Hello everyone, please read this:

This is the longest category by far with the reviews totaling over 42k words. It was a very long process that has left me very, very exhausted. For that reason, I am going to take a short break from judging. I have my first major 2024 story, A Demon's Sin, dropping this week on June 1st, so all my attention needs to be there.

Between the increase in hate I've received and the length of the reviews, I will admit that I'm tired. I enjoy doing these reviews, and don't worry, hate doesn't get to me, but I'm human. I need a break.

On the bright side, this contest is over halfway done. Ten categories have already been judged, so not too many more left. I will be releasing my mini awards, the Padauk Awards, within the next week or two as celebration for this contest's success.

Thank you for your continuous support on this contest, and I can't wait to keep reviewing. As much as it does take a lot out of me to write such lengthy reviews, I enjoy them and it helps me grow as a writer since I get to see so many different writing styles and learn new things. This is a learning experience for all of us, so thank you for joining me on this journey.

With that being said, let's get into the results.

Congratulations to all the winners!

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

Please do not argue with me. Remember this is for fun and all personal opinion. I don't give harsh feedback, just honest feedback. I can't promise it won't sting cause I'm still honest, but I will not be using words like "cringe" and "ugly" to try and insult you like harsh feedback does. You're of course entitled to your own opinion and you can disagree with everything I say if you want, but that doesn't mean you should be rude to me. Remember I'm judging by myself, so please be respectful.

Remember I'm giving a reader's perspective. Just because something is clear to you doesn't mean it's clear to me. You're the writer, you know everything about your story. Readers don't. Keep that in mind.

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.

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.

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Quick reminder that I have a K-pop contest called the Forever Gold K-pop Awards that came out recently, so if you are looking for more opportunities, check the first book on my profile!

3rd Place

The Gathering Dark by Aravis-Brightspell

Review:

Characters: 7/10. I really like what you're setting up here with the characters, and I think you have a solid start that's going to lead to an awesome book. The concepts are all there, and the execution is there, too. Claude is someone I sympathize with, and I'm glad you gave him a lot of depth outside of just "sad spirit." He has more going on with his musical genius and passion to keep Jessica safe since she's just an innocent soul in all this. I also think the demon is interesting, and I'm excited to see how his role grows and develops. I like the idea of Jessica, though my deductions from the characters come from how I feel she could be more consistent and fleshed out more, and I will explain all that below.

It kind of feels like you wanted Jessica to have both the confidence/bravery, but also the fear to kind of be a twist on the "person who can speak to the dead" trope. But it's a little hard to have both. For me, it was a little confusing to have her be established as someone who jumps and gasps a lot one minute, then the next she's brave enough to give a demon her middle finger and say a confident line with no voice cracks or stammers. I don't think using both worked for me since she was jumping and gasping a lot throughout chapters 1 and 2, then more confident in 3, which felt a little contradictory to everything she did in the previous chapters. She doesn't want to be there. That's the very first thing we learn about her: she absolutely does not want to be there and is scared of the place. So that's why it felt a little contradictory to go from seeing her absolutely terrified to confidently flinging off a demon that's threatening her life. I would suggest keeping her more consistent with whether or not you want her to be visibly scared or brave since the two kind of feel like they clash and it goes back and forth between her being too terrified to move and her being brave enough to flip off a demon actively threatening her. I hope that makes sense.

There's a lot of character given to Claude, which I liked, though I hope you take more time in future chapters to flesh out Jessica as well. I feel like that scene between Claude and Jessica where she's asking questions about him was a perfect opportunity for maybe more character building on her part. Instead of all the questions being directed at Claude, maybe Claude asks about her. Or maybe she asks a question that's too painful for him so he deflects by asking her something. Not only is that a realistic reaction to trauma, but it could also flesh out Jessica's character in the process. I feel like I don't know much about her, and while I'm okay with not knowing too much since it's early in the story and you wanted to do worldbuilding first, I'd suggest fleshing her out later and taking advantage of every quiet scene you have (like the Claude and Jessica one) to flesh out as many characters as possible instead of just one (in this case, Claude). The goal in creative writing is to try to do as much as possible with as little as possible without overwhelming the readers, so maybe try building more than one character in those quieter scenes.

To summarize, I like the idea of Jessica, and I also really like Claude and can't wait to see what you do in the future with his character. All I recommend is giving more time to Jessica to fine tune her personality and flesh her out more. I hope that makes sense!

Plot: 9/10. So far, the plot is very interesting and is keeping me engaged. It's pretty straightforward: a woman goes to investigate the house of a dead person only for things to go wrong, and now they have to escape. It's rather straightforward, but you add fun, tense scenes and little twists to spice it up. I think that's a great thing, and that makes for an entertaining read. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies either, so that's another very good thing.

The only deduction comes from the plot happening very quickly and some pacing issues there, but I will explain all that in the next section. The audience could have used a little more time to process what was happening, especially since Jessica's personality seemed to be flipping a lot between fright to brave, so maybe some more consistency with her emotions could tweak it so the reader can at least attach themselves to her more and feel the emotions through her, but when even her emotions are flipping, it can hurt the reader's understanding of what's going on. However, I will talk about it more in the next section. Overall, the plot is very good.

Pacing: 8/10. The pacing throughout the published story thus far is very solid. I think you did a good job slowing down in chapter 4 to give readers time to learn about Claude after all the chaos of the first three chapters. It was smart to give us a moment to cool off and digest what was happening through a quiet scene, and although I do have some critiques for incorporating more character moments and keeping the character of Jessica more consistent so we feel more grounded, I liked the decision to start the story off with a bang and unveil the plot right off the bat. I think that was a smart decision so we can see immediately what's going on and how the characters are going to have to adapt to survive. All in all, I liked the pacing.

I believe I already explained my suggestions in the character section, but I will talk a little bit about how it relates to the plot here. The characters are, more often than not, what drive the plot, and Jessica here is the reason the plot happens since she goes to this house. Well, I guess you could say Sam is the reason, though she's the physical body that ends up going to the house, so I'll stick with saying her for now. She's the one who goes to the house and activates the plot, so she's our vessel for seeing the plot. That's why it's imperative for her to be consistent and fleshed out, that way we can feel what we need to through her. That's why the pacing goes a little fast at times because all these plot events are happening, but our vessel to connect to the plot is also going fast. Other than the consistency suggestion I had, I also suggest considering slowing down in the beginning and doing more character work. Maybe have Jessica investigate more of the exterior before going in and have her report to herself as she does. Maybe she records a bit of the house and gets reminded of a previous case. We can see her expertise and knowledge by having her describe the house and the common traits she sees from one house to the next. Those are just some random suggestions, and that's not to say you never do anything like that or something like that, but those are possibilities if you are interested and think one or more may work for your style!

This is a small thing I will explain in the next section, but also be careful with word choice being a bit repetitive at times, that way the sentences are more fun to read and keep the pacing up. Again, I will explain exactly what I mean in the next section.

So other than those few things, I think the pacing is good, and I can't wait to see how the story continues to unfold in future chapters.

Creativity: 7.5/10. The concept and sentence structure is overall good and creative, and it feels very unique in that sense. My only suggestions have to do with being careful with emphasis and word choice.

Be careful with exclamation marks. Exclamation marks are an emphasis mark, so the more you use them, the less impact they have later. Be careful you're only using them in moments that really need them. They're also telling over showing, so any area you can downsize could be beneficial. One of my English teachers once told me exclamation marks should only be used for situations like "I'm pregnant!" and nothing else, so hopefully that example makes more sense. Here's an example from the text I felt used an exclamation mark unnecessarily: "I jumped at the man's muffled voice from within, stifling a squeak of surprise!". You don't need the exclamation mark there. The "jump" and "squeak" already do enough for the sentence, so the exclamation mark is unnecessary telling over showing, in my opinion, especially since you use telling over showing in this sentence by telling us she's "surprised," so that's two instances of telling over showing as opposed to one if the exclamation mark were removed. I hope that makes sense.

Also be careful with word choice. Word choice is extremely important, especially for a story where it isn't too long, so if you overuse words, it's more noticeable than it would be in a longer story. There are some words that are overused, like "look" and "gasp." There's a lot of looking and gasping throughout the narrative, and I would suggest finding synonyms or alternative ways to describe those actions. The word "look" in particular has many synonyms, so I strongly suggest using some of said synonyms and/or rewording the sentences with "look" so you don't have to use the verb "look" at all. Those are a couple of suggestions, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works best for your style. The story is otherwise creative.

Dialogue: 7/10. The dialogue is overall good, I only have suggestions when it comes to the presentation.

Be careful with overstuffing dialogue with too many words. For example: "You mean, Sam, that you can't let this pass." There's a lot of words there for what you're trying to say, and the placement of the name is a little awkward. Maybe: "Sam, you mean you can't let this pass." I removed the "that" since it wasn't needed, and I moved the placement of the name for stronger flow.

I have two more critiques. One, dialogue tags are done incorrectly in the first chapter. Sometimes you'll end the dialogue with a period/full stop when using a tag, which is incorrect. Other times you'll capitalize the tag even though it isn't a proper noun. This does not happen for the rest of the story and only in that chapter; however, there are only five chapters, so it is noticeable and makes up a good portion of the story. For that reason, I'm bringing it up and suggesting considering editing it.

The second critique is to not use actions as dialogue tags. Sometimes you'll interrupt dialogue to use a tag like "the demon looked pointedly at me." It's a tag because you're using a comma at the end of dialogue and lowercasing the "the." You're tagging it to the dialogue. However, that's not a dialogue tag, that's an action. You can simply put a period/full stop at the end of the dialogue and do "The demon looked pointedly at me." It has the same effect, only this time, it's not a dialogue tag. Actions are a little awkward as dialogue tags since it implies the words are the ones looking pointedly at Jessica, not the demon. They're dialogue tags, not people tags, so if you're using a tag, that refers to the words. Words can't look, therefore making a tag like "the demon looked..." a little awkward. I hope that makes sense.

Like I said, the dialogue is overall good, it could just use some tweaks to the presentation and some editing to the first chapter's dialogue tags to make it even stronger.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. So far, the worldbuilding is very good. I like the presence of music and how it plays such an integral role in the plot and environments. The descriptions of the music in the final published chapter (at the time of writing this review) were good and fun to read. The world surrounding the house and the backstory of the demon is interesting as well. The characters interact with the environment, and you do a good job bringing the house to life. No criticisms, and I encourage you to keep it up throughout the rest of the story since the worldbuilding is very solid so far!

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The grammar and spelling is overall good, though there are a few consistent errors.

Other commenters have pointed this out, so I won't go too in-depth here, but there are tense issues where you flip flop between past and present tense incorrectly. You're mostly writing in past tense, though sometimes you slip into present tense incorrectly. Normally present tense in past tense stories is used for things like dialogue and direct (and typically italicized) character thoughts, so that's fine, but when you're using it for standard actions, be sure you're sticking in past tense.

There are some editing errors. By that I mean errors that were small and probably missed in the editing process. For example, in chapter one, there's this: "Why is this any different?"  Sam argued. There's an extra space between the end quote and Sam. This is a very small thing, but in the same chapter, you do two different styles of dashes: "...I have this gift—or curse--to see...". See how it's a little different? None of these errors are big deals, but the chapters are short, so they are more noticeable, and they do occur a few times per chapter. Just small errors likely missed in the editing process. Not anything I'll take off much for, but still something worth considering when writing future chapters.

While on the topic of dashes, be careful you aren't using them unnecessarily. For example: "The master—does he mean--Claude?" Dashes are best used to section off auxiliary information in a sentence. The "does he mean" is not auxiliary info, it's vital info to understanding the sentence. The dashes are not used correctly there for that reason. Here's what I'd recommend: "The master? Does he mean Claude?"

Be careful about using dashes in dialogue. While they aren't wrong, keep in mind if you're using them, they indicate a longer pause. So if you use them in dialogue during a tense scene, it can be a little off. Like this from chapter two: "Jessica—stop!" The tag even says that Claude is desperate, so a long pause doesn't really make sense there. A comma could work far better since it's less of a pause, and the "stop" is vital info to the sentence. Like I explained earlier, dashes are best used to separate non-vital info from sentences, so if you're using them for vital info, it's a little awkward, especially in dialogue.

There are frequent comma errors where you include commas where they shouldn't be. For example: This is the infamous Red Drawing Room, where Claude Elburke was said to have died from unknown causes, at the age of twenty-five (chap 1). The comma after "causes" is incorrect and should be removed.

This is another small thing, but be careful with UK versus US English. It looks like you're writing in US English with words like "gray," but you use some UK words like "towards." If you're writing in US English, the "towards" needs to be "toward." If you're writing in UK English, "towards" is fine, but then "gray" would need to be "grey." I think you mean US English since sometimes you use "toward," though other times you use "towards," so I would suggest keeping it consistent. Not a big deal, but still something worth mentioning.

Description: 8.5/10. So far, the descriptions are very well done and include many of the five senses to bring them to life. I particularly like how music is described, and I think everything feels very real and engaging. I was immersed in the descriptions throughout the entire narrative, and I think you did a good job with them.

I mentioned earlier that sometimes you use telling over showing, and I recommend trying to avoid it whenever you can. Sometimes you'll tell us things, like you'll tell us when Jessica's surprised. Consider finding a way to show that instead of tell it. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd also suggest using less exclamation marks and considering diversifying the word choice for certain words like "look." Other than those few things, I think the descriptions are good.

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. I really like the emotions and themes present in the narrative since you do a good job presenting your story topic in an emotional way. Claude is selfless and wants to help the innocent, Jessica, out of there. We feel something for Arthur when we find out he's not really there. There are countless layers to unpack about the story, and I admire you for taking it in that direction and really going the extra mile to make us feel things for the themes in the book. That made me really enjoy my read, and I even read it a second time just for fun after I already calculated the scores and wrote most of the review since I wanted to see if I missed anything in my first read through. All in all, great job here.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but my criticisms all relate to things I've said in the past about telling over showing and word choice along with considering building more character for Jessica so the emotions surrounding her are easier to immerse ourselves in. Other than those few critiques, I think the emotions and themes are very strong.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8/10. The Gathering Dark is a nice title with a good length for good SEO and with a play on words for the "Gathering Dark" part. "The" is the only weasel word present, making for, again, good SEO. I don't think I've seen this title before. I've seen plenty of titles with "Dark," but I don't think I've seen it used in this way, and it makes me curious about the story. I overall like the title and have no criticisms.

The blurb is overall good. It's short and to the point, but it does a good job getting the reader invested in what they're about to read. The only suggestion I have is the second sentence reads a little awkwardly. The sentence is this: "But a typical assignment at an old mansion on Halloween turns out to be more than she could handle, in the person of Claude Elburke, a renowned pianist." It took me a few reads to understand what you were trying to say, and that's because of the "in the person of..." part. While there aren't any grammar errors here, some of my grammar checkers, like Grammarly, were a bit confused by the sentence and thought the punctuation was a bit off for what you were trying to say. There's a lot of information packed into that one sentence. We learn: it's a typical assignment, there's an old mansion, it's Halloween, the assignment is too much, Claude Elburke is the cause of that, and he was a renowned pianist. That's a lot of information for a first-time reader to digest. Does this need to be all one sentence? If you read it out loud, you'll see it sounds a little clunky due to how it's formatted and how much information is in there. Can you split it into two or more sentences? Maybe you can do something like this: "But a typical Halloween assignment at an old mansion turns out to be more than she could handle. Renowned pianist Claude Elburke crashes her visit, and the catch? Claude has been dead...". You can rearrange the placement of the "Halloween" wherever you'd like, I just put it earlier to removed the "on" and shorten the sentence just a little bit. I'm not saying that's a perfect suggestion, but I'd suggest rearranging the sentence and/or splitting it up a bit so it's more readable and the reader has an easier time processing the information. The blurb isn't long, so this is a noticeable critique, hence why I'm suggesting it. You have the space to split it up if you want to without risking the blurb becoming too long. If you want to play around with it, I encourage you to!

The blurb is otherwise strong and does a good job introducing us to what the story is going to be about, and the only grammar "error" is debatable with the comma after "spirits" in the final sentence, so I'm not going to dwell on it since I honestly think the grammar checkers are wrong in this case. If you want to plug it into a grammar checker and make the call for yourself if you need the comma after "spirits," that's up to you, but I personally think it's fine. The blurb is overall good.

The cover is overall very nice with a clear picture, nice border, and good text placement/font. The only very minor criticism I have is the title text could be moved down a hair so the "The" isn't overlapping with the house. There's plenty of space on the bottom, so that's why I'm recommending it so the house isn't overlapping with the text. Again, that's a very minor critique for an otherwise cool cover that gets me interested in reading the story.

Total: 79/100.

2nd Place

Lucy's Sketches by GhostGirlMayhem

Review:

Characters: 10/10. The characters are my favorite part of this story due to their clear personalities and diverse traits, likes/dislikes, and interests. They have distinct personalities that are shown through their dialogue. I'll mention it again in the dialogue section, but Josh in particular has very recognizable dialogue you can tell is him without needing any indicator that he's speaking. I know a lot about the characters by the end of chapter 1, but you also don't sacrifice plot to do this and still introduce everything you need to right off the bat. As the story progresses, you unveil more and more about the characters that makes them super engaging to me. I enjoyed reading about them and noticed no inconsistencies/OOC moments. Overall, good job, no criticisms.

Plot: 10/10. The plot is about a grieving family moving into a house that's haunted by memories. It's a straightforward plot, but it doesn't need to be anything extravagant since you're already covering one of the most complex human emotions: grief. Even then, you spice it up by adding Lucy's sketches into the mix, and even Lucy's POV, which I was not expecting but was pleasantly surprised by. You give the plot its own space but don't overwhelm us or take away attention from the characters. Considering this is a character and theme-driven narrative, that's a very good thing. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies. For that reason, I have no criticisms.

Pacing: 9/10. The pacing throughout the story is overall good. At first, I was on the fence about certain scenes, like the flashlight scene in chapter 2, since I thought maybe you could have moved along faster, but I'm glad I didn't write anything here and kept reading instead since I think the pacing balanced out well and the character moments in the beginning did a great job setting up the emotions and my investment in who these people are. I think you overall do a great job with the pacing.

The only deduction comes from frequent redundancy in the word choice and the frequent presence of the filler word "that," which I will explain in the next section since I wrote a very detailed explanation for it. I feel a good 50-100 words can be removed per chapter of filler and redundancy, or at least tightening it so there's less redundancy in the way you phrase certain sentences. However, I will provide specific examples and alternatives in the next section so you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Creativity: 5/10. The story idea is overall very good and one of my favorite parts of this narrative. Choosing to follow grief through the lens of a "haunted" house was an interesting decision, and when paired with Lucy's sketches, I think that makes for a very creative story idea. My critiques all have to do with presentation.

Just be careful with some redundancy. For example: "...daughter shrugs her shoulders" (chap 1). You don't need the "her shoulders" since a shrug already implies she's shrugging her shoulders. Shrug literally means to raise one's shoulders, so you're pretty much saying "daughter raises her shoulders her shoulders." That's why the "her shoulders" isn't needed and is therefore redundant. You do something similar shortly after that example with: "I know I should be pleased since this is the most elaborate answer I've gotten from her in a long time, but I'm not pleased." You don't need the second "pleased" since you've already established that that's the emotion of the sentence, so you don't need to repeat it again by the end of the sentence. If you read it out loud first with the second pleased then without it, you'll notice it makes sense and flows slightly stronger without the second "pleased."

I hate to be that person since I think the comment is now deleted, but whoever made the point about the windows, I actually agree with them. I'm going to use this point to segue into the criticisms I have about word choice, so bear with me while I explain.

In that first chapter, you use the word window a lot, and there actually are synonyms you can use. Word choice is extremely important, so if you're using the same word over and over, it can be distracting. You used window six times in less than four minutes, so although I don't know what the commenter said, whatever point they made about trying not to use the word window is perfectly valid criticism that I actually agree with. Off the top of my head, I found multiple different ways you can word it so you don't have to use "window" as much. Here are just two examples I thought of: "All I can see are ivy-covered stone walls and dark window frames...". Completely remove the word "window." The sentence makes sense and you're removing an unnecessary use of the word window. You just used it in the previous sentence, so we know you're talking about the window. That ties into the redundancy point I said. You already established the subject is the window, so if you were to say "All I can see are ivy-covered stone walls and dark frames...", it still makes sense, especially since the continuation of that sentence says "...frames filled with emotionless glass panes..." Glass panes is a way to say window, so you have a synonym for window in the sentence, so why use window twice back-to-back? So that's why I'm saying that commenter had a fair point. I don't know what they said so I'm not trying to defend them, especially if they seriously read the banter as disrespecting the husband, but they did have a very valid point about the windows. As for the second thing: "Not entirely convinced, I narrow my eyes, intensifying my focus on the specific window that...". Instead of window, maybe "pane," "opening," or "aperture." So those are three alternatives. You don't have to use direct synonyms for words in order to make them work. For example, in chapter two, you say this: "When Josh enters the foyer to find us, we are sitting on the floor, inspecting the foyer in awed silence." You don't need to use "foyer" twice there. You can replace the second one with "room," "space," "vicinity," "area," etc. Even then, there are plenty of direct synonyms to foyer you can use, like "hall," "lobby," "atrium," etc. So it's really about thinking outside the box with your word choice, is what I'm trying to say.

You can use words like aperture, opening, glass, pane, panel, etc. as substitutes for window (depending on how they're used). I'm not saying you don't since you do use glass and pane a couple times, but I'm bringing those words up to show there are plenty of ways you can remove unnecessary uses of the word "window." I'm saying all this to set up that there are word choice problems where there are some words you repeat often throughout the narrative, which also ties into the redundancy point I made. One word you repeat is "look." Since that has countless synonyms, I'd suggest tweaking a few uses of them whenever you have time.

