all the description at once. You can spread it out. Look at this from chapter 1, right from the beginning:

Wearing an all black tuxedo with a matching overcoat, his jet black hair perfectly gelled backwards revealing his forehead, the fitted black shirt perfectly tucked inside the pants paired with a blazer which didn't fail to reveal his muscular body proportions, the man appeared to be a descendant of Greek gods.

If you read that out loud, you'll see that it goes on too long and sounds unnatural the longer it goes. You don't need to put that all in one sentence, if that makes sense. Consider breaking this up and separating it into more sentences, or sprinkling this description over the course of a few paragraphs instead of all at once. For example, maybe have the black tuxedo and the hair in one paragraph, and then in the next paragraph you can mention his body proportions and how he looks like a Greek god. There are many ways to pace your descriptions, though, and I encourage you to play around with it!

There's also a lot of telling over showing, where you'll tell us things like "this person must be important" (chap 1) instead of letting the descriptions show us. It doesn't happen too often, and sometimes telling is not only recommended but necessary, so I'm not telling you to never tell over show since that would be bad advice. I'm more suggesting limiting the unnecessary telling over showing, like that moment. We can tell based on your descriptions that Jungkook is important, so there's no need to tell us information we already know. For moments like these, they almost feel like director's notes, which are sentences an author leaves in to direct their audience to what they want said audience to feel. You want us to know he is important, so you tell us that instead of letting the showing do the work, but the showing did the work. We saw how he was dressed, how he walked, and how he was guarded. That screams that person is important. I hope that with that breakdown of why that line felt like unnecessary telling over showing, it makes more sense why I'm advising against including too much telling over showing. You can absolutely do telling over showing, and in some case, you absolutely should. I'm just suggesting removing unnecessary telling over showing moments, if that makes sense.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. It's hard to identify a clear theme this early in the book, but that's not a bad thing. Most books I read don't make their theme clear until 25% or more into the story, and the first 24% is setting up said theme until it becomes more apparent, so that's nothing bad or anything I would take off points for, it just means it's hard to judge this category. But, based on what I've seen, I think I can make an educated guess about themes and that the themes will be about morals and the dangers of desperation in romance (with Seora's character being desperate for Jungkook to be her beloved), which I think are interesting. The emotions are so far presented well other than some telling over showing things I mentioned earlier. All in all, the themes and emotions are good so far.

The criticisms I have are the same as I've had throughout the review, so I won't go too in-detail other than to mention where the deductions come from, like from the descriptions and some of the grammar errors being consistent enough to break immersion, like the tense flip flopping so frequently that sometimes it was impossible to tell if you were trying to write in present or past tense. The themes and emotions sometimes are overall good, I just recommend some tweaks to the presentation.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7/10. The title is In Search Of Heaven, and I think that's a cool title. It works for the story and encourages readers to think about what the title could mean. I overall like it. No criticisms.

The blurb could use some improvements to the grammar and presentation. There's a lot of mixing of different types of fonts, and I'd suggest sticking to one or two. Not only because alternate fonts make it so readers with conditions such as dyslexia will have a hard time reading your work and screen readers can't read it, but also because it's hard on the eyes to jump between multiple different fonts, especially in such a short amount of time. From the parts I can copy paste, here is the blurb:

It took a few seconds for twenty years of friendship and an inseparable bond of love to vanish completely breaking each and every part of her heart into millions of pieces which can't be joined again.

Lee Seora meets her boyfriend after three years of long wailing and depression, his death was unconvincing to her and she was certain he isn't dead , not yet.

❝I knew you're alive, please don't leave me again.❞

❝I'm not your boyfriend! ❞

A lie, a very meticulously planned lie. Crossing paths with a not so good stranger was definitely a huge mistake.

There are numerous grammar errors here, and here's what I suggest:

It took a few seconds for twenty years of friendship and an inseparable bond of love to vanish completely, breaking each and every part of her heart into millions of pieces that can't be joined again.

Lee Seora meets her boyfriend after three years of wailing and depression. His death was unconvincing to her, and she was certain he wasn't dead, not yet.

"I knew you were alive. Please don't leave me again."

"I'm not your boyfriend!"

A lie, a very meticulously planned lie. Crossing paths with a not-so-good stranger was a huge mistake.

I added some commas, split up some sentences that needed to be split, and fixed the spacing errors. I made minor word choice changes, but mostly tried to keep it the same as the original in terms of idea. So those are the grammar tweaks that could be made. The idea in the blurb is interesting, it could just use some tweaks to make it easier to understand.

The cover is very good and has a nice aesthetic to it. It's visually cohesive and looks attractive to me. I like all the chosen pictures and fonts along with the text placements. Overall, no criticisms. Great job with the cover.

Total: 74/100.

Beyond the Heavens by ReynaBennett

Review:

Characters: 7.5/10. The characters are overall pretty good and fit in really well with the chosen genre. They feel consistent in terms of both their characterization (as in, I didn't notice any OOC moments), and also in the sense that they fit in well with the world you chose to set the book in. They carry themselves like characters I would expect from this genre, leading to high consistency and engagement within them. There are quite a few characters, but I didn't find that to be a problem and I even thought that, again, it was a good reflection of the genre and allowed us to see more sides of this world with so many moving layers and parts. So all in all, I think all the characters fit well in the historical-fantasy concept, and I think you did a good job with implementing their personalities into this new world you created.

The deductions come from some pacing issues where the character development is hard to follow, and also some dialogue issues where sometimes there's repetitive formatting for the dialogue and/or there's too much emotion being placed in the tag instead of the dialogue itself. However, I'll explain those things in their respective sections, I'm just bringing them up here because they impact the characters, and I wanted to make it clear why points were taken off. But overall, I still like the characters and think they do their jobs for the narrative.

Plot: 7.5/10. I know I'm biased since I like these kind of stories with the kingdoms and fantastical elements blended with some ancient history, but I really liked the plot of this book. I thought it was interesting to see how the power struggles and dynamics unfolded throughout the narrative, and I overall enjoyed it a lot, especially when there are cool themes and characters to back it up and keep it going. I didn't notice any inconsistencies or plot holes, either.

The deductions come from some pacing issues that make the plot hard to follow at times. There was an overuse of exposition, primarily in the beginning, that made it hard to attach to what was going on. However, I will explain this in the next section, I'm just bringing it up here to explain why there were points taken off. All in all, the plot is good.

Pacing: 5/10. As the story progresses and we get out of the beginning phases of it, the pacing gets stronger and flows out at a more fluid pace that helps let the plot and characters feel more well-rounded and interesting. However, there were some major pacing issues in the beginning during the hook segment that I will explain below.

The deductions come from the massive overuse of exposition in the beginning. The prologue is about 90% exposition and 10% story, and chapter one has several long paragraphs of exposition to the point where it looks like about 4-5 out of 10 of the pages are dedicated to exposition. That when combined with there being about 2-3 pages of description means you only have 2-4 pages of actual story progression. Remember you have the entire story to give exposition. For example, do we really need to know Quan Yi's extensive background with the family in chapter 1, or can it be saved for later? You didn't give us that exposition when he showed up for the first time, you saved it for the end of chapter 1, but I understood what was going on without the exposition even during his first appearance without the exposition, so it didn't feel like needed exposition. We really only needed one to two sentences just to set up who Quan Yi is, not an entire paragraph pinpointing the exact year he showed up in their lives. That's why I said to remember you have the entire story to give exposition, so you don't need to dump it all in the first few chapters. Chapter 2 sees an improvement, but there's still a good 3-4 pages of exposition. What I recommend is finding the exposition that is absolutely, 100% needed in order for the readers to understand the first few chapters. Anything else that isn't absolutely, 100% essential to a reader's comprehension of those first few chapters can be saved for later. I'm not saying don't use exposition in the first few chapters since, especially in sci-fi/fantasy stories, it's needed, but what I am saying is consider downsizing and spreading it more throughout the book instead of all at once, if that makes sense.

So that was where the deductions came from since the first few chapters are your hook, meaning they're arguably some of the most important chapters in the entire book. That's why I recommend downsizing on the exposition so readers are more hooked in. This also impacts the rest of the book because it impacts how we view the characters and world. When too much is given all at once, it can overwhelm an audience and have them forget important info about the characters because there's so much important info to learn all at once that we forget. It's hard to get that much info in our heads in such a short time, so that's another reason I suggest slowing down. The first few chapters are what determines if readers stick around, so that's why I'm emphasizing this and spending so much time on it.

Creativity: 7.5/10. The overall creativity in the story is strong and makes the reader want to keep reading. The highlight here is the story idea and how interesting and fresh it is. It's a new idea unlike most I've seen before, making it stand out in the algorithm. The story idea is probably my favorite part of the entire story!

I just a few critiques about the creative side of the story. Let's start with the smaller thing and then talk about the bigger thing, and I'm also doing this because the smaller thing is connected to the bigger thing.

When it comes to word choice, be careful not to use too many of the same words in such close proximity. For example, in chapter 2, you use "imposing" twice in the same paragraph. I'm bringing that up as a segue into my bigger point about another part of word choice, but it's also telling over showing: adverbs.

You use a lot, and I mean a lot, of adverbs. To put it into perspective, I counted chapter 1, and there are about 60 adverbs there. That's a bunch of adverbs to use in just one chapter. Since adverbs are telling over showing, I would suggest downsizing on the adverbs, and you can do this in a few ways. For one, in many sentences, you can just remove the adverb and the sentence won't change much, if at all, so you can remove the adverb and that's a simple solution. Another solution is rearranging the sentence so you don't need the adverb at all. I say this because adverbs are telling over showing, and while telling over showing is okay to do and sometimes even necessary, the more adverbs you use, the more telling over showing you're doing, and many adverbs aren't needed and are added to make the sentences longer. That's why I suggest downsizing. I hope that makes sense!