You also repeat adverbs quite frequently, like "quickly." Since adverbs are telling over showing, I strongly suggest using as few adverbs as possible. Along with that, be careful with the word "just." In chapter 1, there's this: "It's just for talking, and we get along just fine," I explain, but Josh just.... See how you used "just" three times within one sentence? "Just" is an emphasis word, so the more you use it, the less emphasis it has. I think you only need the first "just," and the other two can be removed not only for stronger flow, but to give more power to the emphasis word of "just." I brought that up because you use "just" frequently throughout the entire story, sometimes multiple times in short paragraphs. I used to do the same thing, and I've found my writing got much stronger once I started limiting how many times I used it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with repeating words, especially if there's a specific purpose in mind for repeating them (like the eye rolling being repeated is fine, I'd argue it's even a good repetition since it's a character quirk); however, if there are areas you can remove repeated words without leading to syntax errors or a thesaurus sandwich, I encourage you to play around with it.

Lastly, be careful with overusing semicolons since they're complicated punctuation marks that tend to overcomplicate sentences, especially if you're using a bunch in one sentence, which you often do. For starters, I would recommend almost never using semicolons in dialogue. A good friend of mine, hopelessromintic, once made a good point by saying we humans don't really speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, and I agree with this. Dialogue is a lot less formal, especially between friends, so using a formal punctuation mark can risk giving the audience the wrong impression and creating an awkward long pause. As for semicolons in regular text, he's an example of awkward semicolon usage: "I don't answer Josh's question; I don't have to; he always seems to know how people feel; asking is just a formality for him." There are three semicolons in one sentence, which is pretty awkward to read. You can split this up to remove one of them and increase reading flow. For example: "I don't answer Josh's question; I don't have to. He always seems to know how people feel; asking is just a formality for him." You can also do: "I don't answer Josh's question—I don't have to. He always seems to know how people feel; asking is just a formality for him." Now you removed two semicolons. Since the "I don't have to" is auxiliary information, it could work better with a dash since dashes are most prominently used to separate auxiliary information from the core text. Not only does that diversify the sentence structure and make it more unique, but it removes an unnecessary semicolon and makes the sentence less complex and easier to understand/read. I ran both of those alternatives through my grammar checkers, and they all agree they're grammatically correct, so those are some alternatives to eliminate the unnecessary semicolons. I recommend being careful with semicolons because A) the more you use them, the more likely you'll have a grammar error as semicolons are the most complicated punctuation mark, and B) like I said earlier, they overcomplicate sentences. If you can avoid using them a lot, or at least avoid using them multiple times in a sentence, then I would recommend going for it and limiting how many you use, especially in Lucy's POV since her POV is written in a more simplistic in child-like manner, so semicolons don't really fit there, in my opinion.

So, to summarize, the story idea is very creative and well-executed. All I recommend is some tweaks to the presentation to strengthen the flow, word choice, and redundancy.

Dialogue: 6.5/10. The dialogue itself is overall good, and Josh in particular has very recognizable dialogue. Since there are very few errors with grammar, the dialogue flows smoothly. All my recommendations have to do with the presentation.

I only have two criticisms, but they're very important, hence why they're factored into the score so much. First and foremost, I strongly recommend the 50-30 advice of dialogue for you since you have a major dialogue tag problem. Almost every line of dialogue has a tag, and of those tags, the vast majority of them aren't said or asked or are actions that are a bit unnatural, like "he pounces" is used as a tag, but that's a very strange tag to use. Remember when writing dialogue, the most important part is just that: the dialogue. The tag exists solely for telling over showing, which is why it's strongly advised to use as few tags as possible. For example, in chapter 2, there are 32 paragraphs containing dialogue. Of those 32 paragraphs containing dialogue, there are 32 tags. That means 100% of your dialogue has tags, and just so you know, I consider anything where you lowercase the next action a tag, so even if you do: "Hey," he pauses, that's a tag since you're lowercasing it and tagging it to the dialogue. I think there are two to three lines that don't have tags, but sometimes you use multiple tags for one person speaking, which I wouldn't suggest doing unless there's a drastic change in how they're speaking, but even then, I would suggest showing that, not telling that.

So the 50-30 advice of dialogue says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should be tagged, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. The reason is because, as I said before, tags exist for the sole purpose of telling over showing. The more you use them, especially the "fancier" ones (for lack of a better term), the more it takes away from the dialogue. Also, the telling over showing aspect where tags are inherently telling over showing. The less you use, the less telling over showing you're doing. Consider introducing who's speaking by incorporating more body language, actions, facial expressions, etc. Honestly, you don't even need to introduce Josh a lot since his speech style is unique enough that we know he's speaking without needing to be told or shown it.

The second criticism is also about dialogue tags. I would strongly recommend not using actions, like "smirks," "chuckles," "smiles," "nods," etc. as dialogue tags. The reason is because actions are not proper dialogue tags. Dialogue tags are called dialogue tags because they tag dialogue, not people, so when you're saying something like: "Hey," he smiles, it implies the "hey" is smiling, not the "he." Tags refer to speech. You can say words, whisper them, shout them, etc., but you can't nod them, you can't smile them, you can't smirk them, etc. You can smile while talking, but you can't smile words, if that makes sense. That's why actions as dialogue tags are unnatural and why I'd suggest not using them. Like I mentioned before, some of the tags were very out there and I felt you didn't need them, like "he pounces" was used as a tag, and I didn't understand what it was tagging or what the meaning of it was in that scenario. When the tag is taking away from the dialogue, that can harm the emotions and bring me out of the story, which is why I mentioned using said or asked for 30% or more of the dialogue. They're very unnoticeable dialogue tags, so that means the emphasis is on the dialogue, and you're also doing less telling over showing.

The dialogue itself is good, it could just use some tweaks to the presentation. I hope that makes sense!

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The worldbuilding is overall very solid throughout the story. You do a good job making the environments matter and the characters interact with said environments. The house feels alive, and no, not just because of the figures walking around or the voices in the drains, haha. Everything feels like it matters to the story and isn't random filler or something like that. Even darkness can trip up the characters and make them fall and stagger, and that's very fun to read about. All in all, good worldbuilding.

Grammar/Spelling: 8/10. The grammar and spelling is overall good, and you even consistently write in UK English, which is very good. Even authors I've seen who have near-perfect grammar tend to write in a hybrid between US and UK English, but I didn't notice any inconsistencies here. If there were any, they were so minor that they were unnoticeable.

There are some awkward sentences where it feels like they need to be reworded to make more sense. For example, from the first chapter: "For some reason, only he understood, my husband invested a small fortune in this place." I feel you meant to say: "For a reason only he understood, my husband invested a small fortune in this place." If you meant the first sentence, then you need a semicolon instead of a second comma, but I have a feeling you meant the second one based on the context of the scene.

There are also some editing errors, and by that I mean occasional errors that probably slipped by in the editing process. Like there are a couple missing commas here and there, some agreement issues, a few tense slips, etc. For example: "I slide down the wall of the shower until I'm sitting on the tiles, and when my gaze land on the new bruise on the bridge of my foot, the dam wall finally breaks and I'm having a good cry." I chose this sentence since it has two errors: a missing comma and a subject-verb agreement issue. Let's start with the agreement issue. The "land" is the issue here. It needs to be "lands." As for the missing comma, you need a comma after "breaks" and before "and." I plugged this sentence into all three of my grammar checkers just to be sure I'm giving you the correct suggestions, and all three agreed and said "land" needs to be "lands" and there needs to be a comma.

Otherwise, the grammar/spelling is great.

Description: 8/10. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, the environment is described well and feels impactful. The characters interact with the objects you describe. Along with that, you're specific. You show us what the characters are eating and what relation the food has to the characters, what Lucy's exact hobbies are, what kind of clothing Josh wears, etc. You add these specific details that make the cast and world feel far more alive. All in all, the descriptions are good not only of the environments, but also of the details, characters, and objects.

The criticisms I have for the descriptions are the same I've had throughout the review with word choice, redundancy, and doing more showing over telling with dialogue. Other than those three things, the descriptions are good.

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. The theme of grief and how it impacts people differently is super engaging. I've been on record many times saying I love the theme of grief and how it intertwines with the human experience, and I think you did an excellent job showing how grief can impact people. It's not just constant tears. Sure, crying happens, but grief is so complex that your emotions change by the hour. You can be happy one minute, then disassociating the next. It's really interesting how you handled grief in this, and I think you executed it well. I also think it was a smart choice to have Izzy be a psychologist, creating an internal dilemma where she questions her own training and if she can understand grief even after all that studying she did to get to where she is. The emotions are also pretty strong throughout, and I especially like how you decided to make Lucy's POV very kid-like and give her those child-like fears, like her not wanting to get up and go to the bathroom until her mom gets back.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but my only criticisms tie into all I've said before about dialogue tags taking away from the emotion of the dialogue and the word choice, but more so the dialogue tags since they really started distracting me after a while. I would also recommend being careful about exclamation marks. Like the word "just," exclamation marks are emphasis punctuation marks, so the more you use them, the less emphasis they have later. So make sure when you're using them, you 100% have to use them. They're also telling over showing, which is why authors recommend using them sparingly. Other than those few things, the themes and emotions were strong.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8/10. Lucy's Sketches is an interesting title, and when paired with the cover, it's very thought-provoking. It fits the story and makes sense, so I have no criticisms.

The blurb is overall very good, has no noticeable grammar/spelling errors, and tells you exactly what the story is going to be about.

The only nitpick I have is about this sentence: "Isabelle and her daughter, Lucy, find refuge in a house haunted by memories of Isabelle's late husband, with the support of family friend Josh." The nitpick is the "with the support of family friend Josh." I'm not a big fan of its placement in the sentence since it comes right after rather eerie imagery of a house haunted by Isabelle's memories, so having the "oh yeah and the family friend is helping" right after that eeriness felt like a little bit of strange placement, in my opinion. Maybe you can rearrange it to the start of the sentence, like this: "With the support of family friend Josh, Isabelle and her daughter, Lucy, find refuge in a house haunted by memories of Isabelle's late husband." It's a very small change and I understand if it doesn't appeal to you, I'm just recommending it since I wasn't a huge fan of having the eeriness followed up by a line introducing Josh. It's not wrong by any means, and I'm very well aware this could totally just be a me thing and no one else feels this way, but I hope my reader's perspective is at least interesting to see even if you don't like the suggestion.

But that's a nitpick and not something I'm going to take off much for, especially when this is one of the only blurbs I've ever judged that doesn't have at least one noticeable grammar error, so kudos for that. I ran it through all my grammar checkers, and none of them found any issues with grammar/spelling.

The cover is really interesting and immediately caught my eye. I love the black and white color scheme and the sketch aesthetic. Not only does it fit with the title, but it also provides context to what the narrative is going to be about. The only critiques I have are about the text placement.

I feel you may be able to rearrange the text to give it more cohesion. There's a JM in the corner, and I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Maybe you can remove the author's name from the top left and replaced the JM with GM to stand for your name, and the "Lucy's Sketches" where the author's name is now. I say that because I really wanna see what's underneath the main picture, but it's a bit hard to see with the title right there. It looks really interesting, just hard to see. So those are my recommendations, and all of them are about the text, not the images/aesthetics. The cover is overall very good and I like it a lot.

Total: 82.5/100.

1st Place

Haegeum by 4everSherlocked

Review:

Characters: 9/10. I mean, c'mon, you know the drill here. We already know your character work is always good, I don't think I need to explain myself.

But I will anyway.

You know it's good when by chapter 1, I'm sympathizing for the antagonist.

Before I get into the doppelganger stuff (forgive me, I don't have an accent keyboard and auto correct doesn't work on it), I want to first start with the interesting twist on greed. Most people think of material items when they think of greed, and though that does play a large part in greed, there are other ways humans can be greedy. Greedy for attention, greedy for love, greedy for a better appearance, greedy for knowledge. That last one is Yoongi's fatal flaw. He doesn't want money, he wants information. He wants to know more about what happened to his parents. Despite living with the "truth" for sixteen years, when a light shows a teeny tiny bit of new information about his parents, all the emotions burst through, and he wants more.

More by J-Hop-

Sorry. I'm secretly Hoseok biased.

Anywhozzles.

The characters are very strong so far. Even though we don't know much about Yoon and Yoongi yet in terms of personality, we know their full backstories and motivations, and some of their traits. I know more about them in a few chapters than I do about some characters in whole TV shows, which is great. I can't wait to learn more about them. As always, excellent character work so far.

The only deduction comes from some awkward dialogue and some unnecessary telling over showing for the characters' emotions. However, I will explain both of those things later in their respective categories.

Plot: 9/10. I'll mention it again in the creativity section, but the story idea is very good. The plot is great so far, and I'm hooked on Yoongi and Yoon's stories. I'm excited to see how you incorporate Yoon into this since he's a sympathetic antagonist, and I'm super excited to see the foil dynamic between him and Yoongi. So far, the plot is off to a great start, unfolds at a good pace, and intrigues me. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies.

The only deduction is something that could come later, though I have to judge based on what's currently out: Yoongi's mother succumbing to greed. Our one and only real look at her is her being adamant about never going outside, paranoid, and desperate to stop her husband from falling to greed, then the next thing we're shown is she gives in to greed. Maybe I missed something, though I did go back and reread to ensure I didn't. I would suggest exploring this more in the future since it does feel a little strange to go from her being paranoid to her being dead because the greed got her. I'm not sure if you're planning to or not, which is why it's hard to judge. I didn't have a huge issue with it since I know there are many ways you can take this story and I have a suspicion you will talk more about the mother later, though again, I can only judge based on what I know so far. So far, I'm hoping there's more about the mother since her reason for going outside contradicts her characterization. I wouldn't say I was confused about it, but I definitely was hoping it'd be explored more to eliminate potential confusion and give a reason why she went against her characterization.

Again, it's not a big deal, but still something worth mentioning.

Otherwise, I have no criticisms for the plot so far.

Pacing: 10/10. The pacing moves at a nice rate. I was worried you'd do too much jumping between past and present, but you don't, and even when you are moving through the timeline in chapter 1, I thought it was well done and made sense. You gave us the pieces of information we needed without overstaying your welcome, and that was great. Everything is unfolding at a good pace, every chapter feels necessary, and every chapter starts and ends well. Overall, great pacing, and I have no criticisms.

Creativity: 7/10. The story idea is creative as f*ck. It's fire. Even though we haven't fully explored the concept of greed yet, I absolutely love your spin on what greed is. Not just because of what I mentioned earlier about the different types of greed outside of materialism, but also choosing to make greed a physical person who's like your evil twin hiding in the shadows. It's such a cool idea, I love it.

Be careful with word choice. You use verbs like "look" and "walk" frequently. Considering those two words have many different synonyms, I would strongly suggest making sure you aren't using them too often. Maybe consider synonyms or rewording sentences so you don't have to use those verbs at all.

Just to put this in perspective, if I counted correctly, in the six-minute prologue, there are sixteen uses of the word "look." That's over double the chapter length. There are also multiple paragraphs throughout the story where you use "look" 2-3 in the same paragraph. I hope when I show how often you used it, it makes more sense why it was noticeable and why I'm suggesting you consider tweaking the word choice.

Be careful with exclamation marks and emphasis. The more you use exclamation marks, the less impact they have later on, and be careful you aren't using multiple exclamation marks since it can come off as overdramatic and take tension out of the scene. For example, from chapter one: "I'm never going home!!!" I'm suggesting not using three, but one. To put it in simpler terms: exclamation marks are already inherently telling over showing, so by doing more of them, you're doing even more telling over showing, and there's also nothing more than one exclamation mark can show that one already does. That's why I suggest never using more than one exclamation mark.

Even though there are consistent semicolon errors I will go over in the grammar section, I can appreciate you trying to diversify your sentence structure and play around with how you format your sentences, so good job with the sentence structure.

The story is overall very creative.

Dialogue: 8.5/10. The dialogue is overall good, and tags are done correctly. I only have one critique and one very very minor critique that I'm not taking off points for, that's how minor it is.

Be careful with expository dialogue since it can sound a little unnatural and it's obvious it's only there for the audience's benefit, which is why it sounds unnatural and awkward. For example: "Even though your father and I moved far away from my rich family to a small place in the country, it doesn't mean greed can't find us." The first part of that sentence is the expository dialogue. The dialogue before that explaining the greed story is fine as expository dialogue because Yoongi doesn't know the story. However, he should know they're in the country since he's living there with them, and also, the only thing Yoongi really knows is the house and his parents, so there's no reason he shouldn't know that. What you're doing is having her repeat information Yoongi already knows, and it's clear it's only for the audience's benefit. The way it's worded also shows that it's expository. It's a little long and overly informative, which is another tell that it's only for the audience.

This doesn't happen too often, though I'm sure there will be more exposition later on in the novel, so I would recommend being careful about it going forward.

I'm not going to take off points for this since it literally only happened once and that would be unfair, but just in case, I still want to point it out. When you are continuing a line of dialogue with a comma, you do not capitalize the next line unless it is a proper noun. From chapter three: "I used to hate flying too," the man said, "But I've had to do...". The "but" needs to be lowercase because you are connecting the dialogue with a comma. Everything that comes after the first line of dialogue stays lowercase unless it is a proper noun until you hit a full stop/period. The second line of dialogue is a continuation of the same dialogue (when connected with a comma). Just like how you don't capitalize dialogue tags because they're continuations of the dialogue, if you're continuing the dialogue with a comma, it stays lowercase. Again, unless it's a proper noun.

It literally only happened once, so I'm not taking off points for something so minor, but it was also the one and only time I spotted where you connected dialogue with a comma, so that's why I'm bringing it up in case you don't know the second part of dialogue connected by a comma needs to be lowercase.

Like I said earlier, dialogue tags are consistently done correctly, and the other dialogue is very good, so I think this category should be scored highly. There's not too much dialogue yet, but there doesn't need to be. It matches the narrative. This definitely feels like it's more internal and thought/description-based than dialogue-based. Overall, you did good with the dialogue.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. So far, the world is clear and feels vivid. The environment literally shapes who the characters are. Yoongi is who he is because he grew up in his own isolated world. The worldbuilding of the superstition revolving around greed is interesting, too. I like how you set the stage with it immediately in the prologue to get the plot started in only a few minutes. Overall, great worldbuilding. No criticisms.

Grammar/Spelling: 7/10. The grammar is overall good, and the spelling was very good. There were no major or immersion-breaking spelling errors, and no consistent spelling errors.

Just some small things.

For one, be careful with semicolons. I always recommend using as few semicolons as possible since they tend to overcomplicate sentences and, honestly, we're kinda guessing with how they're used. The more you use them, the more likely you'll have an error with them since they're more complicated than a BTS fan's emotional state when they have to pick a bias.

I say this because there are consistent semicolon errors. Here's an example: Her head turned towards the left where the kitchen was, noticing a Frosted Flakes box on the cupboard that had been left partially open; the sink overflowing with dishes that had yet to be cleaned.

The semicolon is incorrect there, and the second part of that sentence is a little awkward. I'd recommend removing punctuation altogether, so it becomes "...partially open and the sink overflowing with...". The sentence shortly after that, "She breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw Yoongi kneeling on the couch; his eyes looking out the window at something," is also incorrect. Just keep in mind semicolons are not interchangeable with commas, and it seems you're using them that way. The semicolon in that sentence needs to be a comma.

To put it in perspective, all the semicolons in the prologue are incorrect, and I ran every sentence with a semicolon through three grammar checkers to be sure, and they all flagged the semicolons as incorrect. I believe most if not all of the semicolons used after the prologue are incorrect as well. That's why I'd strongly suggest being more careful about semicolon placement and making sure you're using them very carefully. Along with that, I would still suggest using them less since you used them a lot, and there's not much need to since, more often than not, they tend to overcomplicate sentences.

I used the first sentence as an example for another reason: UK English. "Towards" is one of the most common errors I see for US English writers. Contrary to popular belief, "towards" is incorrect. That is the UK version of the word, and "toward" is the US version of the word. It isn't a big deal, but still something to keep in mind when considering consistency in the English style. I would recommend staying consistently in US English by using "toward" instead of "towards."

There are some comma errors with missing commas. They aren't too frequent, but I'd say there were about 2-4 per chapter. For example, from chapter 2: "Kid get away from there." It should be: "Kid, get away from there." Like I said, they weren't too frequent, but still enough to be noticeable.

There are small editing errors throughout the story, and by that I mean small grammar errors that probably slipped by in the editing process. For example, from chapter two: He had lied to the officers that had brought him home and pretended that he had an older sibling around to take care of him.

The "that had brought him home" is incorrect. You're talking about officers, who are people, so "that" is incorrect. It should be: "who had brought him home."

Another example is in the prologue where there's this: "How was work today, honey?"  she asked. There's an extra space between the " and "she."

These errors are really small and I understand I'm a nerd for pointing them out, but since there were a few scattered throughout the chapters, I thought they were worth mentioning. It's not something I'm going to take off much for, though.

Description: 7/10. So far, the descriptions are vivid and diverse. You describe character thoughts, environments, body language, etc. You do a good job setting the scene for the reader and making them feel more involved in the story.

I would recommend using less passive voice and making sentences more active. For example, there's this from the prologue: "They began to want wealth..." and "...but then they began to notice...". This is dialogue, too, which makes it sound a little awkward. She's speaking very... I don't want to say formally, but overly wordy to her son, especially since he's only eight. That's why I'd recommend shortening it. Not only for conciseness, but also to eliminate unnecessary passivity. What I recommend is: "They wanted wealth..." and "...but then they noticed...". Now that it's a bit shorter and you eliminate the passivity, it flows much stronger and sounds more natural for spoken dialogue, especially between a mother and son. You make it sound more like description when you use both of the begans, is the simple way to explain what I mean.

Another example outside of dialogue is from chapter 1 with "His mother was dressed in a red dress...". The sentence prior to that was "His father was dressed...". That means you used "dress" three times in two sentences, and I feel it's unnecessary. Maybe you can shorten the second sentence to "His mother wore a red dress...". Not only do you eliminate the "was," but you also strengthen the conciseness of the text and the word choice, so that's three benefits from one minor change.