With all that being said, I overall like the creativity and think you nailed the story idea, making it unique.

Dialogue: 7.5/10. Like I mentioned in the character section, I thought you did a good job capturing the overall atmosphere of your world, which is partly due to the dialogue being the way it is. The dialogue fits every character and does a good job showing us who they are, often having monologues that go over the themes and emotions present throughout the book, which I thought was awesome. I overall liked your dialogue and how it immersed the reader in the world, I just have a few critiques for the presentation.

The main critique I have is there were times you had too many dialogue tags, like almost every line had a tag, and sometimes there were multiple tags for the same person speaking. I'm not saying never use multiple tags for the same person speaking, though if you do, I'd recommend making sure it's very purposeful and for a specific reason. Dialogue tags are telling over showing, and while it's okay to use telling over showing (and sometimes even necessary), there are times it can get a little much, and it can also take away from the dialogue itself. The most important part of dialogue is the dialogue, not the tags, so if there's too much emphasis on the tags, it can take away from the dialogue, if that makes sense. So that's why I recommend downsizing wherever you see fit. Maybe you can try the 50-30 advice for dialogue, which states that of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. Since you're writing a historical fantasy, I think you can get away with having more of the tags that are not said or asked, so really my suggestion is to focus on the 50% or less thing since that can really help with limiting dialogue tags, and it can also act as a fun challenge. It doesn't work for everyone, so it may not work for you, but it could be fun to try! It's always fun to experiment! Well, maybe not always, but I think you catch my meaning, haha.

You have a pattern with your dialogue that gets a little repetitive at times: the "then" pattern. You'll often have, multiple times a chapter, a monologue or section with a lot of dialogue where you'll fall into the pattern of having the characters pause, and then you'll have the "then" pattern. Like this "Dialogue," murmured Queen Lin Mei with a sigh, then continued tiredly, "more dialogue." You often have characters pause randomly in the middle of monologues or long pieces of dialogue, and that's okay here and there, though consider diversifying this and having them stop for more natural reasons rather than just "She paused." Or you can use the multi-paragraph dialogue technique to split up the dialogue more naturally. If you're unaware of this technique, it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like: putting dialogue in multiple paragraphs without needing to change anything or add new tags, you can simply show it via the quotation marks! So this is how it's done:

"Dialogue.

"Dialogue."

All you gotta do is omit the ending quotation mark until it ends, so if you have three paragraphs of dialogue, it'd look like this:

"Dialogue.

"Dialogue.

"Dialogue."

Removing the end quotation shows that the dialogue hasn't ended, though you need the opening quotes still. So that's one way to split it up without needing to put any character pauses in the text, though I encourage you to play around with it!

The last thing is you occasionally, not often but occasionally, use actions as dialogue tags, and I would suggest not doing this since they're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so it can imply that the words are the ones doing the actions, not the people. This is a debated topic, though I align with the side that actions (like he nodded, he smiled, she laughed, she extended her arms, etc.) aren't dialogue tags and are just actions. Using the smiled example, here are two alternatives to include smiled while also not using it as a tag:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

So those are two ways to incorporate the action without using it as a tag, making it more natural and engaging. Though those are just two alternatives, and I encourage you to play around with it, and this was also something that didn't happen often, so I'm not going to take off much for it.

Overall, I think the dialogue is pretty solid throughout the narrative!

Worldbuilding: 7.5/10. The world is very interesting. It has a blend of the historical and fantastical genres that make it really cool to read about, particularly since there are elements of mythology blended in there as well. That when combined with specific descriptions about the environments makes the worldbuilding overall pretty good! I also liked the presence of footnotes, but also how there weren't too many of them. That gave another layer to the worldbuilding that reminded me a bit of Dune, the sci-fi book series (and now film series). So I overall thought it was a cool world to learn about.

The deductions come from the presentation of the worldbuilding elements, which I mentioned in the pacing section with how a lot of the world is info-dumped on us at the beginning instead of spread out and shown to us via showing over telling methods. The overuse of exposition and telling over showing made the world not as engaging as it otherwise could have been. However, the world is really interesting, so I still think this deserves a high score for its creativity and intrigue.

Grammar/Spelling: 8.5/10. The SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) throughout the book is very good. It's solid and does a good job getting the reader immersed in the scene. The only deductions come from the dialogue and the sometimes-awkward formatting of it from a technical/structural standpoint, but since I already explained that, I won't dwell on it here, especially since the SPAG is otherwise good and very deserving of a high score. Overall, you did a great job with the SPAG!

Description: 7.5/10. The descriptions throughout the story are overall good and do a good job getting the reader immersed in the scene. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, the world is interesting with many blends of different elements to help it come to life. That combined with the unique, memorable names makes the descriptions more fun to read. You all in all did a good job with them and didn't go too over-the-top, but at the same time, you didn't underdo it either. It was a good balance.

The only deductions come from some adverb and exposition problems that I explained earlier that took away from the overall descriptions, like the descriptions of the character emotions. But other than those two things, I overall liked the descriptions.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. Like I alluded to in the plot section, I enjoyed the themes of this book, but also the emotions that came along with it. A lot of times, in these high fantasy kind of stories, many emotions end up feeling lost on me due to the language being too much and sometimes feeling like the author is trying too hard to sound pretty instead of tell a story, but here, I didn't notice that problem. There was the exposition issue, but that's different than the language being too much. Here, I liked the emotions and how they were portrayed, but I liked the themes even more. The power struggles and revenge alongside some family tensions makes for an entertaining read that will keep the readers wanting more, so overall, good job with that!

The deductions come from the things I've mentioned throughout the review about too many adverbs, some dialogue issues, and the pacing making the emotions hard to focus on at times. However, I already explained all those things, so I won't talk your ear off about them here again other than to mention them since they are important for the themes/emotions. However, I overall think this section deserves a good score due to its interesting themes and emotions.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8.5/10. The title being Beyond the Heavens is fine and works for the story (based on what I see in the blurb). I've been seeing a lot of titles with "Heaven" in them recently. I'm curious to know what's causing this sudden increase in them, so I'd be curious to know why you selected it for this book! I judge this category prior to reading the book, so I have no idea how it relates to the story yet. However, with that being said, I think the title is good, and I like how it's Beyond The Heavens instead of Beyond Heaven. The plural adds a lot to it, so I have no criticisms.

The blurb is overall good and gives a good general rundown about what the story is going to be about. I only have a handful of critiques. To start, this sentence: King Chen's plan is deeply doubted by his daughter - Princess Lin Su, yet out of a desire to listen to her father and trust him, she accepts what will lead to the change of her entire life course. I wasn't a huge fan of the dash there and felt it could have flowed better with a comma. So, this: King Chen's plan is deeply doubted by his daughter, Princess Lin Su, yet out of a desire to listen to her father and trust him, she accepts what will lead to the change of her entire life course. Secondly, this sentence: Amidst a bloody war, searching for essential solutions to defend her family and kingdom, and attempting to adjust to the new situation, what seemed to be actually a legend becomes reality, and the Princess finds herself caught between two worlds: the one she must be part of, and the one she wants to belong to. I didn't feel the "actually" was needed there and made the sentence a little clunky in that area, and I felt you could have benefitted from not including it. Other than those two things, I liked the blurb.

The cover is overall good and gives the historical romance vibe. I like the method you use for the stickers, putting them in the top left in that shape. It was kind of charming to me, haha. Normally I don't focus on stickers when looking at covers, I just wanted to point out how it looked cute and charming. But overall, the cover was good, so I have no criticisms for it.

Total: 74/100.

Surviving Number 8 by SSears90

Review:

Characters: 7/10. The characters are the core of the story in this narrative, where the plot revolves around them interacting and trying to figure out how to deal with an unexpected eighth member of BTS. I think you did this part of the narrative really well since there's a high attention to detail with the character emotions. For example, something I liked was chapter 2, how it opened with Taehyung reminiscing over his grandmother and taking her advice to heart. It's a small moment that gave Taehyung more depth and gave the audience a chance to settle down and think about what happened in the previous chapter. When I first started reading the story, I made a note here about Jimin having a pet fish, but, well, that went down the drain (ba dum tssssh), so I'll just quickly say I liked the choice to give him a fish... until he didn't. All the BTS members have their own stake in the story and their own personal journeys that I liked to see, though Taehyung was my favorite due to the attention to detail for his storyline, and also because I personally relate to it, so it hit close to home for me.

My main criticism of the characters is their decisions and how it seems they make all the wrong decisions possible not for character purposes but because if they made the right decisions, the story would be over. I'll mention it in more detail in the next section, but there were countless ways they could have gotten out of the Ky situation as early as chapter 1, but I'm okay with that because they gave Ky a chance and, sure, that's fine for them to give Ky a chance, but as soon as the ab/se started with Namjoon, I don't buy that Ky would still be in that house for one minute let alone most of the story. However, there are a few other critiques I have about character emotion and how it got repetitive at times, but I'll explain that in the themes section since I already wrote a detailed explanation for it there. So that's where the deductions come from, though both of those things will be explained throughout the review.

Plot: 6/10. The plot follows BTS after they get a new, eighth member of the band, and his name is Ky. However, issues start to arise when Ky is revealed to be 29 years old, five years older than the oldest, Jin, and it only gets worse as Ky gets more aggressive, and more secrets come out about him, leading to cat and mouse games between Ky and the BTS members. I think this is a good idea for the plot. It's a twist on the eighth member of BTS trope that spins it in a more unique way where it isn't used for romance and anything of the sort but rather to display themes about trust and how it can be easily broken, so I think it's good that you went for a spin on the usual trope.