Also be careful with director's notes, which I define as moments that are telling over showing that tend to come after showing as if to clarify to the audience what the showing meant. In simpler terms, they're like notes left in by you, the author, to direct the reader to what they should know about the characters. To explain this through an example, there's this from the prologue: "But why do I have to stay inside?" asked Yoongi, wondering what the point of the whole story was. The "wondering what the point of the whole story was" is the director's note because you're telling us what the dialogue already shows us. You don't need director's notes, and any area you can eliminate telling over showing is a positive in my book. That part felt like it only existed to tell the audience what Yoongi was feeling, but again, that isn't needed because the dialogue already shows it. We can imply he's wondering what the point of the story is based not only on the fact that he asked a question, but also the context of the scene and the words in the dialogue.

You do this a few times throughout, and I recommend trimming where you reasonably can since it can make the emotions feel weaker as a result. For example, in chapter 2, there's this: He felt someone's hand on his shoulder, but he fought against them. He didn't want to get up.

The "He didn't want to get up" is a director's note. We already know based on the previous sentence that he doesn't want to get up, so there's no need to repeat it, only through telling instead of showing. Along with that, the sentence before the first one I showed also started with the pronoun "He," so you can not only eliminate telling by eliminating that sentence I just used as an example, but you can also eliminate potential repetition by starting three sentences in a row with "He."

Lastly, what I mentioned earlier about overusing certain words like "look" and "walk." Just be careful about that since it can make the descriptions not as impactful as they could be.

Otherwise, I like the descriptions.

Themes and Emotions: 8.5/10. So far, the theme of greed is very clear, though I'm sure other themes will become clearer as the story progresses. So far, I have theories for what other themes there might be, like isolationism, the impacts of sheltered living, and overcoming fear, though like I said, those are just theories and not anything I think needs to happen, I'm just excited to see what you do with the themes!

The emotions are overall good, as is the theme of greed. It's a very emotional story with many lows for the characters. Their highest moments are at best bittersweet, which is wild, but in a good way. It's depressing but has a clear reason why it's that way, and you're executing it well. Great job with this section.

The only criticisms I have tie back into everything I've said before about considering diversifying your word choice, trying not to use multiple exclamation marks, eliminating director's notes, and making sure the dialogue is fluid. With those tweaks, I think the emotions would be even stronger than they already are!

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8/10. I feel like it's cheating to give the title the full score, but c'mon, Haegeum and Min Yoongi go together like bread and butter, not to mention Yoongi is Agust D in this story, so it makes sense. It's a fun word with lots of meaning, and it relates to Yoongi and the story, so no criticisms for the title.

The blurb does an overall good job at establishing the story idea. It's written well with good grammar and spelling. I only have one minor criticism that's more like a nitpick, and it's the presence of "that." I think I've mentioned it in a past review I've given you, but be careful with the word "that" since it's a filler word that (no pun intended) makes sentences unnecessarily longer and it can sound awkward. More often than not, you don't need it, and that's proven in your blurb. 

There are four uses of "that" in the blurb, and of those four, none of them are needed. If you remove all of them, it isn't grammatically incorrect, and it makes the sentences flow stronger. If you read the sentences first with the thats then without them, you'll see they flow a little stronger without them. It's a small thing since it's only one word, but one word can make a huge difference in terms of flow, which is why I'm recommending removing them. A classmate of mine once said you as the author control every single word you write, so make each one count. If the "that" isn't doing anything for the sentence, why include it? That's the way I see it, though I understand every writer has their own style and may think differently.

I would also recommend considering tweaking this part of the blurb: But as Yoongi does, he slowly begins to learn that his parents' accident was no accident and a same - if not worst fate - may be in store for him.

What I'd recommend: But as Yoongi does, he slowly begins to learn his parents' accident was no accident, and the same, if not worse, fate may be in store for him.

Maybe this is just a me thing, but using hyphens as dashes really hurts my eyes. Those are hyphens, not em dashes. I never take off points for that because I understand not everyone has an em dash key, but an em dash, or the dash punctuation mark, is —, not -. - is a hyphen, not a dash. If you have a key for the em dash, I strongly recommend using it since a hyphen technically is not a dash, therefore making it technically grammatically incorrect.

However, that personal note aside, I still think commas would work a bit better in that scenario. I also removed the "that" so you can see how it flows without it, added more commas, and changed "a" to "the."

That's just one recommendation, but I encourage you to play around with it!

The cover has a fantastic concept that displays the story idea perfectly. I like the text placement, the font, and the font size. The colors also blend very well and are visually satisfying.

The only thing I'm not a fan of is how glossy both of them are. Both Yoongis look very clean and polished, but I feel it would make more sense for the story and also foreshadow what's to come if the greed Yoongi, or Yoon, was clean, glossy, and super appealing while Yoongi is more realistic and dirty. Yoon would be the ideal, Yoongi would be the reality. Considering Yoongi's mental state in the story and what Yoon is trying to do, I feel that'd make more sense than both of them being glossy and clean on the cover. It'd also add a lot of subtext. Yoon is wearing a suit and looks fancier, so the contrast is there, but not as much as it could be, is what I'm trying to say. It's a small thing, but it could something worth looking into to hint more at the dynamic between Yoon and Yoongi.

I otherwise really, really like the cover!

Total: 84/100.

Honorable Mention

Loyalty and Duty by CJ_parkjennykim

Review:

Characters: 8/10. I was pleasantly surprised by Kiara. Female leads are super hit or miss for me nowadays since too many authors try too hard to make their female characters "bad girls," but they end up being like the stereotypical bad girl on a Disney show, which makes them a bit frustrating, to be honest. However, Kiara does not have this problem. She's cool and all, but she isn't overly confident and "brave" to the point where she gets annoying. She has her own struggles and mental limitations, and I was surprised by how much we learned about her early on in the story. Jimin is Jimin, he's just as hot and fun as always. The entirety of BTS feel very BTS and fun to read about, and the other characters throughout, like Vincenzo, are good too.

I only have two criticisms. One is that there are a lot of characters introduced in the first ten chapters, and it can be a little difficult to keep track of, especially since not only do we need to know their real names, but also their code names. So seven members of BTS, seven code names, that's fourteen names to remember for BTS alone. I think you were clever by making their alternate names their Fates names, that definitely helped with my memory (Haru Haru Haru Haru oh how I love Haru), though it still is a bit much to process all at once. It could help to slow down in the beginning and focus more on character than plot. It's not a big deal since I caught on later, but I feel by slowing down and waiting on revealing BTS are mafia, we'd have more time to adjust to how many characters there are and we'd be more prepared to learn new names, like BTS' code names.

The second is similar to what I just said about slowing down. In the beginning, a lot of the development between Kiara and BTS is skipped over, and I feel this is crucial considering Kiara likes BTS. I feel focusing more on that internal conflict in the beginning before it's revealed that BTS are mafia could be very interesting, add another layer to Kiara's character, and give us more time to settle into the plot/characters before we get new info.

The first thing is minor since you get used to it more as the story goes along, but I'd definitely recommend considering slowing down more in the beginning so the characters have more time to get fleshed out. Otherwise, I like the characters and think you did a good job with them.

Plot: 8.5/10. The plot follows Kiara and her fellow ISB agents as they attempt to infiltrate BTS and find out if they're mafia or not. The plan takes a turn when Kiara learns BTS already knew about who they were, thus meaning they were one step ahead. I think this is an interesting idea, and I'd never say no to mafia BTS. I think the plot is good and works for the genre of the story, and other than some pacing issues I'll explain both below and in the next section, I think the plot is fun to read and makes sense. It did go too fast at times, but otherwise, it was good.

The only deductions comes from it feeling almost too plot heavy at times and, like I mentioned before, it felt a little fast at times with all the information we were meant to process in a short amount of time. The beginning in particular felt very plot-focused, but almost a little too much since we didn't get to learn about Kiara and BTS' relationship, though I'll explain a little more in detail about the pacing in the next section. The plot is overall good.

Pacing: 7.5/10. The pacing is stronger in the second part of the story than the first, but the pacing isn't bad by any means in the beginning, it could just use some tweaks. Judging the story as a whole, the pacing is overall good and does a good job relaying plot and character information at a good rate.

I wasn't really sure where to put this, so I'll put it in pacing since it does break immersion: try not to use author's notes in the middle of chapters. There were many times you had author's notes present in the middle of chapters, and it was a little distracting, especially since you bolded them, calling even more attention to them. If there's any important info about the chapter you want us to know, I suggest only putting it in the opening note before the chapter starts or saving it for the end, but leaving notes in the middle can really bring the reader out of the tone of the scene.

Like I mentioned in the characters section, the pacing could benefit from slowing down in some areas to flesh the characters out more. Like you skip over BTS and Kiara bonding in that first week of her as their manager, so when Taehyung gets a little touchy with her (oh to be a female lead in a BTS fanfic), it feels a little hard to believe, and I also think the back-and-forth between them as the story progresses could be more emotionally impactful if more time was given to fleshing out their relationship at the start. It could've added a bunch more layers to Kiara as she struggles with wondering if BTS could really be mafia. She does have a bit of denial at first, but it could've been interesting to see Kiara struggle more between her personal biases and her dedication to her job. Maybe she even tries to self-sabotage because she's that in denial (me too, Ki, me too). That could be an interesting character flaw/mistake. I'm not saying you have to add a lot, and you don't have to add anything at all if you don't want to, but it is something worth considering in future stories if you ever have a situation where the main character is torn between personal biases and her job. This also could have fleshed out BTS as people more before the mafia revelation comes, and also their relationship with Kiara, so that's why I'm suggesting it.

Lastly, like with the character names, it does become a lot to focus on since we're given a lot of info quickly, particularly in the beginning of the story, and any area you can slow down could be beneficial. Like the chapter where Kiara has a nightmare about her childhood in the early parts of the story, the timeline got a little confusing since it felt like we were jumping in and out of flashbacks, and I feel that flashback scene could have been saved for later and we could have just focused on the Kiara-BTS confrontation instead, if that makes sense. That's a whole lot of new info to take in at once, especially since the confrontation is like the inciting incident, so focusing on that could help the pacing.

The pacing is overall good throughout, even more so in the second half than the first, I just recommend some tweaks so readers have an easier time getting invested early on.

Creativity: 7/10. The story idea and sentence structure is overall good and does a good job presenting the characters and themes. The word choice is overall good too aside from one word that's overused and the dreaded curse of the -ly. I'll explain what I mean below.

The word choice is very good throughout the story, and I especially like the scene in chapter 5 where Kiara is describing all the BTS members in her mind and she's just simping and using elegant language to describe them. It makes sense for her character and also allows us to see unique words in a way that feels purposefully simp-y and fun. The word choice throughout is good aside from two things.

"Look" and adverbs.

Yep, you're getting the adverb talk, CJ.

I'll start with "look" since it's shorter. The word "look" is used frequently throughout the narrative, and it's not a huge deal since it's only one word, but it has countless synonyms, so I'd strongly suggest searching for synonyms and trying to use it less wherever possible, or rewording the sentences so you don't have to use the verb "look" at all. It's obviously more than okay to use the word "look," all I suggest is trying not to overuse it.

Adverbs are inherently (no pun intended) telling over showing, and the more you use, the more telling over showing you're doing. I wouldn't have as big of an issue with the adverbs if they weren't the same adverbs. You use words like "immediately," "softly," and "quickly" over and over again throughout the text, so I'd recommend removing them or at least changing which adverbs you're using so you don't have any issues with repetitiveness. There's nothing wrong with using adverbs here and there, though I challenge you to try and use 1-3 adverbs per chapter, if even that. If you can limit it that much, I think that may challenge you to do more showing over telling and diversify your writing. The word choice is otherwise good, it's just that adverbs can be distracting, especially when overused, and they're overused here. So what I'd suggest is using less adverbs and/or trying to diversify what adverbs you use. Instead of using "immediately," "softly," or "quickly," consider replacing them with different words or, preferably, doing showing over telling to show something immediate, or something soft, or something quick. The more you can show, the better. The more adverbs, the more telling, so that's why you're getting the adverb talk.

Overall, the creativity is good, I just suggest some tweaks to the presentation by limiting the amount of adverbs used + the specific adverbs you're using, and also limiting the usage of the word "look."

Dialogue: 7/10. The dialogue itself is good and flows well, so the dialogue is overall good. Tags are done right for most of the story, though in the more recent chapters, there are some errors. I'm not going to take off as much as I normally would for tag issues since it only happens in the later stages of the story, and also inconsistently, so it's not a huge deal.

But I'll just say to make sure if you're using a tag, the dialogue should end with anything other than a period/full stop. So, not: "...since the past week." Vincenzo explained (chapter 16). This: "...since the past week," Vincenzo explained. Like I said, this doesn't really happen until later in the story, and it's also not too consistent, so it's not a big deal, but still something worth mentioning.

This is a minor thing, but make sure commas are inside the quotation marks instead of outside, and if you have punctuation like ? or ! at the end of dialogue, you don't need a comma too, you only need the ? or !. Like the tags, this is something that you do wrong for about 7 chapters, then you fix that problem and the rest of the story doesn't really have the comma error, so that means the majority of the story does it correctly. However, 7 chapters is still a lot to have punctuation errors, so I won't take off as much as normal for something like this, but it is still something I need to factor in.

I was going to give you the 50-30 talk about using less dialogue tags, but like everything else in this section, you fix this in the later parts of the story where you use far less tags. However, since there are many tags in the beginning parts of the story, it is still something to factor into the score. But again, you fix this later and use far less dialogue tags, so it isn't a huge deal, but still something worth mentioning. I won't take off too much for those three things since they stop happening and don't happen for much of the story, but enough to be noticeable.

The main thing I want to talk about in this category is actions as tags; however, since we've already talked about this privately, I won't give you the full actions as tags talk. Pretty much I'll just break it down and say I recommend not using actions as dialogue tags, and also being careful about what tags you use. I won't give you the full 50-30 talk as I just said, but I'll give you the basics. The 50-30 advice says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should be tagged, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked because if you're using too many tags/different tags that aren't said or asked, you're taking away from what's important: the dialogue. Actions as tags are the same way.

So action tags refer to "he smirked," "he chuckled," "he smiled," etc. being used to tag dialogue. This is a bit awkward because they're dialogue tags, not people tags. You can say words, whisper them, yell them, etc., but you can't chuckle them or smile them. You can chuckle and smile while talking, but words themselves can't do either of those things, so by using something like "he chuckled" as a dialogue tag, you're almost implying the words are chuckling, so that's why it's awkward/unnatural. Luckily, it's an easy fix. Instead of something like this: "Hey," he chuckled. You can do this: "Hey," he said with a chuckle. Or: He chuckled. "Hey." Or: "Hey," he said while chuckling. Those are three ways to include the action without using it as a tag, making it more natural and fluid. To summarize, I'd recommend sticking more to said/asked tags since you use many tags like "informed" and "exclaimed" and could benefit from using less, and try to avoid actions as tags.

Overall, the dialogue itself is good, and you mostly do tags correctly. Most of the errors resolve themselves less than halfway through the story, so they're not big deals but still things worth mentioning since the beginning is, of course, important. My main criticism is the actions as tags since they're unnatural, but otherwise, the dialogue is good.

Worldbuilding: 10/10. The world is very specific and clear with names given to every little thing. No location goes unnamed, and everyone has an intricate series of code names that are easier to follow as the story progresses. There are many branches of the world to unpack as we explore the narrative and find new mafias to engage with, and also BTS' role in it all makes for an engaging world. You do a good job describing locations, items, and clothing to make the world feel more alive. Overall, I liked the world and have no criticisms.

Grammar/Spelling: 6.5/10. The grammar and spelling is overall good, though there are some tweaks I recommend.

Be careful with capitalization. Sometimes you'll capitalize non proper nouns or vice versa where you don't capitalize proper nouns. For example, in chapter 8, the first paragraph doesn't capitalize "Korean" despite it being a proper noun.

I believe this only happens in the beginning sections of the story, but I would recommend almost never using all caps unless it's the name of something (like BTS or HYBE) simply because it's hard to read, is telling over showing, and can come off as overdramatic at times depending on how it's used. It can also give the impression that you, the writer, are yelling at us, the audience, instead of the characters yelling at each other. That's why I suggest never using them unless they're the name of something.

There are comma errors throughout the story where you have missing commas. For example: "Baby you've been distracted these days are you ok?" What I'd recommend: "Baby, you've been distracted these days. Are you okay?" I changed it to "okay" instead of "ok" because if you're using two letters, it's normally "OK," not "ok," but it doesn't matter which one you use, both are correct. I personally prefer okay, so that's why it's written that way in my alternative, but ok is fine too. Missing commas I believe is the most common error. You often don't use commas for introductory clauses, but most introductory clauses need commas. For example: "In the other corner of the room Jimin sat in a make up chair, ready and dressed." What it should be: "In the other corner of the room, Jimin sat in a make-up chair, ready and dressed." The "In the other corner of the room" is the introductory clause since it's introducing the next part of the sentence.

Similarly, there are areas you have commas where you don't need them. "Jungkook snapped out of his daze, and smiled, though it seemed very subtly forced." The comma before "and" and after "daze" is incorrect. The "smiled" is connected to the same subject in this sentence, so you don't need the first comma. This is also an example of the adverbs, you have two back-to-back with "very" and "subtly." I would suggest removing at least one if not both.

I already mentioned some of the grammar errors with punctuation in the dialogue, so I won't go into them here but I will mention them just as a reminder to make sure punctuation is inside the quotation marks when writing dialogue.

There aren't too many grammar errors and very few noticeable spelling errors, but the errors are consistent, particularly the punctuation, so I would recommend tweaking the grammar where you see fit.

Description: 7.5/10. The descriptions throughout the story are overall good, and where you shine is describing environments and things. You include occasional pictures and gifs, but you never over-rely on them. You use them as supplementary information to help visualize, but not do all the descriptive work. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, everything is specific and you give names to everything. Although I did have critiques for there being so many names to learn so quickly, I liked how there are code names and you made the narrative feel more alive in that sense. All in all, good job with the descriptions.

I think I already covered most of my thoughts in the creativity section, but the telling over showing is what brought the score down by a few points since there is quite a lot of it. However, what I will give props for is that the telling over showing really is only about character emotions. You describe the environments and items the characters interact with well in showing over telling ways, as I said before. It's just the character emotions are often told to us, and the overuse of adverbs (and also dialogue tags in the beginning) amplify how much telling over showing there is. For character emotions, it's vital to show it through subtle moments and nonverbal communication, so I would suggest incorporating more of this wherever you see fit.

For example: "...and the tense look in Jungkook's eyes made Kaia worry even more..." (chap 17). You're telling us how Jungkook looks and how Kaia feels. Now, to be fair, you can absolutely tell us how Kaia feels and I think that's fine for the sentence. You can absolutely do telling over showing here and there, but any areas you can cut down could be beneficial. If you're gonna tell us Kaia is worried, consider not telling us Jungkook's tense look. Maybe describe his jaw or his cheek, like Jungkook pokes his tongue against his inner cheek when he's tense/angry/stressed, so that could be a way to show it. Any way you can find to show it that'll fit with your version of Jungkook could work, I was just throwing out ideas to help with the brainstorming process. To summarize, I think telling us Kaia is worried there is fine and it's more than okay to use telling over showing at times, though if you're going to use telling, I'd suggest limiting the telling in the rest of the sentence, if that makes sense.

So, overall, the descriptions are very good, all I recommend is using more showing over telling for the character emotion descriptions. Otherwise, good job.

Themes and Emotions: 7.5/10. Like I mentioned a few times, I like the concept of Kiara being torn between her personal biases and work, and I also like the complexity in the emotions the reader gets seeing all the character relationships, both platonic and romantic. With that being said, I'd say Kiara's backstory is the emotional core of the story where you give her the most emotion and connect her to the themes interweaved throughout the narrative. Her traumatic past makes several appearances in the book and connect to who she is at the present moment and also inspires her decisions. I overall really like the emotions throughout the story.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but all the deductions come from the things I've mentioned before about telling over showing, though more the characters and slowing down in the beginning so we can get more emotionally attached to them. Since the beginning is so important, it is an equally important factor to consider when judging this section. Throughout the entire story, I recommend using less adverbs and telling over showing so the emotions throughout can have even more impact than they already do. With that being said, I overall think you did a good job, especially with Kiara's past.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8/10. The title makes sense for the story and honestly feels like it fits the mafia vibe, so I'm vibing with it too. It has two buzz words (loyalty + duty) and is short/sweet. No criticisms.

The blurb tells us exactly what the story is going to be about, has overall good word choice, and has a quote at the beginning that's pretty good with no noticeable spelling/grammar. My only critiques are grammatical for the second part of the blurb, or the core part of it. Let's start with the first sentence: "Kang Kiara, an undercover agent at ISB, embarks on a mission to infiltrate a a cartel lead by BTS, who are not only talented performers, but mingling with the world of crime beneath the curtains." You repeat the "a," but there should only be one. "Lead" should be "led," and the comma at the end isn't necessary. So, with those changes, it'd look like this: "Kang Kiara, an undercover agent at ISB, embarks on a mission to infiltrate a cartel led by BTS, who are not only talented performers but also mingling with the world of crime beneath the curtains." I added "also" after "but" to make the sentence feel a little more connected.

Those are the main errors, and the rest of the blurb is fine. I know it's a reference to the title, though I'd still suggest lowercasing "duty" in the second part simply because it's not a proper noun. That's a nitpick and I can understand why you capitalized it, though I still wasn't a huge fan of the capitalization. Other than those couple things, the blurb is good.

The cover is simple but elegant with no blank space but also not so much going on that it becomes overwhelming by any means. I like the text placement and font. The background image makes sense for the story and matches in with the theme of lies and deceit you're trying to show. This is a nitpick, but while on the topic of deceit, I'd suggest tweaking the subtext since it's spelled incorrectly as deciet instead of deceit. Otherwise, I like the text, the color scheme, background image, and overall cover.

Total: 77.5/100.

Here, I'll convert it for you since you hate math: 7.75/10. 