I think this is a criticism I've given you a few times before, but the biggest criticism I always have is that BTS being BTS on a similar scale irl as they are in your fics often hurts the believability. Based on the first chapter, it said they've been a group for four years, making them about 2017 BTS (confirmed by how old Jin and Jungkook are), and 2017 BTS were on top of the world at that point, breaking into the Western market and one of the most popular groups in South Korea. Beyond that, they were arguably the single most successful group of that year, being the most mentioned and celebrated in terms of awards. I know fiction isn't reality, but when you're basing your fic's world on reality, that's when the issues come in since now we have to judge based on reality as that's the world you're reflecting here. They have extreme influence and power, and there are countless ways they could have gotten out of their situation with Ky. I really don't believe any amount of bribes or threats or "convincings" from Ky would throw the police off the trail of the ab/se when BTS are extremely, extremely powerful from a social and even political standpoint, especially when the mafia in Korea is not nearly as powerful as the media makes it out to be. But even beyond that, there are still some confusing things about the plot, like why did it take 16 chapters for them to decide to try and terminate their contracts? Shouldn't that have been their first reaction as soon as Ky got out of jail the first time and Junso was saying Ky had to be there? And, in general, I don't believe Ky, one man, would overpower seven grown men who aren't much younger than him. All except Jungkook are in their twenties by this point, not young boys anymore. If this were debut BTS, I could find it more convincing, but it gets really hard to believe when seven grown men are against one man and they still somehow always lose. And if we're going based on their real life experiences, then that makes it even less believable due to people like Jimin having martial arts training, and not just training, but extensive training.

I think the biggest plot hole is Ky getting the police called on him in chapter 5, yet they never followed up with Namjoon, took him for questioning, took pictures of what Ky did with the belt, took statements from any of the boys, etc. That's standard procedure, so the fact that it was overlooked leads to the plot hole: lawsuits. There were a bunch of opportunities for BTS to sue the company, the police, etc. There was clear as day evidence that Ky was the one who did the ab/se due to the belt marks and the belt and fingerprints on said belt matching him, and they would have printed him since they took him in. So clear as day proof, six eyewitness testimonies, prints, Namjoon's body being evidence, etc. Ky being let out of jail because of company interference is a lawsuit waiting to happen, if not worse, and that would very quickly lead to the mafia revelation being discovered early on. At that point, BTS should have sued their company and the police department, and considering their status, that case would make international headlines, and the company would sink due to public opinion swaying so heavily against them. Like I said, they aren't boys anymore; they're grown adults with experiences of lawsuits and the legal department by this point (like 2016 BST). HYBE really had no legs to stand on except BTS in 2017, so with their main group bringing in the dough suing them, it'd bankrupt them, no more Ky, no more plot. Even if the lawsuits don't go as planned since courts are complicated, the police not doing anything with the seven boys, especially Namjoon, is a major issue that BTS should have questioned. Again, it's one thing if this is like debut BTS where they're all young and scared, but they're not that young anymore. All of them except Jungkook are in their twenties, with the hyung line being about mid-twenties by that point. They should know better by that point, especially in a career where lawsuits and defamation cases are the norm in K-pop, and BTS as a group have been facing legal issues as early as 2014, so they're very familiar with it by 2017. Why did they not think to involve Army until chapter 18, after they all almost died multiple times, even if they ultimately shut the idea down due to Army safety? Why did they not think about moving out as soon as Ky got out of jail for the first time, again even if they ultimately shut the idea down because they're fiercely protective of their home?

And the explanation about the mafia could be tweaked since it doesn't really make that much sense. Historically, after the Korean War, gangs and mafia rose because Korea was a developing country, though President Roh Tae-woo started a war on crime back in the 90s to eliminate gangs and the mafia presence, and this worked, making Korea now one of the safest countries in the world. They added over 16,000 new police officers, revamped laws, and cracked down on all illegal activities. Of course there is still crime and gangs, but not nearly to that extent that they can hire that many people to go against one of the biggest groups in the world, so I find it hard to believe that a mafia in South Korea was able to hire doctors, company plants, police officers, etc. to box BTS in without fail for that long. It just could be tweaked to maybe consider downsizing, like maybe instead of this happening for 20+ chapters, this is a shorter story with only 15 or so chapters so the scale is a little more believable, if that makes sense. Or consider making it younger BTS, like after I Need U when they're much younger and experiencing their first major success, making them far more pliable and able to be manipulated and making it more understandable when they make bad decisions that experienced artists in their twenties are far less likely to make. And, in general, the "they're the mafia so they have a lot of power and influence" storyline does get tiring since it's done so often, especially in BTS fanfics, so it could be more interesting to have a smaller scale story where maybe Ky was a cut member of BTS who was seeking revenge and was an incredibly smart and cunning character instead of just a mafia trope. I hope that makes sense.

Overall, I like the creativity of the plot idea itself and think it works well to create an inventive fic in an otherwise tired genre. I just had some suggestions for the believability of the plot, but I otherwise thought it was interesting.

Pacing: 10/10. The pacing throughout the story is overall good and does a good job establishing the plot and characters. While I think you could potentially benefit from downsizing the story and making it shorter, that doesn't impact how the rate at which plot information is given is overall good, so I have no criticisms for this section.

Creativity: 7/10. Like I mentioned in the plot section, the story idea is very good, and I like the twist on the eighth BTS member genre here where A) it's not a Y/n for once, and B) it's used to tell a tale about trusting others and the dynamics of power and age in relationships. I think that makes the creativity in the story overall very good and interesting to read about!

The main critique I have of the creativity is there were some emotional issues with there being a heavy emphasis on crying to the point where there was crying in every single chapter of the book. It made the emotions get repetitive at times and not as creative as they otherwise could have been. That being said, I have a detailed explanation in the themes/emotions section, so I will save most of my explanation for there, I'm just bringing it up here since it impacts the creativity a lot.

But all in all, I still overall liked the creativity and thought it was good.

Dialogue: 7.5/10. The dialogue throughout the book is overall pretty solid and makes sense for the characters, and there's enough happening around the dialogue to make the dialogue feel more well-rounded and interesting. I all in all like the dialogue present throughout the book, and I only have a handful of critiques.

I believe this is another critique I've had in the past, so I won't spend too much time on it other than to mention it since it happened frequently throughout the story: actions as dialogue tags. Actions like smiled, chuckled, frowned, etc. I suggest not using them because they can come off as unnatural, especially when there are so many alternatives that can be used without even needing to remove the action, like: He chuckled. "Dialogue." Or: "Dialogue," he said with a chuckle. So those are two alternatives without needing to use a tag like "he chuckled."

The grammar error with dialogue is you'll often do this: "But," Yoongi joined the conversation, "Maybe he'll change his mind..." (chap 3). You don't do this in the most recent chapters, though since it happens for a lot of the runtime, it is something that needs to be factored into the score. I believe that was the only grammar error I noticed about dialogue, though since it was frequent in the beginning, it is still a prominent error to mention.

So, overall, the dialogue is good, it just could use a couple of tweaks to the presentation. Otherwise, I liked it.

Worldbuilding: 7/10. The worldbuilding throughout the story is overall good in terms of how the locations are described and how the environments play an important role in the book. For example, BTS' home is like a character where they're super defensive about it and don't want to show it to just anyone, which makes it feel more alive and interesting, and also gives the world more layers, so I liked that part of the worldbuilding, and I also think many of the areas are well-described and make sense.

I think most of my criticisms were explained in the plot section about how the world of BTS as idols and their daily lives could be fleshed out more to make the whole experience more believable since Ky's involvement in their lives impacted them a lot emotionally, but it could have been interesting to see more of how it impacted BTS commercially and during practices and things like that. It felt like that side got a bit shunned, so it could be interesting to see more of the inner workings of the company and the legal team and just BTS as a whole since that's what makes the core of the plot. They're based on irl BTS, though for I think a good ten chapters, there's barely any, if any, mention of any of HYBE (or BigHit at the time) as a whole, their practices, their schedules, their music, etc. I understand they were put on break to adjust to Ky, but still, it could have been interesting to see that earlier on, maybe even as a way to build tension before Ky goes all off the walls crazy with the ab/se and things like that. And also consider adding a little more detail about the mafia and how they were able to control so many people outside of "they're the mafia" due to the current state of Korean mafia. However, I still overall liked the worldbuilding.

Grammar/Spelling: 7/10. The overall SPAG is good. I honestly don't have too much to say about it other than it was good (it can be hard to say things about grammar since it's so technical), though there were some frequent errors I will explain below. In general, the spelling was really good, there were some punctuation errors, and the overall grammar was good with a handful of errors. I'll explain the critiques below.

You have some possession issues where sometimes you won't use the correct possession forms. Two examples are where you say companies decision instead of company's decision, and hyungs shoulder instead of hyung's shoulder (chapter one).

This is a small thing, but I recommend spelling out numbers at least from 1-9, if not 1-99. The reason is because it flows stronger in the text. If you type 8 members, it stands out. If you type eight members, it has stronger flow and fits in more with the text. Most authors recommend at least spelling out the numbers between 1-9, though I personally recommend spelling out between 1-99 as I think it overall flows better within the text. But again, that's a small thing.