Honorable Mention

The Good King by Memeboy619

Review:

Characters: 8/10. While it's early in the story, I think you're doing a good job setting up the characters and giving them one or two very specific personality traits to set us up for their characters. Like the king is greedy, the wife is spiteful, etc. You give them at least one core thing to attach to, which I think is interesting. Overall, even though it's too early to comment too much on them since we haven't seen many scenes with them yet, I think you're doing a good job setting them up. However, I do have one criticism about ways you can flesh out the characters more if the pacing were a bit slower at times.

The pacing is quite fast, and while I'm okay with that, I feel like a lot is happening before I get the chance to understand who these people are. There are some clear traits as I mentioned before, like the king's greed and facade of kindness, though there are many plot events happening before I'm fully immersed. For example, the treasurer. His death is actually pretty emotional for someone we don't know, so I give you props for that and for a cool last line in chapter 4. However, my suggestion would be to consider including him in chapter 3 so we can see him before he dies. The first time we see him, he gets executed. Maybe have him in the scene in chapter 3 to have him fight for himself, and we can see his personality and how everyone throws him under the bus, and we can really get an emotional insight into how corrupt they are, and how Abaddin isn't much better than the king if he throws a crying, pleading man under the bus just for his own benefit. I also feel it'll make sense since that's supposed to be a meeting between his councilmen, so why isn't the treasurer there? If he is, why didn't he speak up? That's just one suggestion and not one I'm saying is perfect or even good, but it could be worth considering to further flesh out Abaddin and the treasurer without adding too much to the narrative. So those kinds of things are what I'm talking about when I say a lot is happening before we know who these people are. I'm not expecting to know them super well since the story's only just begun, but some more details and specifics about these people before major plot events happen could add more tension when the plot moves forward, if that makes sense. I otherwise think the characters are intriguing so far, and I'm excited to see what you do with them next. I really hope you continue writing this story since you have a very promising start.

Plot: 8.5/10. Like with the characters, it's a little early to comment on the overall plot since it hasn't unfolded yet, but based on what we know so far, I didn't spot any plot holes or inconsistencies, and it seems like you're setting up an interesting narrative that will follow multiple characters trying to take down the king versus the king and his loyalists. A classic power struggle narrative where the dynamics will be tense and ever-changing throughout the plot. Overall, so far I like the plot.

The only deductions come from the story going very quickly that it's a little hard to grasp what's going on since we're not yet immersed in the world before plot events are happening. I will explain in far more detail in the next section.

Pacing: 7.5/10. The first chapter is overall very good and does a good job establishing tone, King Has, and the pacing of the story. I don't mind the fast pace and the short length of chapters, and I think the chapters end very well with an interesting takeaway that summarizes the theme within the individual chapters. I only have two critiques regarding transitions and considering slowing down in some areas/not jumping around as much.

Be careful with transitions and making sure paragraphs feel like they have the information you need. Sometimes you'll have one main idea in a paragraph, then you'll include another main idea in the same paragraph, which can be a little hard to read. For example: "A liar and a hyporcrite. Water slushes as he rises to his feet..." (chap 3). Do you see how those two ideas aren't connected at all? The entire paragraph before this is spent talking about the king and how he's a liar, then suddenly, in the same paragraph, he's suddenly standing. That should be its own paragraph since it's a new topic.

The pacing is a little too fast at times and could benefit from slowing down. For example, within four chapters, the king is revealed and given a lot of character, we learn the wife is cheating, we learn about Abaddin, the treasurer we don't yet know is made the black sheep, the treasurer is publicly executed, etc. That's a lot to happen within 20 minutes. We learn about four characters, the world, there's already a character death, and more. It made it so when the plot moved forward on the king in chapter 3, it happened very quickly since it happened at the same time we're trying to connect to Abaddin. Maybe you can consider slowing down and setting up the plot a little more instead of having it happen all of a sudden. The last time we saw the king, he was escaping a crowd under the false assumption that his wife was sick or injured, now he's accused of a serious crime off-screen. So the serious plot moment happens off-screen and through the eyes of another character. All four chapters take place in a different person's POV. Maybe instead of showing the wife's cheating in chapter 2, have King Has on the way home when he notices the farther he goes, the more his trusted guards and maids are giving him questioning looks, which you can now establish as odd since servants aren't supposed to question the king. From there, there's chaos inside the castle and the king learns of the treasurer accusing him, then he explodes into his bedroom, same as before, and "wakes" his wife. He notices she's in undergarments that are pretty sensual, planting the seed of doubt about infidelity. Maybe she's a little too eager to do 18+ things with him, and he gets a little suspicious, but not too much, and he has to go take care of the accusation. Now the crime accusation is set up on screen so the next chapter it doesn't feel as sudden, you're setting the seeds for the wife's infidelity, and you're adding a mystery where we want to figure out what the wife is up to. You're slowing down a bit to show more of the world as King Has travels back home, establishing more of his character and daily routine, setting up the next plot point, and setting up the wife's infidelity without giving it away and adding mystery. All that just from slowing down a bit and spending more time with the characters.

I'm not saying this is a perfect suggestion or one you have to go with, but I hope the reader's perspective helps you see that the crime plot felt very sudden, especially considering where we last saw the king. Having such a serious thing happen off-screen felt a little hard to follow, if that makes sense.

Like I said, the first chapter has great pacing, and I love how each chapter ends. The pacing is overall good but could benefit from slowing down at times and giving us more info about what's going on so we have more knowledge before moving on to the next scenes. I hope all that makes sense!

Creativity: 6/10. The story idea and sentence structure is overall creative and does a good job getting the reader hooked on the story. The sentence structure was overall good, though there were some missing words and agreement issues that made some sentences a little awkward. I'll go over what I mean in far more detail in the grammar section since I already wrote an explanation there before writing this section.

I would suggest using less adverbs. You use a bunch of words that end with -ly, many of which unneeded. For example, in chapter two, you use the tag "whispers softly." A whisper is already pretty soft, so using that -ly word isn't needed. I'll bring that exact line up again in the dialogue section, but I thought I'd mention it here as a precursor to that. I would suggest plugging the text into Google Docs and/or Microsoft Word and using the find and replace tool under the edit tab to look up ly. From there, you can consider removing most of the words ending with -ly. Since adverbs are telling over showing, the less of them you use, the less telling over showing you're doing, and the less telling over showing you're doing, the stronger engagement your reader will have with the text.

There are many times you repeat words in the same sentence. For example: "He leans back against the tub, back of the neck and arms resting on the sides of the tub as three young woman tend to him" (chap 3). Repeating certain words like "genius" in King Has' POV makes sense and establishes personality, but be careful not to overuse words unnecessarily. Do you need both uses of "tub" and "back" here? Can you say something like this: "He leans [back] against the tub, his neck and arms resting on the sides of the warm/cool [insert material here, maybe porcelain?] as three young woman tend to him." I said warm/cool since it depends on how you want to describe the tub, and I also didn't specify a material because, again, that's up to you, though instead of describing it as a tub again, maybe describe what it's made out of like the porcelain example I gave. Now you're stimulating more of the reader's senses by using more creative imagery without needing to go over-the-top with descriptions or use too complex of language. That's just one example of a way you can reword the sentence, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for your writing style!

So my overall suggestions are to use less adverbs and to consider diversifying the word choice. The story idea is interesting, it could just use some tweaks to the presentation.

Dialogue: 8/10. There is some pretty interesting dialogue throughout the story where the lines feel introspective, but not forcibly so. You sprinkle in a few deeper lines to think about here and there, probably around once per chapter, that make them pop and stand out. The dialogue is overall good, and I only have one suggestion, but it is an important one.

Dialogue tags are done incorrectly. You write them like this: "I wish he would leave the palace more often." She whispers softly.

Should be: "I wish he would leave the palace more often," she whispers softly.

The same applies when you're using special punctuation like ? or !. For example, this is how tags would be done with the special punctuation: "How are you?" he asked.

Dialogue tags are continuations of the dialogue, hence why they're called dialogue tags. That means they need to be lowercase unless they are proper nouns, and when using them, you can use any punctuation mark except a full stop/period. If you aren't using a tag, any punctuation except a comma can be used.

The dialogue itself is good and, as I said earlier, has some cool lines that are thought-provoking. The one issue is dialogue tags, which is a vital part of dialogue, hence why I'm recommending tweaking them.

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. So far, I like the world and what you're setting up. I like how the environment interacts with the characters, like in chapter 1 with the crowd overwhelming the king with their demands for shares of his wealth. I like the use of temperature and how you describe the liquid in chapter 4 as cold. There are many interesting worldbuilding elements where you give us specific descriptors to immerse us in the scene, which I think is interesting. There are still some things left to explore in the world, like more about the king's council and how it runs, but it's very early in the story, so that's no big deal and I'm sure you'll explore those elements more later on.

Be careful with consistency in the language. I'll mention it in the blurb section, but I talk about how "genius" is spelled in the archaic way of "genious." While I was not a huge fan of it, I understand why you used it. However, if you're going to be going all the way with that and using more archaic and ancient terms, then make sure you aren't using modern slang. You say this in chapter three: "Why does the king always bother me when I am about to get some?" While it's tricky to find a source on this, I did some Google scouring and found the origin of the phrase "get some" isn't until the mid-20th century, which would be far out of date for your story. Beyond that, even without Googling, using that phrase felt oddly modern to me when I was reading and I wanted to Google it to see if it was used in more ancient times and couldn't find anything. Even if it was, it still feels very modern when you've already established a more ancient-like language. Sometimes you use phrases that felt a little too modern, which is why I'm suggesting making sure you keep the language consistent so the world continues to stay believable.

Grammar/Spelling: 6/10. The grammar is overall okay but could benefit from some tweaks.

Be careful with agreement issues. Sometimes you have words that need to be plural but you make them singular. I'll provide two examples from the first chapter: "The boy smile..." and "He fake a frown..." the smile needs to be "smiles" and fake needs to be "fakes."

Similarly, there are times you have missing words or articles that are needed so the sentence makes sense. For example: "...and grin forms across his wrinkled face" (chap 3). You need an article in front of the "grin," and in this case, it would be "a grin." This happens a few times throughout the story, so I would recommend reading sentences out loud if you are ever unsure if you need articles or not.

I would suggest using less sentence fragments. They can work as stylistic choices, and some of them work in your story (I myself use them, so I have nothing against them), though make sure you're using them for clear purposes and not too often, otherwise you risk losing clarity. The #1 goal of creative writing is to be clear with your language, so if you're being unclear by using too many sentence fragments or sentences that feel incomplete, the story can be hard to follow. For example: "Cheeks red with embarrassment" (chap 3). This sentence feels incomplete and feels like it needed to be added to the previous sentence so it makes more sense. If I just isolate that sentence, do you know whose cheeks are red with embarrassment? No, there's no subject with the red cheeks, we're just told cheeks are red with embarrassment. So that's why I suggest attaching it to the previous sentence or expanding upon it to make it feel more complete. You do this often with sentence fragments and sentences that feel incomplete, hence why I'm suggesting it.

There are some typos throughout, like the chapter 3 example I showed earlier with hyporcrite instead of hypocrite from the line, "A liar and a hyporcrite."

There are some punctuation errors where sentences go on too long or have missing commas. I would suggest using grammar editing software like Grammarly, QuillBot, and/or ProWritingAid to help with commas if you are ever unsure, or reading sentences out loud and/or using TTS to help you hear where commas could go. Here's an example of a sentence that has too many commas: "A gasp escapes him as cold water splashes against him, an old woman has thrown a bucket at him, a hag to be exact" (chap 4). The comma before "an" and after "him" could be replaced. There are a few things you could do here, so I'll give one suggestion: "A gasp escapes him as cold water splashes against him; an old woman has thrown a bucket at him, a hag, to be exact." You could also split it up into two sentences or incorporate a dash before "a" and after "him" in the second part of the sentence. There are many ways to rearrange it, but the first comma doesn't really work, in my opinion. I ran it through my grammar checkers to be sure, and they all agreed, hence why I'm recommending tweaking it.

Description: 8/10. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, you do a good job including small details and giving us interesting visuals to help us visualize what's going on in the scene. You make the world feel more alive that way. You also describe places and people well, too, other than the grammar errors I mentioned before where some sentences are a little awkward and can make the descriptions hard to read. Overall, the descriptions are good.

The criticisms come from things I've said earlier about using less adverbs and considering tweaking descriptions so you aren't using the same word multiple times in a single sentence, like the tub example I used earlier. Word choice is very important for keeping descriptions fresh, which is why I'm strongly recommending it. I otherwise like the descriptions.

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. I was pleasantly surprised by how emotional the hanging scene in chapter 4 was. Considering I had no idea who this treasurer was before that scene, you can't help but feel bad for him and respect his devotion to the king, even though the king doesn't deserve that loyalty. And his daughter being there was just another hard-hitting moment that would make anyone feel awful for the poor guy. That's the most emotional scene in the book so far, but the general emotions in the other chapters are overall good, too. It's too early to identify a clear theme other than maybe the negatives of greed and not to blindly trust leaders, though again, it's a little too early for me to confidently say those are the themes. For that reason, I will not be commenting on the themes or factoring them into the score, though it is good that only four chapters into the story, I can already start making theories on the core themes.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but the only criticisms I have tie back into the things I've mentioned before regarding adverbs, spending more time with the characters, and tweaking some of the grammar/spelling for a more fluid and therefore more emotional reading experience. I think that by making those tweaks, the emotions could be even stronger than they already are!

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7/10. I'm not sure how I feel about the title. On one hand, it sums up the story pretty well. On the other, it could use some more emotion since it is a title that's been done many times in the past. While I don't think a story's title is valued just by how unique it is, maybe consider playing around with it. Maybe The "Good" King to add a little bit of mystery to it and get the audience more intrigued by the presence of a unique punctuation mark around the Good. Maybe tweak the way you phrase the title and add more emotional words to evocate more of a reaction from the audience. I don't have any problem with the title, but those are just a few suggestions to consider. I'm not saying they'll work for the story or your style, so please only play with it if you're interested.

The blurb overall tells us what the story is going to be about without overstaying its welcome. It makes sense, too. I only have a couple of grammar suggestions for the first sentence, but the other sentences are grammatically fine. "In the glorious kingdom of Ribune, a genious king uses all his wits to prosper but a group of insolent rebels are plotting to dethrone him, jealous of his achievements." I made sure to run it through my grammar checkers and change the grammar checkers between the different English versions to ensure these suggestions are all correct, so here's what I'd suggest: "In the glorious kingdom of Ribune, a genius king uses all his wits to prosper, but a group of insolent rebels is plotting to dethrone him, jealous of his achievements."

I changed "genious" to "genius," added a comma in front of "but" and after "prosper," and changed "are" to "is" since you're talking about one group, not multiple, so the agreement could flow stronger as "is" instead of "are." I understand "genious" is archaic, though I would still recommend spelling it as "genius" since most are not aware that it's archaic, and it's also a term rarely used in modern times, so it could unnecessarily confuse readers. Other than those grammar things, I like the blurb.

I like the background image of the cover. It says a lot about the king and his attitude with his forward stride and the people behind looking straight at him. The elegant armor and shining crown show his personality before we even get to see it.

The criticisms I have are about the black border and the font. I'm not a huge fan of the thick black border, and I don't think it's needed, or at least not needed in that capacity. That's a lot of blank space, and you have an interesting background image, so I don't think you need the black border at all since the image is interesting enough. As for the font, I feel you can play around with it to make it more fantasy-like or elegant to match the "elegance" the king is trying to portray. Maybe consider a cursive font, or one that's inspired by calligraphy, like Almendra.

Total: 75.5/100.

REVIEWS

Revenge and Marriage by elemariaJin

Review:

Characters: 7.5/10. I like the dynamic between Y/n and her grandfather. Right off the bat, I found it wholesome and fun to read about. I was actually really surprised with how much I liked Y/n in this. I think as a BTS ff author, I'm sure you understand that there's stereotypes surrounding Y/n characters and how many of them end up being annoying and cliche, but I actually really liked how you handled Y/n. You gave her emotion and genuine personality. Her traits are clear and she has a reason to be cold and annoyed with people, so that made her personality believable and fun to read about. I like how you gave her flashbacks and she still struggles with her emotional past, which was nice. She struggles, has cool moments, and is fun. Good job with Y/n.

My criticisms are criticisms that will pop up a few times throughout the review. The dialogue is formatted incorrectly, which leads to some confusion with what you're trying to say and hard times investing in the characters since it's hard to understand what they're saying sometimes. There are also frequent grammar errors that tie into that and make some of the dialogue a bit unnatural, and since dialogue is a major part of characters, it can hurt the character development. There is some repetitiveness with the way you describe character actions (like you use smiling and chuckling a lot), and you could benefit from using a more diverse list of character actions to help give characters more uniqueness. I'll talk more about this in the creativity section, though. And I'll talk more about the dialogue and grammar in their respective sections. So most of my criticisms will be explained in far more detail later, but I hope that rundown gives you a summary of what I'm going to cover throughout the review.

Overall, I like Y/n in particular and I think the other characters are fine, there could just be some tweaks to the dialogue, grammar, diversity in descriptions, and emotions. I'll explain all of what I mean throughout the review.

Plot: 8/10. The plot is pretty intriguing and keeps my attention. I never found myself bored while reading since the chapters have lots of fun in them. The characters are fun and mix in with the plot idea, too. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies, and I think Y/n's character in particular drives the plot forward and makes it feel more alive and engaging. I overall like the plot and think it is deserving of a high score.

The deductions come from the pacing being very fast and dialogue-heavy, so sometimes plot events were unclear because most of it is described through dialogue. I'd recommend using more descriptions to give readers a clearer idea of what's going on in the story, that way we can better visualize the scenes and see what you're imagining when you're writing. I can tell you have a vivid imagination based on the interesting story idea and fun characters, so I encourage you to show us more of your creativity by using more descriptions. I'll explain more about the pacing in the next section, but that's a general rundown of where the deductions come from.

Pacing: 7/10. While I do have critiques for the overreliance on dialogue, the pacing is overall good and unfolds the plot events at a good rate. The characters are revealed at good rates as well. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about not introducing Jimin until later in the story, but I think it was a good idea so we can set up who Y/n is first, then when she has development, Jimin is introduced. So I liked that and I overall liked the pacing other than my critiques for the dialogue.

Since this story is mostly dialogue, it means we don't get many breaks from said dialogue, which can lead to the pacing being very fast at times. Instead of relying on dialogue and pictures, consider adding more descriptions or at least adding a few lines here and there to give us a break from the dialogue. So maybe something like this:

Dialogue 1.

Dialogue 2.

1-3 sentence break for description.

Dialogue 3.

Dialogue 4.

It doesn't have to be like that by any means and you can certainly pick and choose when you want to include description, but that's one example of how you can format some of your dialogue where you're giving us more breaks so we can process the dialogue instead of having to move to the next dialogue before we get a chance to really feel what the first dialogue was saying. It can be overwhelming to read a lot of dialogue back-to-back and makes the pacing very fast. I have no issue with fast pacing, though it did feel a bit too fast in the sense that we didn't get many breaks from dialogue. In real life, when we talk, there's a lot happening around us. Like right now, I'm sitting in my room and mumbling to myself as I write this. My fan is blowing and making a noise, my legs are hot since I'm wearing leggings in 81 degrees F heat, my hair is tucked at an uncomfortable angle behind my ear, my glasses are crooked, my iPad buzzed and lit up next to me, my stomach growled a minute ago, my voice is scratchy since I woke up recently, etc. So with all this happening around just one person, now imagine a school setting with countless people. If your characters are talking in, for example, a classroom, a lot is happening around them. Consider taking a break from the dialogue to show that with just a handful of sentences. Not only will it strengthen the worldbuilding, but it'll also slow the pacing without you needing to add a bunch of paragraphs. Even just 1-3 sentences here or there can make a huge difference.

The pacing is overall okay, I just recommend slowing down every once in a while to help the readers understand what they're reading and give them more of a chance to process it. Remember that since you're the author, you know everything about your story. We readers don't. We only know what you tell us, so when most of that telling is dialogue, we need time to process it since this is all new information to us. For you, you're used to it since, again, you're the writer. So that's why I'm recommending it. You don't need to do a crap ton more descriptions, but like I said earlier, maybe consider adding a little bit more here and there. I hope that makes sense.

Creativity: 6/10. The story ideas and characters are very creative. Like I said in the plot section, you have a strong grasp on creative ideas, and I was pleasantly surprised with how you handled the Y/n and her storyline, and also how you tied it into the other characters like Tae and Jimin. While I'm sure there's still much more to come as you update it further, I think your characters are in a good spot in terms of their personalities, motivations, and traits, and that's due to how much care you put into them. That shows in the writing and how you bring out really fun ideas to keep the audience interested. So all of that is to say the idea and concept is interesting and creative, and all my criticisms come from the presentation of things like word choice and sentence structure.

My criticisms have to do with things I've already mentioned like there's a lot of dialogue, so there isn't too much experimentation with the sentence structure and how the story is formatted. I'd suggest playing around more with your sentences. Consider using more dashes, colons, semicolons, introductory clauses, etc. to give them more spice. Not too many, but including a few here and there can make the sentences more unique from one another.

The word choice and actions could be more diverse too. There is a lot of smiling, frowning, chuckling, etc., and you could benefit from using synonyms for those words or finding new ways to describe character actions. For example, use synonyms for chuckle. There are plenty of ways you can describe a chuckle. That's a small way to change it up, but it'll at least add more diversity to the word choice. Another example is happiness. People show their happiness in more ways than just smiling, like Jimin likes to shake his fists or fall to the ground laughing. Some people get excited and bounce on their feet or throw their hands in the air. So those are four other ways you can show happiness without needing to incorporate smiling. Those are just some ideas, and I'm not saying they're perfect, but I hope they inspire you and help with brainstorming!

The story is fun with an entertaining idea matched with equally fun characters, so there is creativity here that's overall good. I would just suggest tweaking the presentation to make the sentence structure and word choice a bit more unique, if that makes sense.