There are some comma errors with non-essential info where you'll have non-essential info (in this case, names and honorifics) in dialogue that isn't blocked off by a comma when, in most cases, you need one. For example: "I'm sorry hyung" and "He's not some random jerk anymore Jungkook-ah" (chap 2). Since the "hyung" and "Jungkook-ah" don't change the meaning of the sentence, for flow and grammar purposes, it makes more sense to have a comma before them. So they should be: "I'm sorry, hyung" and "He's not some random jerk anymore, Jungkook-ah." Since the "hyung" doesn't change the "I'm sorry" and the "Jungkook-ah" doesn't change the meaning of the second sentence, that's why I suggest having a comma to block it off. Typically when we use names or honorifics in a sentence, we block it off with commas to show it doesn't impact the overall sentence and is additional info. It's fine to include those names/honorifics in the sentences, it's just strongly recommended to block them off, otherwise that'll be a grammar error. So, like this: "Right away, sir." And also: "How are you doing, Jimin?" Sir and Jimin don't change the base sentences, so that's why they're blocked off with commas. Even if we speak it more like "Right away sir" or "How are you doing Jimin?", the commas are still needed.

All of these errors were pretty consistent, but there weren't too many overall SPAG errors, which means this category is overall good and deserves a high score.

Description: 7/10. The descriptions throughout the story are overall good and do a good job getting the reader set in the scene and ready to read. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, I like how you make physical places, like BTS' home, feel like real places that are almost like their own characters contributing to the plot and other characters. For those reasons, I think the descriptions here deserve a high score for being overall solid, and it helps that there was overall good grammar to help them flow well, too.

I wasn't sure what section to put this in. I normally put tone stuff in plot since it impacts the overall feel of the plot, though I feel these occasional tone issues should be in descriptions instead of plot since it didn't impact the overall plot too much for me, more just made me pause sometimes. You have occasional tone issues where you'll have a description that doesn't feel like it fits the scene you're describing. For example, in chapter 3, Jin is confronting Ky, and it's this serious scene where all the members are frightened, even Jin despite him putting on a strong front. But then, halfway through the intense scene, there's this: "How can you not care if you hurt people?" Jin pouted. The "pouted" doesn't feel like it works here, not only in the context of the scene, but also for the dialogue itself. It doesn't feel like it matches the anger and bitterness Jin must feel. It feels a little out of place and like it goes against the established tone of the scene (anger). So that's what I mean when I say you had occasional moments where the tone would slip and feel like the descriptions didn't match what was going on.

There was also the thing I mentioned in the creativity about there being an overabundance of crying, making the descriptions feel repetitive at times. However, I will explain that in the next section since I already wrote a detailed explanation for it there.

So overall, the descriptions are good, they could just use some tweaks to make sure they fit in with the moment, and there could be some tweaks to the repetitiveness of the crying, though I will explain that in the next section.

Themes and Emotions: 6/10. I really like the overall message of this story and how trust and ab/se play a big role here, and also how kindness can be more like a knife than a useful tool. BTS are punished for being kind, and the entire world is out to get them, which I think is a very interesting theme that's unique in the BTS genre. I don't see too many stories like this, especially in the eighth member subgenre, so I think that's really cool, and I overall like it a lot.

My main criticism of the emotions is the emotions got very repetitive. Just to put this in perspective, there are 21 chapters in this story. Every single chapter has them crying at least once if not multiple times. They cry in every single chapter. All 21. It happens so often that back-to-back chapters, chapters 2 and 3, open with a member of BTS crying. Here are all the chapters that start with them crying: 2, 3, 6, 12, 14, 18. That's six whole chapters where it starts with them crying, and 21 chapters in a row where they're crying. Do you see why that'd get really repetitive really fast? So my recommendation would be to consider diversifying the emotions so they stand out more, don't feel as repetitive, and have more of a punch. As many writers say, too much of anything can be a big detriment to the story. The more we see them cry, the less it impacts us later. That's why writers recommend using ! sparingly; the more you use them, the less impact they have. I actually had an English teacher once say to use ! so rarely that they're used for situations like "I'm pregnant!", and that stuck with me to this day. That's just a slightly related example, but I think it explains what I mean: using too many ! makes the ! lose all its emotional impact. Using too much crying makes the crying not as impactful, and it's also unrealistic. Obviously it's fiction so I'm not expecting it to be a 1-to-1 of real life, though there is the suspension of disbelief that all viewers have, and if that gets bent too much, it can completely pull us out of the story. With there being crying at least once in every single chapter of the book, I started to feel like the emotions weren't as powerful as they otherwise could have been. There's more nuance to emotions in situations like these than just crying.

So that's where the deductions come from since the emotions got very repetitive at times due to how much of the same emotion was portrayed, though in ab/sive relationships like this, I'd suggest diversifying the emotions in that sense since these types of relationships bring many complex emotions. That's not to say you never do this since that's not true, though consider downsizing on the crying so the other emotions stand out more, and also so it doesn't get as repetitive, if that makes sense.

All in all, the themes are strong and are unique for the eighth member genre, I just suggest some tweaks to the emotions.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. The title, "Surviving Number 8.," is unique and unlike anything I've seen before. I've seen things regarding an eighth member of BTS before, but not with a title like this. It has strong implications about what the story will be about, so I like it. No criticisms.

This is the blurb:

The members are forced to accept an 8th member into the group. This new member will now be their bandmate, their oldest hyung, and their new roommate. He will also be the reason that they completely fall apart.

Will OT7 be able to save each other from the horrors that is their new member, or will they crack and crumble until none of them have anything left to give?

There are a few errors, so here's what I recommend:

The members are forced to accept an 8th member into the group. This new member will be their bandmate, oldest hyung, and new roommate. He will also be the reason they completely fall apart.

Will OT7 be able to save each other from the horror that is their new member, or will they crack and crumble until none of them have anything left to give?

Grammatically, I changed "horrors" to "horror" to agree with the "is" verb, I removed the "that" in the third sentence, and I removed two of the theirs from the first part for more flow.

The overall blurb says exactly what the story is about, so that's good. It's good other than those grammar things and I have no suggestions for the creative side of it.

The cover is really nice and shows who the main characters are while also providing an interesting blue aesthetic. I've already told you that I like the font and design of the text, though I'll say it again: I like the font and design of the text with the little wavey lines above and below it. The only minor critique I have is Jin's positioning. I'm not sure if it's possible to move him, but Jin feels like he stands out a little too much compared to the others. This normally wouldn't be an issue (an excuse to stare at Jin? Sure!), but he's blocking most of the B of the BTS behind him, and he also feels unnaturally distant from the others. I feel, if it's possible, consider moving Jin down and to the left a little to be more aligned with Hoseok and fill that large gap between him and Namjoon on the bottom left. Or if you're concerned about him blocking the castle in the background, maybe just move him down in the same position without moving him to the left, that way he's no longer blocking the B and is aligned with Hoseok. But even with that being said, I still overall like the cover, and Honey, once again, did a great job.

Total: 72/100.

Step in the Right Direction by emilypoole977

Review:

Characters: 6/10. The characters throughout the narrative are overall okay and do their job for the story. I'd say Jungkook and Hoseok were the two I was most interested in, mostly because Hoseok had interesting stories and I enjoyed seeing Jungkook during the Earth 2 segments where he was questioning why Hoseok and Jimin had it out for him when he did nothing wrong. He was just being a kid trying to fit in, and he got a lot of unwarranted aggression thrown his way. It was interesting to see him react to that and try to come to terms with it since he didn't do anything wrong to them. So I liked that whole storyline and how it was handled, and the same applies to Hoseok. I don't think any of the characters were weaker than any others as they all had storylines rooted in different emotions and experiences, which was cool.

The deductions come from the dialogue and overall lack of descriptions that made it hard to connect to the characters at times, and also hard to imagine them and what they were doing within the world. However, I'll get into those things later throughout the review, but I'm just bringing them up here to explain why points were taken off. The rest of the review will explain why.

Plot: 7/10. This is a character-driven story, so the plot revolves around the characters. It follows BTS after watching a TV show where they learn a lot more about themselves and each other, leading to a journey of friendship and family. The plot is simple, but that's a good thing. I think it fits into the book and keeps the focus on the characters, so I think that's good. I've always liked how you've crossed over other media into your books with different ideas, like the Wizard of Oz or Fire Emblem. Now, we have a TV show for this book that inspires the journey. Overall, I like the plot.

The deductions come from the pacing issues making it difficult to follow what's going on at times, and even when we are following, it can get a bit tough to understand what's happening. I'll explain all this in the next section, though. It's just that the plot moved too fast and was difficult to follow, so that's why I suggest slowing down so we understand what's going on both in terms of plot and character. Again, I'll explain this in the next section.

Pacing: 5/10. The pacing is overall okay, though the entire story happens very quickly due to it being almost all dialogue with little pause for description, character emotions, actions, environment descriptions, etc. That means the readers don't have much time to process what's going on, and also don't have much time to get inside the mind of the characters and see what they're thinking up close and personal. Since this is a character-driven story, as I mentioned above, I would suggest giving the characters more chances to express their emotions in unique ways through descriptions, body language, and other forms of non-verbal communication. The story moves very fast, and while I am okay with fast pacing, this felt a bit too fast since I felt that I didn't know much about what they were thinking, what was happening around them, what they look like, etc. So that's why I suggest slowing down a bit and giving us more space between large chunks of dialogue so then we can process what they're saying. I'll give more specific examples throughout the review, though my main suggestion remains the same that I recommend giving the readers more time to understand what's happening since this is a unique plot idea I enjoyed reading, and I wanted to see more of it, if that makes sense.