Dialogue: 4/10. The content in the dialogue (AKA: the words being spoken) is overall okay and there are some cool lines that I liked; however, some tweaks can be made to the presentation and grammar to help the dialogue flow more smoothly and sound more natural.

I have three main criticisms, though they're very important, hence why they're worth so much of the score. First and foremost, I would strongly suggest not using abbreviations or shortcuts of words (like pls, cuz, sry, etc.) in dialogue. I'll explain more in the grammar section, but when using these terms, it can pull readers out of the story, and it can also come off as unrealistic since college kids don't speak that way. I've been in college for years, no one ever says pls, sry, omg, brb, etc. unless they're trying to be funny, but they don't actually say that in standard conversation. They say sorry, oh my God, be right back, etc. They don't use texting abbreviations because they're not texting, they're talking. That's why the dialogue can come off as unrealistic because no one really speaks like that unless they're trying to be funny, but even then, it's not very common. So that's why I'd suggest spelling the words out, that way it's easier to read and also more realistic.

Secondly, I very, very strongly suggest never using emojis and emoticons in dialogue. You can't speak emojis/emoticons, so it's physically impossible for emojis/emoticons to be present in dialogue. For texting, it's fine, but you sometimes use them for spoken dialogue, which leads to confusing imagery because, again, you can't speak emojis. You can speak words, but not emojis. So by putting emojis in dialogue, it makes it seem like the characters are speaking emojis, which is impossible. That's why I suggest never using them unless the characters are texting.

Lastly, and most importantly, you write dialogue incorrectly. This is advertised as a book, has descriptions like a book, and is otherwise written in book format, but for dialogue, you're writing in script format, which is incorrect. If you want to write a script, that's fine, but then you have to keep the format consistent. You write in a hybrid between book and script format, which is grammatically incorrect. By that I mean, you write dialogue like this:

Student: who? Me?

It should be: "Who? Me?" the student asked.

That ^^ is book format dialogue. By using script format, you're confusing the readers and also taking away a huge part of books: imagination. Script format is meant to be plain and telling over showing, that's why it's for scripts. Scripts are not meant to be read, they're meant to be performed. If you watch a movie, you don't read the script before seeing it, right? That's because, again, scripts aren't meant to be read. But books are. That's why I'm recommending book format. Scripts are unnatural for readers to read, so it can hurt reading speed and it can also confuse readers.

The script format is also done incorrectly. If you are using script format, you do not need to use dialogue tags (he said, she said, etc.). The reason is because you're already telling us who's speaking by putting the character name first, which makes the dialogue tags completely unnecessary. I write scripts daily for my job and for my field of study (I'm a film major), and throughout this time, we have never used dialogue tags for that reason: they're not needed. We label who the characters are, so we don't need them. Dialogue tags have one purpose and one purpose only: to tell the reader who is speaking. So if you already told the reader who's speaking by putting the character name, I hope it makes sense why you don't need the dialogue tags too.

Like I said earlier, the content in the dialogue, like the words being said, is overall okay other than the abbreviations and grammar errors; however, it's the presentation and formatting that need some tweaking to make the dialogue stronger. I hope all that makes sense!

Worldbuilding: 7/10. You give many specific names to the world, like naming products and ice cream and things like that. That may seem like a small thing, but 1) you'd be surprised how many authors don't do this, and 2) the small details matter. Those smaller things flesh out the world more and also make it feel more alive, so keep that up! Keep being specific about the names of places the characters go and the products they have/foods they eat. Small details make the characters and world feel more realistic and easier to invest in, so good job with that!

I'll mention it again in the descriptions section, but there could be more detail given to the environments and how the characters interact with the world around them. Since there's a lot of dialogue, there isn't much attention given to the world. It does feel a little vague at times since there aren't many descriptions of what the characters are doing and, like I mentioned in the plot section, it feels like many plot events are described more through dialogue than action. I'm okay with character development happening a lot through dialogue, but for plot events, we really need to see more descriptions so we can have a better feel of the world/environments and see how the characters interact with said world. It's not that you never do this or never describe the world, but what I'm saying is you could benefit from doing more of it, if that makes sense.

With that being said, I still overall like the worldbuilding and think it's deserving of a high score since you are specific with things like the names of places and what kind of items the characters interact with/the foods they consume. So, overall, I still think the worldbuilding is good.

Grammar/Spelling: 4/10. The grammar and spelling has moments where it's good, though it could use tweaks to make it stronger and more consistent.

I would suggest using grammar editing software such as Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and/or QuillBot to help with the grammar, or hiring an editor through a Wattpad shop to help. I will go over some of the grammar errors here, though it may be more useful to use editing software to help for the long-term.

Like I mentioned earlier, I would suggest not using abbreviations/shortenings of words, like pls, bcuz, sry, etc. When you do that, especially in dialogue, it makes it seem like the characters are actually saying "S-r-y," not sorry. Not only can abbreviations pull readers out of the story, but they can also be really hard to read. Not to mention not everyone knows all the abbreviations, so you could confuse readers by including them.

You have tense issues where you flip flop between past and present tense incorrectly. So sometimes you'll use present tense verbs like "is," and other times you'll use verbs like "was." It doesn't matter if you choose present or past tense, but when you choose one, try not to slip into the other except for in the cases where it's okay to use them in the other tense. Like if you use present tense, you can use past tense to refer to past events in the story's timeline, but not the current timeline. So if your character is currently going to the store, it has to be "I'm going to the store," not "I went to the store." If you use past tense, you can use present tense for things like direct (and typically italicized) character thoughts and dialogue, but mostly everything will be in past tense. So, to summarize, make sure you choose one tense for the story and stick with it except in the exception cases where you can use other tenses. Tense issues are a little complicated, so I would suggest looking into this on Google and other search engines so you can learn more!

For dialogue, make sure you're capitalizing the first letter of it since it's considered its own sentence. For example: "ya what else can he do?" It should be: "Ya," not "ya."

Also make sure you always have end punctuation. For example: "Well Miss Principal is coming here"

It needs to be: "...coming here." You need a period/full stop at the end to complete the sentence. Make sure every sentence has some sort of end punctuation like a period/full stop, question mark, etc.

There are some spelling errors throughout, like you spell "way" as "wat" at the beginning of chapter 3.

Ellipses (...) are done mostly incorrectly. When using ellipses, that's the three dot punctuation mark, so it's ..., not anything else. You often use two dots, or .., instead of the full three. It needs to be three dots. In some rare cases, it's four, but it's normally three, so make sure whenever you use the dot punctuation, you're using three dots, not two.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are some errors with the dialogue, though since I already explained them in the dialogue section, I'll just mention them here as a reminder but I won't go into further detail as I already did.

The grammar and spelling could use some improvements, which is why I recommend free grammar editing software and reading sentences out loud and/or plugging the text into text-to-speech, or TTS, generators so you can hear how the sentences sound. I personally use TTS generators to help me spot typos and grammar errors, and it helps a lot, so that's one thing that could help! The chapters aren't too long, so you should be able to listen to the text in only a few minutes. I hope those suggestions are helpful!

Description: 5/10. It's a little hard to judge this category because there aren't many descriptions throughout the story. The emphasis on dialogue and the more script-like style you have makes it so there aren't too many descriptions, and there isn't much description happening around the dialogue, either. For that reason, I think a middle of the line score is a good fit. When the descriptions are there, they're fine, they're just very few and far in between. I would suggest using more descriptions and incorporating more of the five senses into your descriptions (taste, sight, sound, etc.) to make the descriptions more cinematic and immersive. You don't need to go overboard with descriptions and include paragraphs upon paragraphs of them, but adding some lines here and there to describe what's happening and give us a break from the dialogue could be very beneficial. Dialogue is only as impactful as what's happening around it, so if there isn't much description, the dialogue can almost feel like floating lines with not as much meaning as they could have if there were more descriptions of facial expressions, body language, voice/tone, the environments + how they're interacting with said environments, etc. You also do a lot of telling over showing where you'll tell us when a character is angry, happy, sad, confused, etc. instead of showing it. Like you'll say something like "She's confused." Telling is fine to use and not inherently a bad thing, but any areas you can limit it and instead show the audience the character emotions instead of telling them could be beneficial. For example, instead of telling us the characters are confused, maybe have them knit their brows together or show confusion through some other action. What this means is, don't directly say the characters are confused, show us that they are.

So, like I said, when the descriptions are there, they're fine, but you could benefit from including more to give us a break from the dialogue, doing less telling over showing, and including more detail maybe using the five senses so the descriptions feel more cinematic/immersive. I hope that makes sense.

Themes and Emotions: 5/10. I think the emotional highlight is Y/n. As I mentioned earlier, you give her a lot of emotion that I wasn't expecting, and also a wholesome relationship with her grandfather that's fun to read. I think you handled her emotions well, and I found myself smiling at several of her interactions with her grandfather.

The criticisms I have for this section are the same as other sections with slowing down, doing less telling over showing, using less dialogue to really make the dialogue feel more impactful and emotional, and tweaking the grammar errors so it's easier to read/flows better. When there are frequent grammar errors, it can be hard to attach ourselves to what's going on since we have to reread the sentences to make sure we understand what you're trying to say, so I hope when I break it down like that, it makes sense why I'm bringing the grammar up in this section. It can hurt the emotional impact since we need to reread and bring ourselves out of the moment to try and understand the moment, if that makes sense.

Overall, Y/n's emotions are good, which is great seeing as she's the main character. All I recommend is tweaking the emotions to make every emotion feel more impactful by tweaking the telling over showing, using less dialogue, slowing down a bit to describe things, and editing the grammar errors. I hope that makes sense!

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. Revenge and Marriage is a fun, colorful title with two buzz words (Revenge + Marriage) to give the title flair and pop. It has a good SEO score, and there are no grammatical errors. No criticisms.

The blurb is a little short, but it sums up what the story is going to be about, so I'm okay with it being short. I'm going to focus on the two core sentences in the blurb and not the beginning part since I think that's fine and works as a teaser to get the reader to continue reading the blurb. So for the two core sentences of the blurb, there are grammar errors similar to the ones I've mentioned in the grammar/spelling section. For a blurb, it's really important not to have grammar errors so the reader is more convinced to read the story. For example, here are the two sentences:

"What will happen..when a person is not interested in love but in revenge? The love between enemies will take a good turn in their lives or will ruin their entire lives..?"

Here's what I would recommend: "What will happen when a person is not interested in love but in revenge? Will the love between enemies shine positivity into their lives, or will it ruin them?"

I'm not saying this suggestion is perfect, but it has no grammar errors (I ran it through three grammar checkers just to be sure), and it has a bit stronger word choice to bring more emotion out of the audience. I also rearranged the second sentence since the "The love between enemies will take a good turn in their lives or will ruin their entire lives..?" was a bit unclear and hard to understand due to the position of the "will" in the sentence. The will would work better if it were at the beginning of the sentence, that way it sets up the question mark at the end a bit better.

So that's just one alternative, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what you think works best for you and your style!

The cover has a nice color scheme and font, and I overall like it. I only have one minor critique and that has to do with the male and female kissing silhouette happening in the background. I would suggest making it larger and moving it to the left a little so it's more balanced on the screen and it's easier to see. We can see a lot more of the woman than the man, so by increasing the size and moving it to the left a little, I think there may be more balance between the two we can see. Otherwise, I like the cover and think it does a good job setting the tone for the story. I like the red tones and the text placement. It's overall good.

Total: 61/100.

Total Eclipse of the Heart by strawberry1d

Review:

Characters: 8.5/10. Yoongi is peak Yoongi in this story with his energy level, and you do a good job with younger Yoongi in particular by capturing the teenage angst in a way that doesn't feel immature or over-the-top. Joy is also good, and I'm glad you went with the opposites attract trope. It's like Yoongi is the black cat and Joy the golden retriever, which I was happy with. It's always cute to see someone who's high energy be paired with someone who's more passive and low energy. All the characters had fun personalities and interesting storylines I wanted to see more of.

The only deductions come from dialogue and telling over showing. I will explain both in their respective categories, though I will give a brief rundown here: sometimes the dialogue is a little awkward, making the characters feel a bit harder to invest in at times, and there's a lot of telling over showing, and that makes it harder to fully immerse ourselves in the emotions since you're telling us what to feel, not allowing us space to explore the emotions for ourselves. I'll explain telling over showing more in the descriptions section.

Plot: 8.5/10. The plot surrounding the red string of fate and how it's more literal and physical instead of just metaphorical is interesting. There was some interesting imagery that made the mystical nature of the narrative feel more realistic and fun to read about. I didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies. Overall, the plot is enjoyable, fits the characters, feels like it belongs in its genre, and makes sense.

I have some criticisms for the pacing that made the story hard to follow in the beginning. A hook is super important and arguably one of the most important areas where pacing needs to be really tight, so that's why I strongly recommend tightening the pacing in the first few chapters and also working on transitions so the story ideas connect more. I will explain all of this in more detail in the next section.

Pacing: 6/10. Later in the story, the pacing is good and has plot points unfolding at a smooth rate that makes sense. My criticisms for the pacing apply to the first half of the story, so they are pretty major critiques, but I do want to emphasize that the pacing smoothens for the later chapters in the book.

There are some transitional issues where one minute we're talking about one thing, then the next it suddenly switches to a completely different and unrelated topic. In chapter one, for example, in the beginning segment. Yoongi talks about girls and how his brother is interested in one, then right after talking about girls, there's this paragraph: "He'd heard about an underground rap show...". If you read the paragraph before it, then that one, you'll see how it feels like we rapidly switched topics without any transition. Nothing related to music was mentioned in that previous paragraph, so that new one felt a little out of nowhere, and it shocked me while reading. That paragraph feels randomly placed because we move on right after. That paragraph is only two sentences, or three lines, long, then we move to the next action, so that's why it felt a little random.

You also sometimes do this within paragraphs where there's one idea, then suddenly there's a new one. I'll try to keep the examples close together so you don't have to play musical chapters to see what I'm talking about. This is from the same chapter as the last example: He vowed that he would openly deny their relationship if they did it again in public. After that massive breakfast, he is desperate for sleep.

The second sentence is a completely new idea, so why is it in the same space as "He vowed that he would openly deny their relationship..."? The first sentence should be in the previous paragraph, then you can have the "After that..." sentence starting a new paragraph, that way it flows a bit more smoothly. You do the same thing again with the paragraph starting with: "Yoongi took a deep breath...". There's this line in the paragraph: "Vacations suck!" then right after it, there's this: "His parents had led them to a secluded area." That sentence doesn't match the main idea of the paragraph, and it should be split after the vacations suck line. This is a nitpick, but while we're looking at it, I might as well bring it up: I'd very strongly recommend removing the exclamation mark after vacations suck. For one, it's a little unnecessary since it's unnecessary telling over showing. Two, the more you use exclamation marks, the less impact they have, so any area you can remove an unnecessary exclamation mark is helpful. Three, this is Yoongi's POV, so him using an exclamation mark randomly felt a little off considering his entire character up until this point has been monotone. Exclamation marks give the opposite feeling of that, so it felt a little out of character for Yoongi to be saying vacation sucks with an exclamation mark. I'm not taking off any points for that since that has nothing to do with pacing, but still something I thought was worth mentioning.

The pacing in the first chapter could be improved, too. You mostly put a lot of info on our plates about Yoongi and Joy, but I would suggest saving that for later. We want to know the situation and what the character is up to. You don't need to spend so much time giving us backstory on Yoongi and Joy. Instead, save it for later. You have the entire book to flesh out these characters, so don't feel pressured to give us everything we need to know in the first chapter. Part of the fun of reading is figuring out new things about the characters later. That's why I'd suggest trimming the exposition of the first chapter and giving us more scene over summary. I'd say most of that chapter is summary where you're telling us about the hotel, Yoongi, Joy, and Yoongi's family. Give us some more action/scene, or showing over telling.

In general, the beginning of the story has a lot of exposition about Yoongi and Joy, and I would suggest trimming where you can. You'll have plenty of time to sprinkle exposition throughout the entire narrative, so I recommend giving the beginning more action so the audience can get more invested more easily. I hope that makes sense.

Creativity: 7.5/10. The concept with the red strings and fate's involvement with the storyline is interesting, and I can tell you have a clear passion for it. My favorite part about the story is this idea and how you execute it. I overall think you execute it well, and my suggestions are all about presentation.

Be careful with word choice. There are many words that are repeated throughout the narrative. For example, you use words like "look," "greet," and "walk" a lot. It can have more emotional impact if you diversify the word choice, and it also helps keep the reader engaged. If we're reading the same words over and over, it can get a little tiring, which leads to lower engagement and lower emotional investment in the characters. That's why I strongly recommend using more synonyms and/or rewording sentences so you don't have to use any version of words like "walk," "look," or "greet" at all.

Also be careful with adverbs. Adverbs are telling over showing, and I felt you used far too many. I believe you were using 30+ in most chapters, which, in my opinion, is far too much. I would recommend limiting that to under five, and if possible, maybe only two or three. Not only will this help with the telling over showing issue I'll explain more later, but it'll also enhance your word choice and creativity since you're repeating adverbs like "slowly" and "discreetly" quite often. I'd recommend using find & replace via Google Docs or Microsoft Word and looking up ly. From there, you can delete or replace most of the words ending with -ly. I didn't feel many of the adverbs were necessary. For example, "visibly" and "audibly" are two adverbs that are almost never needed. If you're saying someone is audibly groaning, it's awkward since it's already implied by the verb "groaning" that it's audible. No one's going to think the characters are groaning in their minds unless you specifically say that, so that's why adverbs like "audibly" normally don't make sense. The same applies to visually.

That's why a lot of the adverbs felt a little forced in, which is why I'm recommending removing as many as possible. For example, this: "Their parents were greeting each other jokingly and immediately starting a conversation...". I think I understand what you were trying to do with the adverb "immediately," but I don't think you need it. I don't really see the purpose of the "jokingly" in this context either, so I feel both the adverbs could be removed, but at least "immediately" since it didn't do much for the sentence. Maybe if you want to show they started a conversation fast, you can say they dove into a conversation. That implies speed without using an adverb, so the sentence becomes stronger and more fluid.

The story is otherwise creative, and like I said earlier, the story idea is extremely unique and has a fun, engaging spin on the red string of fate concept that I enjoyed reading about.

Dialogue: 6.5/10. The dialogue is overall okay, but I have some suggestions for the presentation of it and also the grammar to ensure the dialogue sounds natural.

There are some awkward lines that don't sound natural. For that reason, I would suggest reading dialogue out loud and/or plugging it into a TTS generator. Make sure you aren't going too formal and wordy with your dialogue. Remember we tend to speak in shorter bursts, so when all the characters are adding unnecessary words into their speech, it comes off as unnatural. For example: "Even in a different place, I will be a total loser." The "I will be" is a little off. I'd suggest: "Even in a different place, I'm a total loser." It's more natural with I am than I will be. Or "Myself sucks!" This is very awkward since most English speakers don't refer to themselves as "myself" in this context, they say "I" instead. So it'd be: "I suck!" instead. Another moment is in chapter 2 with "Yoongs---wake up. It's lunchtime, and I'm sure you are very eager to eat." The "I'm sure you are very eager to eat" is a little awkward between a mother and son, so they don't need to speak in so many words to one another, especially when it's been established they have a more informal relationship with jokes and stuff like that. You can simply say: "It's lunchtime, I'm sure you're eager to eat." Fluid dialogue is really important not only for the reader's benefit so they can have an easier time reading, but for your benefit too since dialogue is a core part of characterization, so anything you can do to keep it more fluid could be super beneficial.

I would strongly recommend not using actions, like "chuckled" and "furrowed his brows" as dialogue tags. If you lowercase them after dialogue, that means you're using them as a tag, so like this: "Why don't you put on the cute shirt I bought you?" she furrowed her brows (chap 2). The lowercase of the "she" implies it's a tag, but this is not a proper dialogue tag. Actions as dialogue tags are unnatural because tags are meant to tag dialogue, not people. This means it's tagging words. Words can't chuckle or furrow their brows, and by using "he chuckled" or "she furrowed her brows" as a tag, you're implying the words are chuckling and furrowing their brows, not the people. You can still keep the actions, just don't use them as tags. Here are two ways to keep the actions without using them as tags:

She furrowed her brows. "Why don't you put on the cute shirt I bought you?"

"Why don't you put on the cute shirt I bought you?" she asked with furrowed brows (or: "she asked while furrowing her brows").

There are many ways to write it without using it as a tag, so I strongly recommend playing around with it.

I'd also recommend being careful you're not using two tags unnecessarily. From chapter two, there's this: Yoongi scrunched up his nose and shook his head unbothered, saying, "*dialogue*... can we go now?" he pleaded. You don't need both the "saying" and "he pleaded," you only need one. Using both is redundant. Whenever you can cut down on tags, I recommend doing it. Tags are inherently telling over showing, so if you ever use two, I'd strongly consider cutting out at least one of them. The dialogue is overall okay, I just recommend those tweaks to the presentation to help make it a little more fluid.

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. The world is interesting, especially with the red string part that I mentioned in the plot section. I think you do a good job giving us info about the red string and what it means, particularly in the later parts of the story when the story is nearing its close. In the later parts of the story, I'm glad you decided to use more dialogue for exposition and have the characters figure things out together instead of info dumping. It made the pacing stronger and the exposition more natural to have them learning together instead of it being explained to us in walls of text. That aspect of the world was good. The environments were also fine and given detail, though I do have some suggestions for it.

The only thing I recommend is doing more showing over telling and allowing the environment to speak more for itself, and also being more specific. Like in the beginning of the story, you summarize the buffet scene with Yoongi and Joy where he explains things to her. Show more of that. Considering this is the emotional core of the story (Yoongi and Joy's relationship), showing him explaining food and culture to her is really important. It also expands on the world since you're showing us Yoongi's world, a world Joy doesn't understand. The majority of the people reading your work aren't going to be Korean or know much about Korean culture/language, so this could also be a fun opportunity to teach the audience some fun things about SK while also strengthening Yoongi/Joy's bond and doing more worldbuilding. You don't need to make the scene too long, but it could be interesting to add just a few more lines to show Yoongi maybe even getting excited to share his culture. He was otherwise monotone throughout the story thus far, so seeing him get a little excited and try to contain it could be funny.