Creativity: 6/10. The story ideas you have are always interesting and unique. They're unlike any I've seen on Wattpad, really, so that means the story ideas here are good. Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed Jungkook's character and thought his storyline was fun to read about and also reflected maybe what he felt in real life during certain eras, which I think is cool. I like how you blend fiction and reality together by providing potential hypotheticals to what BTS may have gone through during their decade together. I think that's a cool idea that I hope you keep writing about in the future.

The main deductions come from there not being much experimentation and diversity in the sentence structure and word choice. We get a lot of the same words and structures due to it being an almost all-dialogue story. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a lot of dialogue, but it does mean that there's a whole other side to the creativity of creative writing that's being missed out on here: the descriptions. Even just one paragraph here and there, or even just one sentence, can go a long way in giving the readers more to work with in their imaginations. When I read these scenes and try to imagine what's going on, it's like I'm picturing the characters in a white void since I don't know much else about the locations and places, and sometimes even the characters are blank because I don't have too much to go off of, especially when it comes to the original characters. So my recommendation is to consider playing around more with the word choice and sentence structure. For word choice, I suggest using thesauruses to increase your vocabulary range. You don't need to have fancy vocabulary; in fact, I normally advise against that. All I'm suggesting is considering playing around a bit more with vocab and sentence structure, that way the reader has more to work with, if that makes sense.

Dialogue: 5/10. The dialogue has its moments where there are interesting concepts portrayed through the lines. The story is almost all dialogue, so there are good moments where I like what the characters were saying and wanted to see more of it. Like I mentioned before, I pretty much liked anything with Jungkook and thought all his moments were great and fun to read about. However, I do have a few critiques for the overall presentation of the dialogue.

To begin, the dialogue is inconsistent. In the chapter "What is going on?", there are no quotation marks, and this happens for a while. There aren't any quotation marks again until the chapter "So what's next." It's good after that, but that's eight chapters without quotation marks. 8/30 is almost 1/3 of the book, so I would strongly suggest more consistency in that sense.

The main issue with the dialogue is that the dialogue tags are done incorrectly, and there are many SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) errors within the dialogue, making it difficult to follow at times. Dialogue is written like this:

"Hey!" Shouted Namjoon.

"Yeah I'll baby leader needs a nap." Said Taehyung.

Both of those examples are from the A day to remember chapter. What they should be:

"Hey!" shouted Namjoon.

"Yeah, our baby leader needs a nap," Taehyung said.

I switched the said Taehyung to Taehyung said because I personally think it sounds 50x more natural to use he said/Taehyung said than said Taehyung. The English sentence structure does not put the verb first, and while there are always exceptions to everything in English, I just think the said Taehyung dialogue tag looks awkward and doesn't agree with the English sentence structure being SVO (subject-verb-object). However, that won't factor into the score. The thing I'm focusing on here is the dialogue tags being incorrect. Whenever you are using a tag, unless it is a proper noun, it needs to be lowercase. When using a tag, you can end the dialogue with anything other than a period/full stop, and on the opposite end, whenever you aren't using a tag, you can end the dialogue with anything other than a comma. So, to summarize:

- Tags are always lowercase unless they are a proper noun, even when the end punctuation is ? or !

- When using tags, you can end the dialogue in anything other than a .

As for the general grammar errors, I'll go over them in the grammar/spelling section, but I just wanted to bring them up here since the majority of the grammar errors happen in the dialogue, so it sometimes hurts the flow and makes some sentences stiff.

So the dialogue has its moments, it just needs tweaks to the grammar and presentation to make it more fluid and understandable.

Worldbuilding: 5/10. Like I've mentioned throughout the review and as I will continue to mention, the main reason points are being taken off is because there are little to no descriptions, therefore making it extremely difficult to judge some of these categories. The environments are not described much if at all, which makes the world feel hard to decipher. I like how you give us locations like the aquarium, though I still suggest giving more than just that and giving us more to work with within the environments themselves. Consider incorporating the world more into your storytelling. The world is one of the four core story elements (characters, plot, themes, worldbuilding). When you're missing one of the four core elements, it makes the story feel not as well-rounded as it otherwise could. If you think about your daily life, you're interacting with the world around you every moment of your day. You get out of bed and go through your daily routine, traversing your room that's likely decorated with your favorite things that make up who you are. You use the bathroom. You cook in your kitchen and maybe accidentally burn something or spill hot water on yourself. You go out and complain about the heat/cold, your feet feel sore from walking, you bump into a few strangers on the way to the grocery store. Those are just a few random examples of how the world impacts your daily routine, but do you see how much there is to consider? That's why I suggest including more about the world through things like that. Think about the world around you and your daily life, and consider incorporating some of that into your writing. I hope that makes sense.

Grammar/Spelling: 3/10. It's difficult to judge this category, like the next category, because most of the SPAG is seen through dialogue and not descriptions, so I'm judging based on the SPAG within the dialogue, and it could use some tweaks. There are many spelling errors, though that is something I won't dwell on since we've spoken about that before and that's something you're already aware of, so I'd rather spend time on the grammar, which I think would be more helpful for you.

In general, I would suggest using TTS or reading the sentences out loud, that way you can hear how they sound and edit accordingly. I personally use TTS to edit my work, and it massively improves my spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If that doesn't appeal to you, I suggest using free online editing software like Grammarly, QuillBot, and/or ProWritingAid. I'd suggest using a mix of them since they're not always right, but if you notice them pointing out the same things, there's a higher chance they're right. If you don't want to use grammar editing software, I suggest at least looking into the Grammarly blog since they have many tips and tricks for grammar that can help. Those three tips can help you in the long run, depending on which one appeals to you most. It may take time to work, but over time, you may notice differences in your grammar if you use one or more of those methods.

Moving into specific grammar errors, there are very frequent dialogue tag errors that I already mentioned. There are also some capitalism issues where you don't capitalize proper nouns, like sometimes you won't capitalize I and will instead spell it as i. For example in the chapter A day to remember, there's this: "What I said i was sorry." Firstly, the i needs to be capitalized. Secondly, this sentence is a little awkward and I'd recommend: "What? I said I was sorry" instead since it breaks up the what with the rest of the sentence, giving it more space and fluidity. Moving back into the capitalization, on the opposite end, sometimes you capitalize nouns that aren't proper. From the same chapter: "Good Idea Hoseok." This is an example where "idea" needs to be lowercase, and it also leads me to my next point: comma errors. There are frequent comma errors throughout the book, which is why I'd recommend using grammar editing software at least to help with commas, though grammar editing software sometimes isn't good with shorter sentences, so it's a hit or miss there. But either way, there needs to be a comma before Hoseok and after idea, so: "Good idea, Hoseok." The reason is because this kind of comma sections off non-essential info, like sweet names (like dear, sweetheart, etc.), honorifics (like hyung), names, etc. When you have something like that that doesn't impact the meaning of the core sentence, close it off using commas. By that I mean, the inclusion of "Hoseok" in that sentence doesn't change the fact that the sentence would be "Good idea." Hoseok doesn't impact that at all, so show that with a comma. This is common practice with names. Here are some examples:

"I'm sorry, Hoseok."

"I'm here, hyung."

"I missed you, my love."

"Where are you, darling?"

"Are you okay, Jimin?"

See how all the non-essential info is blocked off with a comma? That's what I'm talking about. It's perfectly fine to include that non-essential info; everyone does this, so it's no problem at all. All I'm recommending is blocking that kinda stuff off with commas.

You have end punctuation errors where you won't end a sentence with its proper punctuation. For example: Jimin returned

There's no period/full stop there despite there needing to be. Every sentence needs end punctuation, otherwise that says the sentence is still ongoing, so that's why I strongly recommend ensuring you have end punctuation.

All of these errors are very frequent, comma errors especially. Comma errors are big and can massively change the flow of the sentence, so I recommend incorporating more commas into your sentences and using grammar software or Grammarly blogs on punctuation to help with comma placement. There are plenty of comma placement charts online, too. They can help a lot. All in all, the SPAG could use improvement to increase readability and the flow of the book. I hope that makes sense.

Description: 2/10. It's really difficult to judge this category as there are very few descriptions in the story. It is almost an only-dialogue book. We've talked about this before, so I'm not going to go too in detail other than to say I would suggest having descriptions. Even when there are descriptions, the vast majority of them are quick action descriptions, like BTS laughing, Namjoon jumping, Jungkook smiling, etc. So that's why this section is extremely hard to judge because there isn't much there for me to judge. Whenever there's a new place, like an aquarium, there isn't much, if any, description given to flesh out the place. It's almost all dialogue. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a lot of dialogue in the story, though it does mean that it makes it nearly impossible to judge this section as I don't have anything to really judge here other than the action descriptions, which were okay, though I would suggest incorporating more descriptions. Descriptions of faces, places, emotions, body language, etc. The vast majority of human communication is non-verbal, so when that non-verbal part isn't given to us, it can hurt our understanding of the characters and plot ideas. That's why I strongly suggest including more descriptions, even if they're really short, to help get the reader more invested in what's going on. For example, incorporating the five senses here and there (sight, sound, smell, etc.). If Namjoon is emotional, consider describing what he's feeling in more detail, and you can use the five senses to do this by describing how he's interacting with his surroundings (people who are emotional often do things like hitting walls, crying into their pillows, holding onto a comfort thing like a stuffed animal or toy, talking with their hands, pacing around the room, banging their hands on the closest surfaces, etc.). So those are a few ways to incorporate more descriptions into your writing, but I encourage you to play around with it and see what works best for you.