That's just one idea and not one I'm saying will work for your style, but it is something worth considering. I'd also strongly recommend doing more showing over telling so the world feels even more realistic. I'll explain more of what I mean in the descriptions section.

I otherwise liked the worldbuilding, especially with the story's fate concept.

Grammar/Spelling: 6.5/10. The grammar and spelling is overall okay, though I recommend some tweaks to make the emotional impact of the story more powerful, and also more consistency since you have major tense and POV issues.

You have tense issues where you flip flop between past and present tense incorrectly. You're flipping frequently, so it's hard to tell if you're writing in present or past tense. You start in present, then use past tense for things happening in the current storyline, like Yoongi nodding to his parents. If it was supposed to be in present tense, it needs to be "nods," not "nodded." I strongly recommend making sure you stick consistently to one tense. The tense errors are very frequent. Sometimes they happen multiple times in one sentence, so that's why I strongly recommend choosing one tense and sticking to it. Tense is extremely important since the more you flip flop between past and present, the harder it is for the audience to understand the timeline of the story and what's going on. I hope when I explain it like that, it makes sense why I'm putting a lot of stress on the tense issues.

You have moments where you slip POVs. Sometimes you'll say "You" and "I" even though you're writing in third person. You say "Your mother" in chapter 1 and "I became aware" in chapter 2, for example. Make sure you're consistently staying in third person, or at least waiting until a chapter break to switch the POVs. Just like with tense, you want to keep POV as consistent as possible so the audience doesn't get confused.

I would recommend staying consistently in one English type: US or UK. Sometimes you use US words, like gray ("grey" would be the UK version), and other times you use UK words, like towards ("toward" would be the US version). You combine US and UK English words, and I would recommend sticking to one or the other. If you want US English, then keep writing words like gray, but use "toward" instead of "towards." If you want UK English, keep writing words like towards, but use "grey" instead of "gray." It's not a big deal and not something I'm going to take off much for, but consistency in the language is something to keep in mind.

As I mentioned in the dialogue section, there are cases where the sentences sound a bit unnatural, and I would recommend reading them out loud to help eliminate potential unnatural moments.

The spelling is overall good, and the rest of the grammar is okay, it could just use more consistency, especially with the tense since the tense flips almost every sentence, making it very frequent tense issues.

Description: 7/10. Like I mentioned earlier, there was some interesting imagery with the red string that made for an entertaining read, but you also do an overall good job with describing places and being specific about where the characters are. However, I have some suggestions for describing character emotions.

You do a lot of telling where you tell us what the characters are feeling. We know when they're happy, annoyed, sad, scared, etc. Instead of telling us those emotions, show them. You do some moments of showing over telling, so that's not to say you never show, though I'd suggest spending less time on exposition and telling and more on using descriptions and subtext in dialogue to make emotions stand out more. Most of human communication is nonverbal, so the more you include that, the more realistic the emotions will feel. Consider describing body language and facial expressions more. You do sometimes, but I would recommend doing it more often. Like I mentioned earlier, the overuse of adverbs contributes to this problem. Adverbs aren't strong words to use to evoke emotions, which is why I recommend using them rarely, maybe 2-3 times per chapter, but you use a good 30+ per chapter. To put this in perspective, just doing a skim of chapter 1, I counted about 41 adverbs. And that's only words ending with -ly, meaning I didn't count other adverbs like "still" and "very." So the odds are there are more like 50+ in just the first chapter. That's how many adverbs you use, and since adverbs are telling over showing, I hope when I show you just how much telling you're doing, it makes sense why I'm recommending downsizing.

Outside of adverbs, you're doing a lot of telling over showing by telling us when characters are happy, sad, confused, etc., so if you're doing 50+ adverbs in the first chapter alone, and also telling over showing with other lines, that means most of the chapter is telling over showing. That's why I'm spending so much time to highlight it.

Similarly to telling over showing, you use many director's notes, which I define as little notes of telling over showing the author leaves in almost to direct us (the reader) to know what to feel/think during a scene. For example, from chapter 1, "Her cheerful girl appeared to be depressed." Don't tell us she's depressed, show it. This feels like a little director's note where you're telling us what we need to think or feel. Many times these director's notes come after you give us showing over telling, so right after the showing, you're giving us telling as if to explain the showing. You don't need to do that. Trust your audience to pick up on what you're saying.

One of the main reasons we read is to imagine things for ourselves and make our own interpretations of your story. If you're telling us everything we should feel and think, then you're taking away one of the biggest reasons why we read. That's why I recommend cutting out as many adverbs as possible, trimming the director's notes, and finding more ways to do showing over telling. I hope all that makes sense!

Themes and Emotions: 8/10. The themes and emotions in the narrative are overall strong, and I like how you have diverse emotions that make sense for each character. I didn't notice any OOC moments, so if there were any, they were small enough to go unnoticed. Overall, good job.

The deductions come from criticisms I mentioned earlier about telling over showing and making sure there isn't emotional whiplash between paragraphs (transitions) where we're talking about one main topic then jumping to something completely unrelated. Also the grammar within the dialogue and making sure it's natural, but the deductions mostly come from telling over showing and emotional whiplash from the transitions. With those tweaks, I think the emotions would be even stronger.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 7.5/10. The title is really pretty, although I may be biased since I love the word "Eclipse." Heck, my first Wattpad awards were the Eclipse Awards, so yeah, I'm biased, but I think it's a really nice and pretty word. It's an emotional title that isn't too long, so it has a decent headline/SEO score. Overall, I like it. No criticisms.

The blurb is good aside from some extra spaces. There are two extras space in front of "Amidst" in the last sentence and an extra space in front of "In" in the first sentence. Along with that, this is a nitpick, but I'd recommend not using the "strikingly" adverb. You already used an adverb in the same sentence as "strikingly," so I'd recommend not using another back-to-back, especially since the verb "resembling" already shows the audience what we need to know, so there's no need to tell us through adverbs, which are inherently telling over showing. Other than those two suggestions, I like the blurb.

The cover is a bit crowded, and I'm not a fan of how a chunk of Yoongi's face is hidden behind Sun-Hi. I like the font and the red strings going through the title card, that's a clever way to tie the blurb and cover together. I overall like the cover, but like I said, it's just a little crowded since it feels like Yoongi and Sun-Hi are squeezed together and not given much room to breathe. I'm not saying you need to leave a gigantic space between them, but maybe consider giving them some more room. The same applies to the stickers. The stickers feel a little randomly placed to the point where two of them are even overlapping. They don't appear aligned, they appear slightly off (it looks like it slants—starting from the top, it keeps slanting to the right). That's why I recommend playing around with the placement a bit more since it feels a little crowded and things are overlapping unnecessarily. With that being said, I like the overall aesthetic of the cover, and I really like the red strings.

Total: 74.5/100.

Fading Spotlight by reindolfwrites

Review:

Characters: 6/10. I like the idea of Isabella's character. Someone forced into fame out of desperation who suddenly loses that fame because of the thing that led her there in the first place. It's a twist of the fates kind of thing, and although the story is early in its development so there's more to come, I can safely say I like that idea.

Where the deductions come in is I feel like I don't know anything about Isabella outside of her being an actress and being bipolar. I don't think it's really mentioned what kind of films she stars in, what she likes to do in her free time, what she likes to talk about (the vast majority of the conversations are about her schedule or the plot, that's why I'm saying this), etc. Like I just said, the vast majority of the conversations in this story are about the plot, not the characters. Now, to be fair, it is early in the story; however, I have to judge based on what's there, and of what's there so far, there hasn't been much character work for a story that feels like it's supposed to be very personal to the characters. It deals with a traumatic event that happened in Isabella's past and her bipolar disorder, so I feel it definitely needs a very strong connection to the characters. Again, that's a really cool concept that I like a lot. Okay, I'm also biased since I'm a film major, but let's ignore that bias!!!

Anyway, back on topic.

I think the concept behind each character is interesting, even the film producer being her father. You have the foundation for cool characters, I just suggest giving them more character work and slowing down to give us said character work. I save the character section for last since that means I finished reading the story, so most of what I'm saying here will be explained with specific examples and suggestions later on in the review, like in the plot and pacing sections, but I just thought I'd give a general rundown here so you know exactly where the deductions come from. However, I will explain more clearly with examples and specific suggestions in the next two sections.

Plot: 8/10. Like I mentioned in the previous section, you have an awesome concept where the main character turns to fame to escape her past only for her past to destroy the thing she used to attempt to escape it. And it's tragic since even though we don't know exactly what happened, it's pretty clear it wasn't Isabella's fault, and considering the justice system in New York City right now, I'm not surprised Isabella is so stressed out about all these things.

My main criticism is the pacing and the fact that it's very plot-driven when I don't know if it should be. I'd say it's around 70% plot and 30% character, but I feel a balance of 50-50 is needed. The main character has bipolar disorder, and the plot is linked to her mental health, so I feel exploring that more and giving us more quiet moments with the protagonist/moments where she's talking about something other than the plot could be beneficial. I know it's early in the story, but right when I think we're gonna get character moments, it switches back to plot. Like the interview. You completely skip over the questions the interviewer asks about her rise to fame to skip to the questions related to the plot. Show more of the interview. That's a perfect, natural moment to give us insight to Isabella. Or the dream Isabella wakes up from, then showers afterwards. Give us some more quiet time with her and her thoughts before Rebecca shows up.

So I feel it's almost too plot focused and you could benefit from slowing down and not overwhelming us with the plot. There's a bunch of plot events, but not much time to process them, if that makes sense. The characters don't do much quiet reflection on the plot and it's more "What are we going to do next?" Maybe take a few minutes to have quiet scenes and slower moments. I'll explain a bit more in the pacing section.

I overall like the plot and think that's the most important part, though my recommendations and where the deductions come from relate to the pacing and how much plot there is for something that feels like the characters are just as if not more important than the plot. I hope that makes sense.

Pacing: 7/10. The pacing for the plot is overall okay since it unfolds the plot events at a rate that isn't too slow and something new is happening every chapter, though I have some suggestions about balancing the pacing out and giving us more time to process the plot events.

I think I explained most of my criticisms in the previous section, but the pacing could benefit from slowing down, especially in those scenes I mentioned where it feels you skipped over a chance to give us quiet character moments in a story that feels like it should lean more toward 50-50 plot/character instead of more plot than character. Isabella is very intricately linked to the plot, so I feel having more quiet scenes understanding who she is as a person could help a lot. There's a bunch of plot events happening, and I understand why there's a bunch happening, but I still felt you could slow down even when the events themselves were happening. For example, the awards show. Maybe take a moment to linger in the darkness on the awards stage and amp up the tension, explore more of Isabella's thoughts and feelings during that moment, describe more of the ambiance using the five senses (sight, sound, smell, etc.), etc. Those are just a few ideas, but I encourage you to play around with it.

The pacing is overall fine and does what it needs to for the plot, but I strongly suggest balancing it out with more character work so it doesn't feel too plot heavy, if that makes sense.

Creativity: 7.5/10. I mentioned it a few times, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again: I like the story idea. It's creative and has a nice spin on the Hollywood fame idea. The creativity is overall good, and I like the direction you took this concept. I only have recommendations for the presentation.

I would suggest using less adverbs. Adverbs are telling over showing, so any area you can limit them means you're eliminating telling over showing. I'd recommend plugging the text into Word or Docs and using the find and replace tool to look up ly. From there, try removing a bunch of words ending with -ly. Sometimes you use 2-4 adverbs in a single sentence, which is a lot of telling over showing in one sentence. That's why I'd recommend searching up words that end with ly and considering removing some, or rewording the sentences so you don't need to use the adverbs at all.

Along with that, be careful with exclamation marks. Exclamation marks are also telling over showing and emphasis marks, so the more you use them, the less impact they have over time. That's why I suggest using them very sparingly. One of my English teachers once said exclamation marks should only be used for things like "I'm pregnant!", and that's stuck with me to this day. For example, from chapter 2, "Your days are numbered!". I didn't particularly care for the exclamation mark there for two reasons. One, I feel it'd be scarier for the voice to be calm and less erratic, so I felt the exclamation mark was a bit unnecessary in that sense. Two, she's in a small space with Edward very close to her. If the caller is yelling, like an exclamation mark implies, I find it hard to believe Edward didn't hear it, and if he did hear it, I find it hard to believe he wouldn't comment on it. When my mom is talking to someone on the phone, I can hear their casual talking from a decent distance away, so I find it hard to believe Edward didn't hear yelling from only a few feet, if even that, away.

The creativity in the story is overall good, I just recommend those couple things to make the creativity stand out more. I hope that makes sense.

Dialogue: 6.5/10. The dialogue itself, as in the spoken words, is good. I only have some recommendations for the presentation and grammar surrounding dialogue tags.

Be careful with dialogue capitalization. A few times throughout the text, you connect dialogue using a comma and capitalize the second piece of dialogue. That is incorrect, and you only capitalize it if there's a period/full stop. That's a word sandwich, so let me explain via an example: "...eavesdropping on me?" she pondered, "But why would...". Now I know this is a character thought, but the same applies here since character thoughts are internal dialogue. The but needs to be lowercase, so: "...eavesdropping on me?" she pondered, "but why would...". The reason is because it's a continuation of the previous dialogue. When starting new dialogue, you capitalize the first letter, so that's why it'd be capitalized if it were a period/full stop. Like this: "...eavesdropping on me?" she pondered. "But why would...". See the difference? If it's a comma, you're continuing it. If it's a period/full stop, it's now new dialogue and you can capitalize it again. After capitalizing the first letter of the new line of dialogue, you do not capitalize anything else (unless it's a proper noun) until the next period/full stop. That's why dialogue tags, in this case, "she pondered," are lowercase. They're continuations of the dialogue. So the same applies to if you're connecting dialogue using a comma. I hope that makes sense.

I mentioned tags, so let me delve into them: I'd strongly suggest using less dialogue tags, and using less "fancy" ones, for lack of a better term. Let's start with using less tags. Almost every line of dialogue has a tag. Dialogue tags are telling over showing. Their one and only purpose is to tell the reader who is speaking, so the less you use, the better. Just to put this in perspective, in chapter 3, there are 25 lines of dialogue. Of those 25, there are 25 tags. So that means 100% of your dialogue has tags, which is far too much.

I'd recommend the 50-30 advice of dialogue for you. This advice says of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. This is because the more tags you use, especially if they aren't said or asked, the more attention you're drawing to the tags. Now, to explain why this is a big deal, let me ask you something. What is the most important part of dialogue?

Dialogue.

So if you're using so many tags that they're taking away from the dialogue, I hope it makes sense why this is so critical. Beyond that, publishers hate dialogue tags. I sent in a draft first chapter that had maybe 30-40% of its dialogue tagged, and my boss still told me to use less, that's how much they hate tags, and I don't blame them. Like I said, tags are telling over showing, so the less you use them, the less telling over showing you're doing. The more you use the "fancier" tags, or tags that aren't said or asked, the more attention you're drawing to your telling over showing.

That's not to say never use tags that aren't said or asked, but I'd suggest making sure a good 30-35% of your dialogue tags are said or asked. Instead of telling the audience who is speaking, show us. Introduce who's speaking through actions, descriptions, speech style (give your characters specific ticks/quirks in their speech to make them easily identifiable), facial expressions, body language, etc. Introduce who's speaking by describing it. You can do this with as few words as two, like "Isabella smiled," then write dialogue after. So, altogether: Isabella smiled. "I know."

That's just a random example, but it shows how you can use actions to describe who is speaking without using a dialogue tag. I strongly recommend playing around with it and seeing how much you can get away with in terms of how little dialogue tags you need. Of course they're necessary so readers don't get confused, but we readers naturally read dialogue like this:

Dialogue 1 - Person A

Dialogue 2 - Person B

Dialogue 3 - Person A

Dialogue 4 - Person B

We see it as a back and forth (at least when it's between two people), so you can also just not include anything at all (though I wouldn't suggest doing this for too long, like maybe just have dialogue for 2-4 lines, then go back to introducing who's speaking so the reader doesn't lose track). Those are a few ways you can present dialogue differently, but I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for you!

I don't want to go too in-depth since I already mentioned it before, but you could also benefit from having more dialogue that isn't surrounded by plot. A lot of the dialogue in this story is about the plot, the awards show, and Isabella's schedule. You could benefit from diversifying what the characters talk about.

Like I mentioned earlier, the grammar is overall good within the dialogue and I think the dialogue is overall okay, it could just use some tweaks to its presentation.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The worldbuilding is overall good. I live in New York, so I understand I'm biased, but I like the location being NYC. I think you do a good job bringing the world to life by including some interesting descriptions, like wailing police sirens and cold floors. The small details matter, and you do a good job incorporating some of the five senses to make the world feel more alive. The characters interact with the world around them as well. This may seem like a strange thing to praise, but I like how you name the cars, especially considering these are elite members of society, so I'm sure we're all curious to know what they drive. It also helps paint a clear visual in our head of what the characters are using to get around.

The main criticism I have is about the first few chapters and the awards show. I don't think you give a name to this awards show, and something I was also surprised by was it being labeled "actor of the year." Normally film award shows split it to "actor of the year" and "actress of the year." I've studied film for years now and I don't think I've seen any major awards shows only have a best actor category, not a best actress. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it is odd, especially since Isabella is such a massive star, and the higher the esteem of the awards, the more likely there are going to be more award categories (so more incentive to split it into best actor then best actress), so there's no reason I can think of that the awards wouldn't split it into both best actor and best actress. Even the Razzies split it into worst actor and worst actress. So, again, I'm not saying it's impossible, but specifying what awards these are could be very beneficial. Someone of Isabella's class is only going to be going to the best of the best awards, so that's why I'm suggesting specifying it. Not only will this clarify any confusion about why she's getting an actor of the year award instead of actress of the year award, but it'll also characterize Isabella. If you use an esteemed film award show, without needing to tell us anything further about Isabella's career, you're showing us how famous and esteemed she is, and you're doing that just by saying the specific name of the awards. I didn't see any name given to it since it was referred to as "awards show" for the beginning, and I reread the beginning chapters twice just to be sure I didn't miss anything. If the name was mentioned, I'd suggest mentioning it more since I didn't notice it even after rereading specifically to find a name for it. Moving back to the characters thing, you could also have Isabella talk about the film or films that she got nominated for. This can show some characterization where we see how she talks about her fame and also what films she likes to star in. There's another opportunity to flesh out Isabella a bit more while also giving more worldbuilding.

I know it seems like a small thing, but this is the inciting event of the story, so it's actually much bigger than it seems. Anything you can do to make the inciting incident feel more cinematic and specific can really help the reader's comprehension of the story. Like I said, the world is overall good, I would just suggest giving some more specificity to those kinds of things.

Grammar/Spelling: 7/10. The grammar is overall good, I just have some recommendations for a couple consistent errors that can help strengthen it further.

There are some misspells throughout, like you spell "grin" as "grim" in chapter 3.

There are some capitalization errors where you capitalize not proper nouns. Like limousin is capitalized and also spelled wrong. It should be limousine. I looked it up in the British dictionary just to be sure, and it appears to be limousine in UK English as well as US English, so English differences don't apply here. Either way, it should be lowercase.

Like I mentioned earlier, there were some capitalization errors with the dialogue, but I won't go too in-depth on that because I already covered that in the dialogue section.

There are comma errors where you need commas but are missing them. Here's an example from chapter 3: "Edward being vigilant, stepped in to shield her from the onslaught." It should be: "Edward, being vigilant, stepped in to shield her from the onslaught." If you're ever unsure about commas, I would recommend plugging the text into Grammarly and/or QuillBot, two free grammar checking software, to help identify where they go. And/or you can read the sentences out loud since that can help you find the natural places a pause is needed.

Like I said, the grammar is overall good, I just recommend those few tweaks to make it even stronger.

Description: 7/10. The descriptions in the story are overall good and immerse the reader in the scene. You incorporate some of the five senses throughout the narrative to make the descriptions more interesting to read, and like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, there are cool moments where the environment feels very real.

Most of my criticisms for the descriptions are things I've said earlier with being careful with adverbs since they're telling over showing. You do a lot of telling over showing through things like excessive dialogue tags and adverbs. While on the topic, I feel you can give the dialogue more weight by including more descriptions around it and slowing down a bit. I mentioned earlier that that scene where the lights go out could be slowed down to amp up the tension. Maybe try describing the atmosphere more before continuing on with the scene. The same applies to dialogue where I recommend adding a bit more description to how the characters are speaking. I'm not saying you never do this, but consider describing facial expressions, voices (tones/voice cracks/breakages/interruptions/etc.), body language, the environment around them and how it interweaves with the dialogue (for example, if there are police sirens, do they need to raise their voices to be heard over them?), etc. more. When we talk, countless things are happening around us. I'm sitting alone in my room talking to myself while I write this, but even in my monologue, a lot is happening. I have a sandwich next to me with the wrapper blowing in the breeze from my fan. My brother is yelling over a game in the room down the hall, and his voice is echoing. My dog is trotting up and down the hall. The fan is making a weird noise. There are cars interrupting my thoughts since I live near a busy street. The list goes on and on, but just as I talk to myself in my controlled environment (a bedroom), imagine a conversation between two or more people in public, uncontrolled environments. So that's why I suggest including more descriptions and things happening around dialogue.

I still overall like the descriptions and think you did a good job with them, I just recommend those tweaks to help strengthen them further.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. The concept behind the themes and emotions is very good and makes sense for the story. I think you have a great idea here with some tense scenes, like her going to the interview only to be confronted by someone with a gun. There are some very interesting and tense scenes that lead to high emotion, so I think you overall did a good job with the emotions.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, so I won't go too too in-detail here, but the deductions come from all the things I've said before about telling over showing and the characters. By fleshing out the characters more and giving them more emotion and chances to show said emotions (the emotions don't have to be big and grand like tears, they can be simple emotions like the ones we feel in our day-to-day lives), I think the emotions and themes could be improved. I'd also recommend removing as many adverbs and tags as possible so you have more opportunities to show us the emotions, not tell them. Since the emotions are dependent on the characters, that's why I'd strongly recommend giving the characters more depth in future chapters. Also what I mentioned in the descriptions section about considering slowing down during some scenes, like the inciting incident in the dark, to really channel more emotions and make the readers scared. I hope that makes sense.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 6/10. The title being Fading Spotlight reflects the story perfectly. Isabella's life is fading in front of her, and she's spent her life in the spotlight. It quite literally tells us exactly what the story is going to be about, so I like it. No criticisms.

The blurb sums up the story in a brief but understandable way. The word choice is overall good and I think you tell us exactly what we need to know without overstaying your welcome. My only suggestions are grammatical to help with flow. This sentence: "But on the night of her third consecutive victory, as the world watches, the lights in the entire building where the award show is taking place plunges into darkness...". The "plunges" should be "plunge" because it is agreeing with "lights," therefore it needs to be singular. Secondly, this sentence: "In the world of Hollywood, a young actress ascends to the pinnacle of success, a two-time winner of a big award." The final part of the sentence feels like it's like an add-on and could use some tweaking to make it feel more part of the sentence. Maybe: "In the world of Hollywood, a young actress ascends to the pinnacle of success and becomes a two-time winner of a big award." I feel like you need a conjunction of some sort to connect it to the sentence. Other than those two grammar suggestions, the blurb is good.

The cover could be improved. While I like the background image, I can't see it very well since the text placements feels very random, in my opinion. There's also three different fonts being used, so it's a bit of whiplash to have three completely different fonts for text placed so closely together. So I like the image, I would just suggest tweaking the font. Maybe remove the subtext completely since I felt it didn't add anything to the cover, and there's also a capitalization error where "grace" is capitalized even though it isn't being used as a proper noun in that context. That's why I'd recommend removing the subtext and focusing on the title and author's name. From there, maybe make the font more mysterious and elegant since this is a story about an elegant movie star. Maybe you can make it a cursive font with little cracks in it, or an elegant font of any kind with cracks in it to show the cracks in Isabella's otherwise elegant image. I'd also suggest removing the ~ since they aren't in the official title, so I wasn't a huge fan of placing them around the title on the cover since it doesn't match what the book title officially is. I'd also suggest playing around with the font of the author's name to help it fit in with the elegant but broken vibe the story has. I hope all those suggestions make sense.

Total: 70/100.

Cataract of Delusion by new_erasktaylor

Review:

Characters: 8/10. I felt bad for poor Olivia from the very start, but I was also intrigued by her since she seemed to have a very strong demeanor mixed with complex emotions surrounding her father and lover. It was entertaining to read about Olivia's story. Seeing as she's the protagonist, that's one of the most important parts of the story right there. I get a little nervous when I see "strong female lead" being advertised since, more often than not, it means the female lead is probably going to be too perfect and have confidence as her only personality trait; however, I was pleasantly surprised with Olivia and I found myself enjoying her presence. She was strong, but not overly so, and it wasn't her only personality trait. She struggled and showed weakness, but she also had many fun moments that made me care for her.

Some of the dialogue is a little awkward, making it hard to invest in the emotional moments at times. Since dialogue is a major part of character development, I would suggest tweaking the grammar so the dialogue flows more smoothly. There were times there were filler words in the dialogue, some extra spaces between quotation marks, some incorrect pronouns, etc. However, I'm only giving a general rundown here because I give a far more detailed explanation later. So I will explain all those points in the dialogue and grammar/spelling section. I just thought I'd mention it here so you have a clearer idea of where the deductions come from and reassurances that I will explain in detail later. Some of the general descriptions of character emotions could also be tweaked to sound more natural since the grammar impacts more than just the dialogue, but again, I'll explain all of this later. The characters are overall good other than those critiques.

Plot: 10/10. The plot is very interesting and had me hooked by the blurb. Not only is there a twist that her husband is homosexual, but she also gets locked up for a crime she didn't commit? Man, how much more tragedy is going to come her way? You can't help but feel bad for her just based on the blurb alone, then the plot expands on that idea in a fun, engaging way that kept me invested throughout the total runtime of the story published so far. I overall like the plot and didn't notice any plot holes or inconsistencies. I have minor criticisms for the pacing, but not large enough to warrant taking off points here. No criticisms for the plot section.

Pacing: 8/10. The pacing is overall good throughout the entire story and plot events unfold at a natural and understandable rate. Information about the characters also unveils itself at a good rate.

The only criticisms I have for the pacing are that sometimes I feel you can condense the story and restructure where certain things go. For example, parts 5 and 6. Part 6 starts with the end of part 5's flashback, but is that needed? We're only there for a couple paragraphs, and I feel you could have put it in part 5 instead so part 6 is all in the present instead of us starting in the past. We start in the past but are immediately brought back to the present, so I wasn't sure what the point of including the flashback in part 6 was when it was really short and could have been condensed by keeping it in part 5 so part 6 could stand more on it's own. The reason I'm bringing this up is because time is very important in storytelling, and if you're jumping between timelines too much or unnecessarily, it can confuse readers. So that's what I'm talking about when I say consider combining certain scenes to make them more concise and so the chapters feel more fluid. I have some critiques for the grammar as well, and tweaking the grammar can help with pacing since it'll help readers read faster/clearer, but I'll explain that in the grammar section. The pacing is otherwise good.

Creativity: 6/10. The story idea is interesting and the sentence structure is unique. You play around with your concept and structure, and I like that about this book. That shows you have a lot of creativity. All my suggestions are for the presentation of said creativity.

As other commenters have pointed out, I would suggest not bolding the dialogue. Not only is that telling over showing, but it can also be hurtful as an audience member since it feels like you don't trust us to remember those lines of dialogue and keep them marked down as important. Trust your audience to remember what you're setting up. If you trust us to pay attention without needing to bold the dialogue, the emotional impact later will be far more impactful since we remembered it ourselves instead of having to be told by you (through bolding the dialogue) that we needed to remember those lines of dialogue. It just feels more impactful if you give us the space to remember and pay closer attention, and by bolding the dialogue, you're taking that away.

Be careful with adverbs. You use a bunch of adverbs throughout the story, sometimes even 2-4 times in one sentence. I would suggest plugging the text into Word or Google Docs and using the "find and replace" tool in the editing category to search up ly. From there, consider removing a bunch of words that end with -ly. I say this because adverbs are telling over showing, so the more you use, the more telling over showing you're doing. The less telling over showing, the better (in general). That's not to say never use adverbs, but make sure you're using them wisely.

Also be careful with word choice. Like I said before, adverbs were repeated frequently, but some other words, like "look," were repeated throughout the story. Since "look" in particular has many synonyms, I'd suggest tweaking some uses of it to diversify the word choice a bit.

While on the topic of word choice, be careful with some awkward word choice. Like this from the chapter titled Sparkle of Anger: "The next day, when Olivia produced in the court...". The word "produced" doesn't really work there. There were a few times I felt the word choice could have been tweaked, like you say "blasted into tears" I believe in the liar chapter, and I felt that was a little much. Back to the court scene, the "produced" doesn't really make sense in that context and I feel "appeared in court" could work better, or something that relates to arriving on the premise. Producing almost implies she's producing a song in there or something similar, not showing up. I hope that makes sense.

The creativity is overall good, I just recommend tweaks to the presentation to make the creativity shine even more. I hope that makes sense.

Dialogue: 6/10. The dialogue has interesting moments and cool memorable lines that I liked. My suggestions relate to the grammar and presentation of said dialogue.

I'll explain the grammar in the grammar/spelling section, so I won't go too in-depth here; however, some of the grammar made the dialogue a little awkward. I'll give specific examples of what I mean in the grammar section. I just thought I'd mention it here as a precursor to my explanation in the upcoming grammar/spelling section.

Be careful with filler words in dialogue, like the word "that." The word "that" isn't needed in a bunch of sentences, and in dialogue, it can make the lines feel longer than they need to be. For example: "I promised you that I never lie to you but I'm sorry..." (Chapter: Liar). That's also an example of the grammar I mentioned before where some of the dialogue was awkward due to how the sentences were worded. Here's what I'd recommend: "I promised I'd never lie to you, but I'm sorry...". If you read the original out loud, then that one, you'll notice the second flows smoother. Saying "I never lie to you" is a little awkward and doesn't sound like something an English speaker would say, which is what I meant earlier when I said some of the dialogue sounds a little awkward. That's why I tweaked it to be "I'd" instead of just "I." It's a small change, but it helps with flow. As for the word "that," many times you don't need it. You do need it sometimes, so please don't cut out every use of the word "that," but I'd suggest finding sentences with it and reading the sentences out loud once with the use of the word "that," then without it. If the sentence makes sense without the word "that," remove it. You can plug it into a grammar checker like QuillBot or Grammarly if you're ever unsure.

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, sometimes you capitalize dialogue tags when that is not correct. Since dialogue tags are continuations of the dialogue, they are never capitalized unless they are proper nouns. For example, from the liar chapter: "...with Mr. James Pattinson," The junior officer replied. It should be: "...with Mr. James Pattinson," the junior officer replied.

Even if the dialogue ends with special punctuation like ? or !, the tag still needs to be lowercase because it is a continuation of the dialogue, not a new sentence (again, unless it's a proper noun). So, for example, a correct dialogue tag would be this: "How are you?" he asked. NOT: "How are you?" He asked. The "he" needs to be lowercase.

Overall, the dialogue itself is okay and does what it needs to for the story, though I suggest some tweaks to the grammar to make dialogue more fluid and some tweaks to the presentation of the dialogue tags. I hope that makes sense.

Worldbuilding: 8/10. The worldbuilding is overall solid and does a good job portraying American life. Like, yeah, it's just average NYC to have cars smashing into each other and a bunch of reporters eavesdropping on literally every single thing that happens. People can breathe wrong and reporters would shove their mics down our throats just for a single headline. So the world is overall interesting and it also makes major impacts on the lives of the characters. Good job with that.

Just something to keep in mind for consistency's sake: this story is taking place in New York City, so in America. I would strongly suggest using America's measurement system so the world feels consistent. You use kilometers, but Americans don't use kilometers. I'm an American living in New York and can confirm we never use kilometers. Nitpick, but you also might want to consider writing in US English so the language is also consistent. That's not as big of a deal as the kilometer thing (the kilometer thing is a big deal since I've lived in NY for years and never heard anyone say it), but it is something worth considering. Like you'll use "towards" instead of "toward," and "towards" is a UK English word. I'm suggesting this because if you're going to set a story in America, make sure you're using American language and culture, that way the world feels more alive.

As I mentioned before, the world is overall good, I just recommend staying consistent to American life and language, which is a big deal for a story taking place in America. I hope that makes sense.

Grammar/Spelling: 5/10. The grammar and spelling is overall okay, though there are many awkward sentences throughout and some core sentence structure errors that make the sentences a little hard to read at times.

There are some spacing errors where you sometimes include an extra space between the " and the first line of dialogue. A few other commenters have pointed this out, so I won't go too in-depth, but I will give one example: " No. I'm ready" (chapter: Liar). There's an extra space between the " and No when there doesn't need to be.

There are times you use the wrong pronouns, which leads to some confusing sentences. For example, sometimes you call Olivia "he" and sometimes you call her dad "her," so it was a bit confusing at times. For example: "...little Olivia ran to his father...". The "his" should be "her."

There are comma errors where there are missing commas. I used an example in the dialogue section, so I'll repeat it here: "I promised you that I never lie to you but I'm sorry...". There needs to be a comma before "but" and after "you." That's also an example of the awkward sentences thing I mentioned earlier. Sometimes there are sentences that don't sound like something an English speaker would say, like that example I just gave. For that reason, I would suggest reading sentences out loud and/or using a text-to-speech/TTS generator so you can hear how your sentences sound. I personally use TTS to edit my stories, and I've found it helps identify typos, grammar errors, and any awkward sentences. If that doesn't appeal to you and you're looking for something faster, then you can try Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and/or QuillBot, three free grammar editing software that can help with clearing up awkward sentences. I'd recommend QuillBot the most since it catches the most errors and gives you the most features for free, though I'd also suggest plugging the edited text into Grammarly as well since sometimes QuillBot can get a bit overambitious with its errors. So that's why I recommend using two grammar checkers instead of one. They're still software, so they make mistakes, that's why it doesn't hurt to cross reference, is what I'm saying.

Here's another example of an awkward sentence: "Then we became best friends of each other and on my birthday he promised me that he would stay with me like a shadow, so that, no one would dare to touch my single hair." This sentence is very awkward and isn't something an English speaker would say. There are many added words here that make the dialogue a little clunky, and there are also comma errors. Here's what I recommend: "Then we became best friends, and on my birthday, he promised me he would stay with me like a shadow so that no one would dare touch a single hair on my head."

Let's break this down step-by-step. I removed the "of each other" because by saying "we became best friends," we already know they're best friends to each other, making those extra words unnecessary. I also reworded the "dare to touch my single hair" to the common phrase of "no one would dare touch a single hair on my head." "Dare to touch my single hair" sounds a little awkward, and the proper phrase would be "single hair on my head." I added some commas in the beginning and removed the commas toward the end. I also removed the "that" in between "he promised me" and "he would stay" since I felt it was unnecessary. By making those changes, I made the dialogue far more natural and concise for easier readability. I'm not saying that's the perfect way to rewrite sentences, but I encourage you to play around with it to find what works for you and what you're trying to say in that sentence. I recommend reading dialogue out loud so you can hear how it sounds. Since dialogue is spoken, if you think it sounds a bit hard to say out loud, you may want to consider rewording it.

Lastly, I would suggest spelling out numbers between 1-99. Sometimes you'll put a number like 2, but I'm suggesting you write two instead. It's far easier to read and looks less awkward in the text. That's a small thing, but still something worth mentioning.

Description: 7.5/10. There are some very interesting descriptions throughout the story that paint a clear picture in the reader's mind of what's going on in the scenes. The characters are well-described and I like the way you incorporate the world into your descriptions. Overall, I think your descriptions are solid and do a good job showing the audience the people, places, and things the plot revolves around.

My criticisms tie into things I've said before about limiting adverbs since they're telling over showing and also tweaking the grammar errors so the sentences flow more smoothly. I think that by making those tweaks, the descriptions can be even stronger. They're overall good, though with some tweaks to the telling over showing and flow, they'll have stronger support and therefore feel even more engaging to read. I hope that makes sense.

Themes and Emotions: 7.5/10. I think you have some very interesting and complex emotions here surrounding marriage, sexuality, and tragedy. All three of these things combine to create complex and diverse emotions that keep the readers on their toes. I was very impressed with the topics you chose to cover throughout the narrative, and I applaud you for having the courage to cover said emotions in this book. So, overall, I think this is an awesome concept, and I encourage you to keep writing about these types of topics that not many writers are comfortable exploring.

The deductions come from all the things I said before about making sure dialogue/description sounds natural so it's easier to immerse ourselves in, and also being careful with word choice and telling over showing through adverbs. By making those three tweaks, I think the themes and emotions would be even stronger than they already are.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 8.5/10. The title is Cataract of Delusion, and I'm not gonna lie, I kept calling it the Cat of Delusion for a while. Not because there's anything wrong with the title, but because my brain literally couldn't say Cataract for some reason. Now I can say it no problem, but sis was struggling for a bit, so I thought of cat instead. But I'm not complaining. Cats are cute. Either way, the title is unique, and while at first I wasn't sure how I felt about using Cataract, it grew on me overtime, and now I like the title. No criticisms.

The blurb is overall good. It's short and to the point and easy to read. I only have one suggestion, and it's noticeable since the blurb isn't very long. This sentence: "Olivia Whitley's life was happy until she learned that her first love, Vinson, was Gay and that he loved another childhood friend, Leo." "Gay" is not a proper noun, so it should be lowercase. Otherwise, I like the blurb.

The cover is nice and relates to the idea of delusion. Water often blurs reality for us when it gets in our eyes or we get consumed by it. It can be hard to see the world clearly, so I'm glad you used water imagery for the cover. I like the placement of the author's name. I went back and forth on how to feel about the title's placement. I think the placement is good, though maybe consider making the title a little larger. Not to the point where it overlaps with the figure in the water, but maybe enough to fill out some more of that blank space on the left and right sides of the cover. The font is okay and works for the aesthetic, it's just the size could maybe be adjusted a bit to make the title a bit more noticeable. That's just one suggestion and I'm not saying it'll work, but maybe you'll play around with it and find that it does work. I'm not sure if it'll work or not, so I definitely suggest playing around and experimenting before making any solid changes. Otherwise, I like the cover and think it works for the story.

Total: 74.5/100.

Open Secrets by Yootifully

Review:

Characters: 7/10. I like the idea of the characters and the idea of their relationships. Choosing to cover such a complex topic about ab/se and toxicity in marriage is a bold choice, and I praise you for doing it. This is far from an easy topic to cover, to say the least. Y/n representing all the toxicity and dark topics makes for a more interesting Y/n. Jungkook also has a far more interesting role in the story than I was expecting, and I'm glad you gave some plot twists to him to make us never feel fully safe with him. Almost like he's just like her ex-husband. We're kept on our toes wondering if he's genuine or not, and based on what's published as of May 23 2024, I can say I'm not sure whether to trust him or not, and that's a good thing in a narrative like this. Hoseok is one of my favorites even though he isn't one of the mains because of the way his storyline is handled and the way he interacts with Y/n. I overall really liked Hobi.

And no, I'm not just saying that because JUNG HOSEOKKKK 🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭

But also yes, Jung Hoseok. What a man.

Anywho, back to the review.

The vast majority of my criticisms for the characters have already been written in future categories. I normally save the character section for last since that means I finished reading the story, so some of these sections were notes I took while reading, and I had a lot of thoughts on the characters. My general thoughts boil down to this: they could use more depth, mostly with Y/n and Jungkook, but I'll focus on Y/n for now. I feel you could show that she's an ab/se victim more. For example, Jimin screams at her in chapter 1. Why didn't she flinch? Ab/se victims are often sensitive to loud noises. When she's near crime scenes, I'm surprised she doesn't have stronger emotions/reactions considering she's been a walking crime scene for a long time. I'm surprised she's not only not having much reaction, but also giving orders with little difficulty, stuttering, confusion, etc. She seems frustrated the case isn't going anywhere, but not triggered or getting any flashbacks. When Jungkook comes in all wet with broken glasses and looking a mess, I'm surprised that didn't trigger anything for her. I'm surprised there's no scene where Y/n talks about her experience with her husband while Jungkook kisses her scars and she explains the story behind each one. That would have been a great opportunity to build Y/n as a character while also giving Jungkook and Y/n's relationship more depth. Most of their relationship is telling over showing where they tell each other how much they like each other, but we don't see much of their bond outside of the physical touch and the dialogue telling us they really like each other. I don't think there are many scenes, if any, where we see them doing things together, like activities. Do they like watching movies together? Taking hikes? Cooking? Even knitting? Why do they enjoy each other's company so much? I'll get more into it in the pacing section, though. I didn't have any issue with them getting together fast since that kind of thing happens in real life, but if you're going to have them get together fast, there needs to be justification for their strong feelings later, is what I'm trying to say. However, this section is really just a general look at my thoughts, but I will get far more specific with examples and suggestions throughout the review. I hope this general rundown makes sense, but if not, I hope my future explanations will clear any doubts you may have.

I also have some criticisms for how Y/n and Jimin's relationship was presented. Jimin feels like he disappears for most of the story despite being her close friend. I'll also explain more of this in the pacing section. Most of my criticisms are explained in far more detail in the pacing section.

So, to summarize, I overall like the idea of the characters, and there were many scenes throughout that I liked involving them. All I recommend is slowing down in some areas to give us more info about who these people are, and also considering adding more to show Y/n is an ab/se victim. I hope that makes sense, though I will explain with more specific details later.

Plot: 8/10. The plot was a bit hard to follow at times since there are many twists, some of which feeling a little hard to believe/follow, though despite that, I still think the plot is overall good and fun to read, hence why it has such a high score. It's super entertaining matched with an interesting theme about toxicity and trust, so I think you did a great job here. I admire your dedication to making the plot always feel like it's moving and twisting to keep the audience on our toes. Like I mentioned in the character section, I still go back and forth on how to feel about Jungkook and if he's lying to Y/n or not. So you did a great job there, and I think the plot is one of the strongest parts of the narrative, so keep that up!

Just be careful not to include plot twists for the sake of plot twists. Sometimes it felt like the plot was twisting without much, if any, setup. The most prominent example I have is Jaehwa. I don't recall her being mentioned even once before it was revealed that not only was she Jungkook's sister, but apparently someone Y/n was close with. I'm going to mention it throughout the review, but be mindful of character relationships and how they continue to exist even if the characters aren't on screen. Like Jimin and Y/n's relationship doesn't feel as strong as it could because it feels like it stops happening when Jimin isn't on screen. He isn't mentioned much, I don't recall her having any gifts from him, she doesn't appear to have adopted any of his personality or language, etc. If she was best friends with Jaehwa, I find it hard to believe there wouldn't have been more signs. I reread parts of the story to see if I missed something, but it doesn't appear I did.

From what I gathered in chapters 12 and 13, I didn't see Jaehwa mentioned again. For such a major revelation, I'm very surprised there wasn't more time dedicated to that with Y/n talking about it with Jungkook and them sharing experiences they had with Jaehwa. Not only would this again be a good opportunity to flesh out the characters, but it'd also explain the twist more and give it more meaning. The other deduction comes from some pacing issues I will explain in far more detail in the next section. But overall, I think the plot is good and fun to read about. I certainly had a fun time and was always engaged with what was happening.

Pacing: 7/10. The pacing is overall okay, though I do have some recommendations for POV and character development purposes.