Themes and Emotions: 5/10. Like I've mentioned throughout the review, I like the concepts behind the characters and their emotions, and I like the whole notion of going a step in the right direction. I always think your ideas are there since you have good, creative ideas that I encourage you to write more of. Jungkook in particular, as I mentioned a few times, stole the show for me, and I enjoyed his character even more than my two biases, Jimin and Hobi, so that goes to show that I enjoyed him a lot if he dethroned my faves. So I overall think the concepts of the themes and emotions are good, they just need some tweaks to the execution to give them more weight.

My criticisms are the same things I've had throughout the review, so I won't repeat myself too much here other than to list where the deductions come from: frequent SPAG errors disrupting the flow, pacing issues sometimes hindering the emotions, the lack of descriptions, the lack of diversity in the structure, and things like that. So all the things I've already explained throughout the review. The themes and emotions are cool in terms of their concept, they could just use some changes to the presentation to make them more understandable and emotionally powerful, if that makes sense.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 5/10. The title sets up exactly what the book is going to be about in a way that makes sense and rolls off the tongue well. The only suggestion I have is to consider lowercasing the t in the since, according to capitalization rules, the "the" wouldn't have a capital letter in this situation.

The blurb could use some tweaks. It's a little vague and doesn't say too much about the story. This is the blurb: The guys start watching a TV show called the Next Step, Hoseok learns what Namjoon was going through and Jungkook is fed up of being treated like a baby. While it does summarize the core idea, it could use a little more detail to get us more invested. What is this going to lead to? Why should we care about these characters? What's at stake here? I haven't read the story yet (I review this section prior to reading the story), so I can't answer those questions, but consider including more details about what's going to happen and why the audience should want to read it. What is the Next Step, and how is that related to Hoseok and Namjoon? Are the other BTS members involved? Jimin and Jin are on the cover, but they're not mentioned in the blurb. In fact, Namjoon and Jungkook aren't even on the cover, so are they the main characters, or are they Jimin, Jin, and Hobi? That's why I suggest expanding since the cover and blurb don't match, and there isn't much information given.

As for the cover, like I mentioned above, I'm not sure how it relates to the blurb or the story since the blurb names two completely different characters than the ones on the cover. Jin's cut out could use a little bit of polish since his head looks a little unevenly cut, and the same applies to Jimin, though Jin is the one who could use the most polish. Hoseok looks pretty polished, and his head looks the most natural of the bunch, which is good considering he's the one in the center, taking up most of the attention. The cover is otherwise okay, even though I'm not sure how it relates to the book or blurb. Seeing as it's about a TV show, I would expect the cover to be more about TV shows and screens and things like that, so consider having a cover more geared toward TV and the themes of the book. I hope that makes sense.

Total: 49/100.

Still a family ? by Taekookiecookie

Review:

Characters: 6/10. I like the concept behind Taehyung and Jungkook a lot. I actually liked the choice to age them up so significantly since it gave us a chance to see an older relationship and the struggles that can come from a long-term relationship, and I also liked how the struggle didn't boil down to cheating or something like that. There were more layers to it than that that gave it more weight. I like the concept behind all of this happening while Jungkook battles cancer, especially since two people in his life (Taehyung and Hyejoon) are doctors. I liked the part where Hyejoon (forgive me, I don't remember the chapter since I'm writing this after reading the full story) asked herself what kind of doctor she was after she discovered that Jungkook had cancer. That guilt of not realizing it earlier was interesting to see, and I think it gave Hyejoon and Taehyung more layers.

I also like how Jungkook wasn't a complete pushover. While he was in the beginning, he stood up for himself more later and was far from a damsel. While I dabble in the occasional damsel here and there depending on the story, I get tired of the trope real fast, so it was nice to see Jungkook learn and stand up for himself. Satisfying, too, since his entire family was emotionally ab/sive.

Another thing I enjoyed was Taemin overall. He started off as seemingly the only reasonable one, but then we discovered he's just like Taehyung and Hyejoon, and then, as the story progressed, he became more sympathetic and understanding toward Jungkook. Seeing both kids, but Taemin in particular, understand the value of life and family over time was satisfying.

Moving into critiques, a couple characters felt unnecessary and like they only existed to serve one specific purpose, like Mina, Eunwoo, Jimin (he's just a background character that gets lines every once in a while), and Park Jaehyung is just a mouthpiece for the theme. Mina needed more depth and screentime to be impactful. Eunwoo is forgotten about for most of the story. Jimin's role easily could have been fused with Yoongi's. Jaehyung's role could have been combined with Mina's, giving Mina more meaning. I'll get into Eunwoo, but let's talk about Mina and Jaehyung first.

Jaehyung really only exists to tell the audience directly the theme to the point where the theme is in spoken dialogue by Jaehyung and it's bolded to make it even more obvious to the reader (will talk about this in another section later). So that's why his character feels like he only exists to be a mouthpiece for the theme considering he doesn't impact the plot in any way, shape, or form, and he only appears when the readers need to be reminded of the theme (I believe he's only in three chapters of the story, one of which being more of a mention than a substantial appearance in the last chapter to show he married Hyejoon). When I say he could be combined with Mina, I mean that Mina is also like a mouthpiece for the theme, so everything Jaehyung said could have been said by Mina, just in slightly different ways, and it'd give Mina more impact on Jungkook and Taehyung's lives. The same applies to Yoongi and Jimin. Jimin's role was minimal and could have been merged with Yoongi. I'm far from the type to advocate for not having Jimin in a BTS story, but in this case, it could have strengthened the pacing to have one less character to have to remember, if that makes sense. So with that being said, let's get into Eunwoo since he's the most impactful in terms of his concept.

Eunwoo, in my opinion, is really underused. The revelation in chapter 31 that Jungkook was prioritizing Eunwoo over Taehyung feels underdeveloped since Eunwoo is barely in the story. It feels like Eunwoo only exists to give Taehyung a sympathetic backstory rather than to act as genuine conflict. So my suggestion for any future stories you do like this would be to consider sprinkling more hints of this problem throughout the story. For example, the easiest way is to have Eunwoo more present and Jungkook going to Eunwoo more frequently, but I honestly forgot Eunwoo was in the story in the beginning since there was a giant gap without him, and then he appeared in the middle chapters, and then I don't think he was even mentioned again until chapter 31 (though I could be wrong since I was focusing on judging other things). So that's why it felt like the revelation was there to give Taehyung an out instead of a genuine conflict, and for any future stories you may do like this, I suggest sprinkling in that conflict throughout more clearly so it's more morally gray since prior to that, I don't see how anyone can justify saying Jungkook is at fault when Taehyung was mentally and verbally ab/sive to Jungkook, same with the entire family. Jungkook ends up being far more at fault due to the backstory, though again, it felt like an underdeveloped plotline since we don't even learn of it until chapter 31/37, and Eunwoo is barely in the story.

So, all in all, the core four are good, but most of the side characters are really underutilized or could have been completely removed or combined with another character to tighten the pacing. I hope that makes sense.

*This part of the review is not going to factor into the score at all, and none of it is praise or criticism, it's just my thoughts. Considering how much discourse Taehyung and Jungkook's relationship sparked, I'm sure you probably want to know my opinion on it. To be honest, I think Jungkook is pretty justified for most of the story, even after knowing the backstories, since he was battling cancer and a family. He of course made mistakes, but his family wasn't just mean to him—they were ab/sive. They took every opportunity to call him pathetic and put him down. Jungkook definitely was in the wrong for things like prioritizing Eunwoo, but in my eyes that doesn't outweigh verbal ab/se. So, in summary, I think they're both wrong for different reasons, but I can honestly understand Jungkook a bit more. But that doesn't mean either of them are bad characters, so like I said, this isn't praise or criticism, just my thoughts since I thought you might be curious to know them. I mean, the fact that I even can make a long a/s paragraph breaking down the actions of these characters shows there was a lot of thought put into them, so maybe it is praise, haha.

Plot: 7/10. Like I mentioned in the previous section, I liked the concepts behind the characters, and that feeds into the plot since it's a character-driven narrative. So the concept behind the plot being the falling out of a long-term relationship was good to see. The core four characters in the Kim family do a good job portraying the themes and emotions to get the reader invested in what's going on, and the overall pacing is good, too, aside from a couple of critiques I'll mention in the next section.

I have a handful of suggestions. The first one is about your hook, or chapter one. One of the most common things writers say to avoid doing is starting your book with the main character waking up and doing a morning routine. While I think every story is different and requires different introductions regardless of what other writers may think, I would recommend considering avoiding this in the future for a few reasons. For one, the waking up here isn't very engaging, and the second reason is the ending doesn't have any cliffhanger or overall element that makes readers want to keep going. While I did like the hints of Jungkook having something wrong sprinkled throughout, I feel there may have been a more direct approach that could've been taken to make the narrative more immersive right off the bat. For example, maybe skip the waking up and preparing food part and go right into the meal where we get to see the family dynamic and conclude that there's some really poor family dynamics going on here, with two of the three being really rude to Jungkook for no reason.

And then consider tightening it a bit and removing any fluff. For example, chapter 2 has a much stronger hook and ending than chapter 1, and I almost feel like chapter 2 would have worked better as chapter 1 than chapter 1. I was really hooked at the end of chapter 2 and thought it was a good way to end the chapter, showing Jungkook puking and coming to the realization that he puked up blood. Like I said, that hooked me, so I almost wonder if there's a way to make that the hook to tighten the pacing a bit. But that's just one idea, and I encourage you to play around with these types of pacing techniques in future stories.