Be careful with POV. You don't need to restate the POV if it's staying the same. So if the chapter is all Y/n's POV, you only need to say that once at the beginning. Secondly, be careful with sudden POV changes. In chapter 6, we get two lines in first person POV, then a sudden third person POV before we even really start the chapter, so the first person POV felt a bit out of place, and also, I wasn't sure what the purpose was of having it be in third person POV when it's Y/n's memory. Why would her memory be in third person when any time she's referred to past events before this, the POV was kept in first? If you had a specific goal in mind by switching to third person, I'd be curious to hear it and get your thoughts since that was a part that confused me a bit. You write both first and third person well and do a good job staying consistent with the pronouns, so it's not a huge deal, but still something I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on.

I think the thing you're waiting for me to comment on is Jungkook and Y/n's relationship and the pacing of it. First and foremost, I have no issue with them getting together and dating fairly quickly. They're adults, and Y/n's in a terrible relationship. This isn't high school anymore where the philosophy (at least where I come from) is that you need to be friends for months before dating. They're adults, they know what they want, so there's absolutely nothing unrealistic about them deciding to date after meeting for the first time. People hook up after knowing each other for 10 seconds, so I really don't see any issue with that as long as the relationship is fleshed out later. All of that is to say I had no issue with them getting together quickly and think that was perfectly fine for the story.

However, even though I had no issue with them getting together quickly, I feel you could have slowed down in certain areas and given us more time to know who Y/n and Jungkook are as individuals and how they work together. By chapter 6, Y/n says Jungkook is the person she cares about most, which I find hard to believe she cares more about him than Jin and Jimin. That's why I suggest showing more of their relationship and fleshing it out even a little. I have no problem with them getting together fast because, again, they're adults. They're not high schoolers, they know what they want, and Y/n was in a bad relationship and is likely more than eager to get into a healthy one. If anything, Y/n should be one of two: eager to be in a relationship to the point where she jumps into one (like she does here), or so broken she can't be in a relationship for a very long time. Those are the two most believable reactions, so I think you did a good job there. I actually think them getting together quickly is the most realistic outcome.

Moving back into what I was saying before, it feels like most of their relationship is told to us. I still wasn't a big fan of it even if that was the intention. When Jungkook's manipulating her and clearly has more going on, I need a reason to really care and be attached to what's going on, but by this point in the story, I don't know much, if anything, about Y/n outside of her marriage and friendship with Jimin/Jin. I don't know much about what she likes and dislikes, what she does in her free time, what food she likes to eat, what movies she likes to watch, etc. If you go back through the beginning of the story, you'll notice almost all of the conversations Y/n has is about men. It's either she's talking about her divorce or Jungkook. I can accept this to a certain extent because, again, she's been through high trauma and it makes sense; however, there has to be more so I can invest in her as a character. My care for her is mostly surface-level since I don't think anyone in their right mind would see an ab/se victim and not feel bad. So I think it's less about their relationship and more about them as individuals, if that makes sense.

So, here are my suggestions. Consider slowing down in certain areas or adding more specific details that can flesh out Y/n. For example, in chapter 4, instead of them sitting in silence, maybe her favorite movie is playing on the TV (and specify what movie it is). Specify how it makes her feel. Maybe attach a memory to it, like her and Jimin used to watch it together when they wanted to get their minds off their gone parents. So it's a comfort movie to her. Maybe instead of them running around at the end, we see them bond a bit over an activity they both like. Maybe they cook together and cook Jungkook's favorite food, that way we're seeing why they like each other outside of the physical aspect, and also showing us what they like to do. Or maybe in chapter 5 when she's reading the report, she's drinking her favorite drink or trying to eat her favorite food but can't since she can't stomach it while reading the report. These small details won't add many words to the word count, but notice how just by adding those things, we now know Y/n's favorite movie, a memory of her with Jimin, Jungkook's favorite food, that Y/n and Jungkook like cooking, Y/n's favorite drink and/or favorite food, etc. And I'm not saying you have to do this or that Jk and Y/n definitely like cooking, that's just an example. All I'm trying to do is show that by including these specific details, you're adding very little to the word count but doing a tremendous amount of character work all by just having their favorite things present.

To put this more simply, by the time I read the last available chapter (chapter 13), I still feel like I don't know much about Y/n, Jimin, Jin, and Jungkook, but Y/n in particular. And when I say "don't know," I mean I don't know much about her personality, likes, dislikes, and hobbies. I'm okay with her backstory and the other backstories for the other characters being more obscure, but to attach ourselves to the characters, we need to know their personalities and traits.

Let's talk about Jimin cause, let's face it, I always look for excuses to talk about that fine man. In this story, Jimin is maybe a little dramatic, but in the first chapter, after Y/n apologizes, he drops it and doesn't continue with his dramatic act and pouty-ness. Maybe consider amping that up. Have Jimin get all sassy and sarcastic and say "No, no, I get it, you moved on, you don't care about your 'Minnie' anymore." I'm not saying have him say exactly that, but amp up his personality and give him that flair and pop. So instead of him dropping the topic, he drags it out a little and is dramatic and sassy Chimmy. It won't add much words, but it'll add a lot to his personality. The same applies to the other characters, but I'll stick with Jimin since I'm the Jimin whisperer.

Okay, that sounded wrong. I'm so sorry-

Anywhoooo.

I by no means am expecting fiction to be like real life, so I'm basing this based on what's in the story, not in real life. It seems Jimin is very caring here in the sense that he screams at her to get out of the relationship and wants to know what's going on with her. Where is more of that later on? Based on how you described Jimin, he seems like the type to randomly show up at her house, or send her baskets/gifts to make her feel better, to text her to check in, etc. You showed him as caring, but he doesn't seem to do that for the rest of the story. He isn't the protagonist or deuteragonist, so I'm not expecting him to be an extremely important character, but when you establish him as one of the most important parts of Y/n's life and also a caring person, I'd suggest keeping that consistent and showing that caring-ness more. The same applies to Jin. He's a chef, so maybe he sends her her favorite food, thus fleshing out Y/n more by showing her favorite food, but also showing Jin's caring-ness. You can even combine this with a scene with Jungkook where the food arrives while he's over, and together, the two of them eat it and we can see more of Jungkook's personality. Maybe he's witty and makes smart remarks about the food.

So that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. These small things that can really strengthen the character building without needing to do much work. This relates to the pacing because the story goes very fast in terms of its character development. The plot events unfold at a good rate, which is great and why you still scored highly in this category, I just suggest matching that with the info we learn about the characters. Like I said, I'm absolutely okay and even onboard with you obscuring info about their pasts and maybe even okay with having Y/n and Jungkook's relationship be more on the vague side maybe to set up a future plot point where Y/n realizes she doesn't know much, if anything, about Jungkook. However, with that being said, I still think some more depth should be given to at least Y/n, Jin, and Jimin as individuals.

I know that was probably a lot, but I hope it wasn't too much or too overwhelming, and I'm more than happy to answer any questions you may have. I hope all that makes sense!

Creativity: 8/10. The sentence structure is pretty good along with the word choice. I didn't really pick up on any words you were using too often other than one I'll mention later, and the structure was pretty fresh and unique. The overall story idea is interesting so far, so the creativity is solid.

The overall creativity is good, just be careful with some cliche phrases and plot lines, like you use "shivers down my spine" a few times. As for the plot, this may make me sound cruel or cold, but I found the ab/se scene in the first chapter a little cliche where the husband resorts to screaming at her and calling her a sl/t, throwing bottles at her and being drunk, it happening immediately, etc. This does happen irl and I'm not trying to say it doesn't, but most ab/sers are far more manipulative, and the tension raises over time. I don't want to get too personal, but I lived with an alcoholic, and one of my best friend's parents is an alcoholic as well. I understand this is anecdotal evidence, but from what I know, most of the time, it doesn't just go right into name-calling and anger, it starts slow and builds. Again, I'm not saying it can't happen that way where it happens fast, but I feel a more interesting way to take it is to have him giving microaggressions and getting angrier throughout the conversation. I also thought it was a little convenient that he took her outside when he really had no reason to. Maybe instead, have her turn and walk out since she can't handle his growing rage, and that's what sets him off, and he storms out after her and bam, then the ab/se really starts, thus more naturally setting up her going outside and Taehyung catching them, and also showing the ab/se in a more original way since most ab/se stories I read have very similar ab/se scenes where the man is drunk and calls her a sl/t or wh/re and starts hurting her, which is why this kind of ab/se scene is a little cliche. Gosh I feel like such an a-hole for saying that, forgive me. It's just that I've seen it in most stories with ab/se in it, which is why I'm bringing it up. Again, I am absolutely not saying it doesn't happen irl because it does, but considering her being taken outside by him was a little convenient in my opinion, it could be interesting to tweak that to make the ab/se more tense/slower and have there be more reason for them to go outside, if that makes sense.

Lastly, be careful with the word "just." Some chapters you use "just" a lot, other chapters you don't use it at all. The word "just" is an emphasis word, so the more you use it, the less emphasis it has later on. This isn't a big deal since, like I said, some chapters you use it a lot and other chapters you don't use it like at all, but be careful with using it too much. For example, in chapter 11, I think you use it five times within a handful of paragraphs, and two of those uses are in the same sentence. Other chapters it maybe appears once, so it's really not a big deal but still something I thought was worth mentioning. Otherwise, the creativity is very good.

Dialogue: 7/10. The dialogue is overall good and improves as the story progresses. I only have some suggestions for presentation.

I would very strongly suggest using less dialogue tags. Dialogue tags do nothing for the story other than tell the reader who's speaking, so that means they are inherently telling over showing. If you're looking to go further with writing and move into publishers, I'll let you know now that publishers hate dialogue tags. I once wrote a draft first chapter for my boss that had dialogue tags for maybe 30% of the dialogue, and she still sent it back since she wanted me to use less, that's how much publishers hate them (I can only speak for who I've worked with, but I've heard this is a common trend in the publishing industry). The reason is because, as I said, they're telling over showing, and they're, more often than not, not needed.

For example, in chapter 5, there are about 14 paragraphs containing dialogue, and of those 14, guess how many have tags? All 14 of them. That is 100% of your dialogue, and that's a common trend throughout the story where almost every line of dialogue, if not every one, has a tag. That means every time you use dialogue, you're using telling over showing. So, here's what I recommend: the 50-30 advice.

The 50-30 advice of dialogue says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should be tagged, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. The reason is because the "fancier" (for lack of a better term) tags draw too much attention to the tags and are unneeded. When writing dialogue, what's most important?

The dialogue.

So if you're using tags that are too out there or you're consistently using tags that aren't said or asked, it can take away from what's important: the dialogue. That's another reason publishers hate dialogue tags: they take away from the dialogue. So what I'm recommending is showing who's speaking, not telling. Incorporate more actions and character descriptions (body language, facial expressions, quirks while speaking like maybe biting on nails or pulling on hair, etc.), rely on speech style, rely on the Person A Person B pattern, etc. The Person A Person B pattern is how readers naturally read dialogue. Like this:

"Line 1." ---> Person A is speaking

"Line 2." ---> Person B is speaking

"Line 3." ---> Person A again...

Etc.

So what this means is when you use a line break, we think a new person is speaking. You can rely on that without needing to do tags. So if you do this:

"Hey," Jungkook said.

Y/n smiled. "Hey, how are you?"

"Good, you?"

"Great. Wanna go to the park?"

"Sure!"

We automatically know the dialogue goes: Jungkook, Y/n, Jungkook, Y/n, Jungkook. And we know this naturally because that's how we're trained to read. So that's why I say you can rely on the pattern more, and I also showed an example of an introductory action. The "Y/n smiled" shows us she's speaking without the use of a dialogue tag. Consider doing more of that instead of relying on tags.

I'm only going so in-depth on this because almost all your dialogue has tags, and it can be distracting, especially since you often split it up where Person B will speak for two or more line breaks. So, like this:

Person B: "Line 1."

Person B: "Line 2."

Person B: "Line 3."

Instead of how we naturally read it, which would be like this:

Person B: "Line 1."

Person A: "Line 2."

Person B: "Line 3."

So instead, consider combining it to this:

Person B: "Line 1. Line 2. Line 3."

Person A: "Line 4."

That makes it far easier to read, you don't have to use nearly as many dialogue tags, and you're flowing more with how readers naturally read dialogue. You do this later in the story, so that's good, but you write it more like the first example in about the first half of the story, so it's still present for a bunch of chapters.

My second criticism is actions as tags. Try not to use actions (like "growled," "spat," "chuckled," smirked," etc.) as dialogue tags. Dialogue tags are called dialogue tags because they tag the dialogue, not the person, otherwise it'd be called a people tag. So if you're saying "*insert dialogue here," she chuckled, you're implying the words are chuckling, not the person. Do you see why that'd be awkward? So it's a little unnatural to use actions as tags since tags refer to how words are being spoken. You can say words, whisper them, shout them, etc., but you can't smirk them or chuckle them. Words like "growled" and "spat" in particular I'd recommend avoiding since they're overused in the BTS fanfic community and have thus become cliche.

Like I said, the dialogue is overall good, I just strongly recommend using less tags and considering not using actions as tags.

Worldbuilding: 8.5/10. So far, the world is engaging and you do a good job describing the environments and bringing them to life. There are some cool details, and you do an overall good job with the worldbuilding here by giving specific names to places and making locations central parts of the plot/characters.

Like I mentioned in the pacing section, there were areas I felt you could have slowed down to give us more detail about who these people are and what's going on around them. While I'm okay with mystery and even confusion, there were some moments that felt too shocking, like Y/n turning to her assistant Hannah. Did I miss something? When did she get an assistant? I know she joined the agency, but maybe flesh that part out more so we know more about who Y/n's going to be working with and what her job entails.

Grammar/Spelling: 7/10. The grammar and spelling is overall good, I just have some recommendations.

I would strongly recommend going back in and editing the first chapter. I'm not going to mention any of the grammar errors from that chapter since they're fixed in the rest of the story; however, the first chapter is your hook. It's imperative to have good grammar for that first chapter so the reader is hooked on the story. I think it's awesome that the grammar greatly improves after that first chapter, but the first chapter is one of the most important ones since it determines if readers are going to stay or not, hence why I suggest tweaking the grammar errors to make it match the rest of the book's writing.

This is a nitpick, but be careful with US versus UK English. It seems you're writing in US English due to the presence of US-spelled words like "gray," but you also use UK spellings like "towards" instead of "toward" (though sometimes you use "toward," too). I would suggest being more consistent with the style, so if you're writing in US English, make sure you're using "toward" instead of "towards." If you're writing in UK English, make sure you're using "grey" instead of "gray."

Another nitpick, but while on the topic of consistency, be sure you're consistently saying -ssi and not shi. Not only is -ssi far more accurate to the Hangeul spelling (씨 is a double s, there's not really an h there), but you also spell it as Hoseok-ssi or Jungkook-ssi in the beginning, then it switches to Hoseokshi or Jungkookshi for the second half of the story. At the very least, it should be hyphenated to Hoseok-shi/Jungkook-shi since when I learned Korean, we never attached 씨 to the subject. If I wrote Jimin-ssi, it'd be 지민 씨, not 지민씨. There was a space added to keep it separate. So that's why I recommend spelling it as Jungkook-ssi or at least Jungkook-shi, not Jungkookshi. I'm only going to take off 0.5 for both of those nitpicks since they aren't big deals.

The grammar and spelling is overall good but inconsistent. Some chapters have more grammar errors and awkward phrasing while others have fantastic grammar. For example, chapter 1 has many grammar errors, chapter 2 has an overuse of semicolons, and chapter 11 has a lot of awkward phrasing and sudden grammar errors you weren't making before (like dialogue tags being capitalized with special punctuation like ?). So I'd recommend making sure the grammar is consistent throughout the entire story instead of there being a few chapters where errors you weren't making before appear.

Other than the US UK English thing I mentioned, the spelling is consistently good throughout, and like I said, the grammar is overall good, I only recommend some more consistency with it. I hope that makes sense.

Description: 8/10. The descriptions in the story are overall solid and do a good job immersing the reader in the scene. Like I mentioned in the worldbuilding section, you give places specific names and don't let them feel vague. In general, the story doesn't feel vague and you do a good job incorporating some of the five senses into your descriptions and making them more diverse that way. You also do a good job describing the physical characters, Jungkook in particular with the tasty descriptions you gave him. The only recommendations I have have to do with telling over showing with character emotion.

Be careful with telling over showing. This ties into the characters and how I feel like I'd be more invested in them if we got more specifics about who they are and also their emotions. There are many times throughout the story where you'll do telling over showing lines like "His eyes reflected sincerity and affection..." (chap 11). And that isn't the only time you say "his eyes reflected his sincerity." How do eyes reflect that? Describe that in showing terms, not telling. Maybe he's moving closer to her, maybe his tone is rushed and breathy, maybe he's nibbling on his lower lip, or scratching the back of his neck to show a nervous tick, etc. Earlier in the story, I don't quite remember when (maybe chapter 2 or 3), Y/n was nervous and you told us she was nervous while speaking, and I remember thinking "How?". Show us how she's feeling. Maybe she bites her nails, or pulls on her hair, or bites her lower lip, or fiddles with her fingers, etc.

If you really want to go an extra step, maybe she fiddles with a little charm Jimin bought her whenever she's nervous. For someone so huge in her life, Jimin doesn't have much screentime, and I'm okay with that so you can focus on Y/n and Jungkook, but if you're going to do that, maybe show more of Jimin's impact on her. He doesn't feel like her best friend since pretty much birth since he isn't mentioned or shown often, so by including maybe a little charm he bought her when they were younger that acts as her comfort charm, you're including Jimin without him needing to be physically present, fleshing out Jimin and Y/n's relationship, adding a nervous tick, and making their relationship feel more present. So what I'm saying is, Jimin maybe bought her a charm and she fiddles with it whenever she's nervous, and maybe there can even be a memory attached to the charm where Jimin promised her he'd always be there for her whenever she needed, or something like that depending on how you view Jimin in your story.

I'm not saying you have to do that or that's a great suggestion, but it is something to keep in mind when writing character relationships. How do they impact each other when they're not around? My best friend lives on the other side of the globe, but even though he's never been physically with me, I still carry around a little booklet he got me no matter where I go. I can actually see it from where I'm sitting, and I bring it with me everywhere. I wear a bracelet he got me every day, and it bounces off my keyboard as I write this. I've known this person for a few years and never physically met him, but even though I haven't known him as long as Jimin and Y/n have known each other, I still carry him with me every day. It doesn't feel like Y/n does that with Jin and Jimin, two people who should be closer to her than my best friend and I are.

So that's what I mean when I say consider describing more of those kinds of things. I'm not saying you have to include all or even some of those things, but they're worth considering when you're writing character relationships. Relationships don't stop just because they're off screen, so that's why I'd suggest having Jin and Jimin have more of an impact on Y/n.

To summarize, my suggestions would be to do less telling over showing and to give more depth to the characters through descriptions. The descriptions of physical things/environments are very good, and the word choice being fresh is a plus as well. Overall, very good descriptions.

Themes and Emotions: 7/10. I think you have some cool concepts here with the themes and emotions, and you overall do a good job executing them. I mentioned it before, but it doesn't hurt to mention again: the concept behind Y/n's story and the ab/se is very interesting and emotionally impactful. I think all the concepts of the emotions and themes are great and huge standouts in the narrative that kept me engaged.

The only criticisms all come from things I've said throughout the review about giving character relationships more depth/lasting impact, showing more of the relationships so they feel more impactful, fleshing out the characters as individuals to help them stand out, do less telling over showing, etc. The themes and emotions are overall good, I just recommend some tweaks to the presentation of them and the characters to make them even stronger.

Title/Blurb/Cover: 6.5/10. Open Secrets keeps reminding me of Open Season for some reason. I don't know why, I'm sorry- Maybe I'm just old-

In all seriousness, I like the title. It's a clever play on words. How are secrets open? That's the question readers ask when they first see the title, and I think that's a good thing. It's short, easy to read, and makes sense for the narrative, so I have no critiques.

The blurb pretty much tells the reader exactly what to expect, which is good. The creativity of the blurb is good, and I only have grammatical suggestions.

First, the quote needs end punctuation. The quote is: "If having you is a crime I don't mind being the criminal"

It should be: "If having you is a crime, I don't mind being the criminal."

It needs both a period/full stop and a comma.

Now into the core blurb, I would suggest rewording the second part: Y/N is married to an abusive husband. But when she meets Jungkook, her life turns to a beautiful fate of happiness..or was it?

The ellipse (...) is wrong. Ellipses are three dots and occasionally four in rare scenarios, but normally three, so two dots is incorrect. I would recommend combining these sentences to avoid starting the second sentence with "but." While I don't think it's a huge deal to start a sentence with a conjunction, for a blurb, I would advise against it if possible, especially since these sentences could easily be combined.

What I'd recommend: Y/N is married to an abusive husband, but when she meets Jungkook, her life turns into a beautiful fate of happiness... or does it?

I also changed "was" to "does" since that's a tense issue. You used present tense throughout the entire blurb, so the sudden switch to past tense is incorrect.

I overall like the blurb, I would just recommend those grammar changes.

The cover is nice, though I would recommend turning up the brightness. I can't quite tell what it's supposed to be. Is it a TV screen? A person standing in front of a screen? A restaurant interior? I can't really tell, but it seems like it's either a screen or the inside of a restaurant/cafe with a person in front of it. I like the aesthetic of the cover, but without being able to see clearly what I'm supposed to see, it's a bit difficult to judge. I like the text placement and font, it could just use some tweaks with the background image for more clarity.

Total: 74/100.

END

Y'all still reading again?

Why y'all reading this far?

Are you guys that bored? This is like 3 hours worth of reviews. Even if you didn't read all of them, scrolling all the way to the end takes dedication.

Well, here, take a cookie for scrolling so much: 🍪

Do we need to have a staring contest again?

...

I don't feel like it, that's a lot of work.

You're waiting for the Jimin joke, aren't you?

Sigh.

Okay, here it comes-

COMES 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Ahem.

Anywho.

Jimin is a very pretty boy and I love him so so much-

SIKE

I wish he'd run me over with his tank (joking, I am JOKING)

(kind of)

(and I mean that respectfully)

Anywhozzles.

Bye bye, see you in the next category!