Another thing is the college bullying could be tweaked. For starters, bullying is far less common in college, even in Korea. Not saying it doesn't happen, though it's less common since it doesn't have the same community and culture for it to thrive. In high school, you see the same people for four years almost every day a week. In college, you see them for one semester, if even that since you can easily drop the class if you don't want to deal with it. So when the bullying happens, consider making it less like high school since the bullying there is very high school-ish. Resorting to calling someone a "loser" is really not how it would happen in college, and it wouldn't be taken seriously. So consider making it centered around harassment more than bullying since that's far more common.

All in all, the plot works and deserves a high score, it could just use some tweaks to make it flow a bit smoother. I hope all my suggestions made sense!

Pacing: 7/10. The pacing is overall good and works for the story. The rate of which we get plot information is all in all good and keeps the readers invested throughout the runtime of the book. I'd say the beginning and end are where the pacing is at its strongest since a lot is happening but also not so much that we get overwhelmed, so good job there.

I can't recall if I mentioned it in the past or not, but I would recommend not including whole headings for minor time skips. Like if you're skipping to the evening or just by twenty minutes, you don't need to bold it since it brings the reader out of the scene. You can have it within the text itself by saying the time passed in a descriptive way. If twenty minutes go by, describe that. That's a minor thing, but it does impact the pacing since it can pull readers out of the moment.

I'm not sure how to describe it so please bear with me as I try to make my point, but I feel this story could have been cut in half and there's a lot of fluff and filler that did not need to be there. Like I said earlier in the characters section, there are many characters that feel like they're there for sake of being there rather than adding a lot of substance, and even when they do add substance, it feels like they could have been replaced by another character (like I said with Yoongi being able to take Jimin's role easily since Jimin didn't do much in the story). Another example is Taemin's bullying plot is something I completely forgot about until I reread the plot section for this review, and the same applies to Hyejoon's romance with Jaehyung. Do you see why these things could have been removed to instead focus on Taehyung and Jungkook? They were things I forgot about since there are a lot of characters, but only Taehyung and Jungkook really get the core plot. So for future stories, consider tightening it so only really essential characters who make major impacts on the plot are there, if that makes sense.

But the pacing is still overall good, so good job with it.

Creativity: 7/10. I mentioned it before and will likely continue to mention it, but I enjoyed the story idea and how it's presented to us in the form of a fracturing relationship fracturing for more unique reasons than the average Wattpad story, which I appreciated. So when it comes to the narrative and the entire concept, I think you nailed it.

This is another thing you'll see me mention throughout, but I enjoyed the medical side of the world, too, and thought that was handled in a good way that was fun to read about. It's difficult to make the medical stuff fun sometimes since it's a lot of technical terms, so good job.

Only a handful of critiques. There are some word choice errors here and there, where there are times you'll use the same word a bunch of times in close proximity. For example, "echoes" (and all forms of it, including other forms like echoed) are used often, especially in chapter 2, and it got a little distracting how often that word was used. Silence was another word that was used very frequently. Sometimes you'll use similar descriptions multiple times in the same chapter, like "*insert thing here* filled the air," which is also a cliche description, so I suggest avoiding it.

Another thing is you used a lot of introductory clauses throughout the narrative. It's not a huge deal, but to help diversify the sentence structure, consider playing around a little more and not using as many, or at least spacing them out more since sometimes you can have three or more in a row, which can make the sentences blend together at times.

All in all, the creativity is good and is consistently solid throughout the narrative.

Dialogue: 6.5/10. The dialogue throughout the story overall does what it needs to to get the reader invested in the characters, particularly the Taekook dynamic since they're the two protagonists who have the most lines. The beginning parts of the story do a great job using dialogue to get the readers to dislike Jungkook's family. They're very verbally ab/sive and make Jungkook feel like garbage despite his hard efforts, and the dialogue is what made readers get so passionate about it, so good job with that!

I have a handful of critiques, mostly grammatical.

There are dialogue tag errors throughout. I'll take three examples from the same chapter so you don't have to play musical chapters to find them. All of them will be from chapter 6.

First: "Taemin, can you massage my legs a bit?" He asked in a gentle tone.

Second: " Ungrateful. " he muttered.

Third: Hye-joon then said with anger, "Eomma, your taste buds must be malfunctioning. This dinner is perfectly fine," she insisted.

What they should be:

"Taemin, can you massage my legs a bit?" he asked in a gentle tone. (tags should always be lowercase unless they are proper nouns)

"Ungrateful," he muttered. (no periods/full stops when using dialogue tags)

Hye-joon then said with anger, "Eomma, your taste buds must be malfunctioning." (you don't need two dialogue tags)

Those are the dialogue tag errors, but the main thing is the stuttering. I've mentioned it in the past, so I won't go too in-depth with it this time other than to say it started off fine with little to no stuttering, and then it quickly became a lot of stuttering that got so distracting that I could not read the lines. No one stutters that much, so it's a moment of unrealistic dialogue that you realistically can't say. You would run out of breath before finishing the sentence. And, like I've said in the past, not everyone stutters when they're emotional, let alone stutters in the same way (the letter stutter), so it's also unrealistic in that sense. Another thing is sometimes even while they're stuttering, you'll have semicolons in the dialogue. See what that's a problem? They're so emotional they can't form words, but they can do a complicated semicolon pause? So that's why I recommend very rarely, if ever, using stuttering. It's also unnecessary telling over showing.

The last minor thing I'll mention is there were times the quotation marks went back and forth between ' and " even though there was no change to what the dialogue was supposed to mean. So I would suggest more consistency with how you're punctuating your dialogue.

Worldbuilding: 6.5/10. There are some aspects of the worldbuilding I really liked. For example, the medical side of things. I know literally nothing about medical stuff despite literally spending a sh/t ton of time in hospitals for surgeries lmao, but from what I can tell (since I unfortunately know a decent amount about cancer), the cancer treatments and how they're described are accurate. But even if they weren't, the amount of dedication you put into making them clear is admirable! So the medical side of the world, which is important considering it takes up the entire plot lmao, is good!

I have a few critiques with the worldbuilding, and the most prominent one is that it's very vague and I don't think we were given a solid answer for where we even are, and I can only guess based on context clues. For starters, the location Soul International Hospital is introduced in chap 20. Is this supposed to be Seoul? The "international" makes me thing it's supposed to be Seoul. Based on that, the Korean honorifics being used occasionally, soju being prominent, and all the characters being Korean, it's almost certain this story takes place in Korea. But if it takes place in Korea, then the story can't happen. Like, literally. The entire plot can't happen. Gay marriage is illegal in Korea, so the couples in this story would not exist or at least not be married. That's why I strongly suggest not having this story taking place in Korea, or if you want to go all the way, make Jungkook a woman so then it's a legal marriage. They're already aged up, so one more change would completely get rid of half of the worldbuilding issues since I'm assuming this takes place in Korea. If it doesn't, then that's still an issue since everything is very Korean-culture-like; however, at the same time, there are inconsistencies. Small things, but inconsistencies nonetheless. For example, Koreans mark their dates in YYYY/MM/DD. When dates are presented here, they're presented in DD/MM/YYYY, which is inaccurate to Korean dating. That's a small thing, but it's just another way the worldbuilding is a little confusing, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where this story is supposed to take place.

Y'know something funny? I wrote that above section after reading chapter 36, and in chapter 37, I got confirmation that the story takes place in Korea with the line "Now, Jungkook is a well-known and respected lawyer in Korea."

But that funny moment aside, while it is fiction, there's still a level of disbelief readers have. We have a suspension of disbelief that can be broken if too many unrealistic things occur, so that's why I suggest not having such an openly LGBTQ+ story take place in SK unless you're going to acknowledge the hardships that come with it. Like I said, LGBTQ+ marriage is illegal in South Korea, so this story literally couldn't happen. Consider having it take place in an LGBTQ+-legal country, like Denmark (popular for its safety for LGBTQ+ individuals), or even America, for all its flaws (I'm American, I can say that). I won't go too in-depth about the whole eomma thing since I've mentioned it in the past, though I very strongly advise you not to use eomma to describe a male. It's really offensive to Korean culture, as Koreans have said many times that they're tired of their honorifics (like oppa) being used in these ways. It's disrespectful to the language and not how the term is meant to be used. It's like going up to your dad and calling him mom seriously at a random time. So that's why I very strongly advise against it. If you're going to go that route and have a man be called mom, I suggest doing it in English instead of bringing Korean terms into it. But that aside, the focus is more on the LGBTQ+ issues since South Korea does not recognize gay marriages, therefore this story's entire plot can't exist without major legal backlash and conflict.

Going back to the vague thing, like I said, it was a little vague where in the world we were, and also some of the locations, too, like I don't believe the hospital name was mentioned until chapter 20 and was otherwise referred to as "the hospital. In chapter 32, the restaurant is referred to as "the restaurant" instead of any names or details. It may seem like a small thing, but consider giving these places names, and when you do, giving them sooner. I hope that makes sense.

So, all in all, the medical side of the worldbuilding is great, and that's a huge part of the story. The general worldbuilding for the location could just use some tweaks.

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The SPAG is overall okay, and there were never any times there were enough errors to make a sentence incomprehensible or anything of the sort; however, there are a few SPAG errors throughout, so I will go over them in this section. Let's start with some commas. This example is from chapter 2:

Taehyung, also got up, his irritation evident. "What's going on here? Why are you shouting so early in the morning?"
Jungkook, attempted to apologize. "I'm sorry, Hye-Joon. I didn't mean to oversleep. I'm not feeling well today."

There are two comma errors here, both of which being the first sentences of the two lines I provided. The Taehyung, also got up, his irritation evident part, and the Jungkook, attempted to apologize part. The first comma in the first sentence isn't needed, same with the first comma in the second sentence. So: Taehyung also got up, his irritation evident. And: Jungkook attempted to apologize. Another example: Hye-Joon, still seething, also went to the bathroom leaving Jungkook alone in the room. There needs to be a comma after bathroom and before "leaving." Not all the time, but a lot of times when there's an -ing verb later in the sentence like that, it needs a comma. Again, not always since it depends on context, but there are many cases where commas are needed, so if you're ever unsure, I recommend quickly plugging the sentence(s) into Grammarly or QuillBot.

There are times end punctuation is incorrect, like sometimes you'll end sentences with commas instead of periods/full stops. For example: He stumbled towards the laundry room,

The comma should be a period/full stop there (that's from chapter 2).

This is a minor thing, but there are frequent spelling errors throughout, like continued is spelled as cntinued (chap 4), summoning spelled as sumoning in chapter 6, and for as fpr in chapter 7. I won't spend much time on typos, but they did happen frequently, sometimes multiple times per chapter. Another minor thing is there are capitalization errors throughout where sometimes proper nouns are capitalized and other times they are not, like sometimes you'll spell Jungkook as Jungkook, and other times you'll spell it as jungkook. The same applies to all the other names. It's not a big deal but still something worth mentioning.

Three more things that are all minor, so they're no big deals but still worth mentioning. The first is ellipses (...) are meant to be three dots and in rare cases four, but normally three, and you often will use far more than three, so I suggest narrowing those down. Another thing is something I believe I mentioned in the past, but I recommend spelling out numbers at least from 1-10 if not 1-99 since it looks smoother within the text. Like if you say 1 day, it looks much neater and more grammatically sound to say one day. The last thing is there were times you got excessive with the all caps. It's okay to use them here and there for like a word or two, or if it's for a spelling that's in all caps (like BTS or HYBE), though for full sentences and conversations, I strongly recommend avoiding them since they're hard to read, slow reading speed, and take away emotion from the moment. They're also inherently telling over showing, so avoiding them means avoiding unnecessary telling over showing. I hope that makes sense.

So a lot of the SPAG errors were more minor, as you can see, though they were still noticeable and worth mentioning. The overall SPAG worked for the story, and nothing was ever incomprehensible or anything like that, so that's good.

Description: 7/10. There are quite a few descriptions throughout the story that I enjoyed a lot. For example: His own tears, long restrained, now mingled with hers (chap 7). I really like the "now mingled with hers" part. I know it may seem like a small thing to point out, considering it's just four words, but the small details are what make descriptions stand out and become memorable, so I think it's worth talking about and appreciating.

The descriptions are, in general, good, as you can probably tell from the good score. They do an effective job establishing character and what's going on in the moment, especially when it comes to the medical stuff, as I mentioned before, so I think you overall did a great job with the descriptions here.

A couple of critiques. One is to be careful with cliche descriptions. They can work here and there depending on context, so they're not inherently a bad thing, though for some phrases, it may be best to try to avoid them as a whole. For example, "the tension in the air was palpable." I've seen this so many times I'm tired of seeing it now, and it's really cliche. Or "*insert smell/aroma here* filled the room" and "The silence was deafening." Those are two more that are really overused, so I would recommend avoiding those ones and finding different ways to describe those scenarios.

Like I mentioned in the creativity section, there were times there was some redundancy/repetition of words, like you describe rooms as dimly lit a lot. That's a small thing that I already explained, though, so I'll just mention it here since it impacts descriptions, but I won't talk your ear off about it again.

There are some moments of unnecessary telling over showing. For example: "I am not a child anymore that I will be scared of needles appa," Jungkook said in a joyful voice to make his family smile a little.

But his voice was clearly not matching his eyes or expressions.

Is there a way to show this without telling us? Maybe describe the voice? Is it scratchy, is it lower than normal, does he hiccup over certain words, etc.? Those are some ways to show the emotions instead of telling them directly to us, and I suggest applying this to future stories since this kind of telling over showing happened frequently throughout the story. Telling over showing is not inherently a bad thing, so it's fine to use it here and there, and in some cases, it's even necessary, but consider downsizing on unnecessary moments of telling over showing (like the one above).

Lastly, I wasn't sure what section to put this in, so I'll put it here: chapter 33 is suddenly all bold. Sometimes you do this where random lines are bolded, but this was the entire chapter, and I was a little confused by that and didn't see the purpose. I would suggest not having it be all bold. If you want to change the format of the diary entries, I would recommend italics as that makes more sense for diary entries. That's a minor thing but still worth mentioning. I bring it up since the same thing happens in chapter 21, where suddenly character thoughts were bolded, and this is inconsistent. I don't believe they were bolded prior to that point, and they're inconsistently bolded after that point. I would recommend sticking with not bolding them, or if you do want to bold them (I would strongly recommend italics instead, though), make sure it's consistent since the beginning, if that makes sense. That's a minor thing, but it did get distracting.

Overall, the descriptions do a good job settling the reader into the narrative and giving them a clear picture about what to expect from Jungkook's storyline in particular, and there are some really nice moments of description throughout that will get readers even more excited to read.

Themes and Emotions: 6/10. This is a very theme-driven story, and I think the theme is overall good, it could just use some tweaks to the execution, same with the emotions. For example, "We move on, but we carry the weight of our mistakes with us" (chap 22) is bolded. That's super on the nose and can even be insulting to readers that you're saying you don't trust them to pick up on the important lines unless you're bolding them. I'm not saying that was your intention, but that's how it can come across when you're bolding the lines you want us to remember instead of trusting us to pay attention to them. I suggest not bolding that kind of stuff since that line is essentially the entire theme, so let us figure that out on our own instead of directly telling us.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are also two other things that factor into the emotions: intense stuttering and excessive all caps. Those two things make it hard to feel the emotion during emotional scenes. Whenever either of those things were there (and stuttering in particular was in almost every emotional scene), it made it hard to take the scene seriously. If you read the dialogue out loud with the stutters, you'll see how unnatural it is and how even people who do stutter physically cannot stutter like that. It makes the scenes really unrealistic and hard to attach to as a result.

So, overall, the themes are really strong and are great concepts that I encourage you to do more of in the future as they are cool ideas. I just recommend some tweaks to things like the stuttering and trusting your audience to pick up on what you're putting down, if that makes sense.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. The title is Still a family ?, and I think posing a question within the title is overall interesting and makes for an attention-grabber, so I like that aspect. The only criticism I have of the title is the grammar and capitalization. I'd suggest removing the space between the end and the ?, and also capitalizing family according to title capitalization rules. Typically, manuscripts follow Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), so according to that, the title would be Still a Family?. It's also capitalized that way on the cover, so that's another reason why I suggest it: so it visually matches. However, I otherwise like the title.

The blurb is overall good and tells the reader what the story is going to be about. It's short but to the point, giving us exactly what the story is going to be about. It shows who the main characters are and what the conflict is. It doesn't give much world information, which could be beneficial, but I personally think that for this blurb, it's optional and only something to add if you're interested in playing around with it.

I only have one criticism, and it's about these two sentences: Kim Jungkook's once colorful life has lost its brightness since the love between him and Kim Taehyung faded. Their once happy family is now filled with quietness and resentment. I would suggest hyphens between once-colorful and once-happy since they're being used as compound adjectives, though beyond that, consider only using the once-*insert adjective here* pattern once. For example, if you remove the "once" from the first sentence, it doesn't change much. Consider: Kim Jungkook's colorful life lost its brightness ever since the love between him and Kim Taehyung faded. It's a minor change, but it diversifies the word choice a bit. Otherwise, I thought the blurb was good!

The cover is really nice. It has a bright color scheme with clear pictures of Taehyung and Jungkook positioned so they're together but separate. While their bodies are overlapping, they're looking away from one another as if they never saw one another to begin with. I like the hints of the family around the cover without it taking away from the two core figures, and I like the font, too. No criticisms.

Total: 66.5/100.

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You're still here?

Why are you still reading?

Did you actually read all the reviews, or did you just skip to the end to see if I left an end note?

It would take like two hours to read all these, so don't lie.

Jimin's hot.

My man is a bit hotter but Jimin is hot.

Anywho, see you in the next category.

Padauk will be completed soon.

Stream WHO for clear skin.

Get it to 1b by the end of the year.

Oh and don't be an a/shole to me over reviews, please, I am absolutely not in the mental state to deal with it. I have been in this contest and review game long enough to no longer put up with it. I did not spend the past six months doing this category just to get disrespected, so please be nice.

Yes, it took six months. I started judging it shortly after starting best fanfic with the intention of being able to publish the results two weeks after the best fanfic results (that did not happen!!!). I do not know why this category took so long, but there was something about it that kicked my redheaded ass.

Most are good with this but please be kind this is literally an ungodly amount of words for a "standard" category. I'm not asking for y'all to make sacrifices to the gods for me or smth but just respect please 😔😔😔 keep in mind these reviews are literally the length of novels per category. I'm essentially writing a novel every two months on top of work, college, Ambassador responsibilities, having a life, and my own stories... and that's without factoring in I have to read the stories first, and not just read them, but reread certain parts multiple times and read closely.

Reviewing rant aside, thanks for being here. Thanks for all those who are nice. I just want to emphasize that these reviews are literally the size of novels, and I'm doing that every two months on top of all my other sh/t. Seriously, thank you to everyone who is understanding of this and is respectful. Not even nice, just respectful, but bonus points to people who are nice cause I really love you guys. Otherwise I wouldn't do this, right?

Welp, time to go.

Pray for me.

Bye.