Title: Canvas of Deception by EclipseNoir123
Source: Review Shop by TheBlossomCommunity_
Genre: Thriller, Dark Romance
Mature: Y (abduction, blood, death, emotional abuse, explicit sexual content, graphic gore, infidelity, mental illness, murder, non-con, physical abuse, psychological abuse, self-harm, sexual abuse, stalking, substance abuse, suicide, strong profanity, torture, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 38/40
Digging deeper: 95/100
Final thoughts: Complete
Note: Chapter 15 was the last available chapter as of the publishing of this review.

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*****

First impressions total: 38/40

Title: 10/10
Yes. Just yes. This works so well with the cover and the blurb (and, I assume, the story itself). Mystery/thriller vibes, a descent into darkness and intrigue—nailed it.

Story description: 9/10
Every time I read that line about Dominic using the victims' blood as his muse, a shudder runs down my spine. This has such a strong hook, and it leaves no doubt about what to expect in this story. Mystery, intrigue, thriller, creepiness—giving away enough to make lovers of darkness drool and send others running away screaming. I usually don't like starting a blurb with a quote, but it works here, because it seems less like an out-of-context quote and more like a tagline. My only complaint is the random double quotation marks at the end of the third segment. I assume you just overlooked taking that out. 😉

Cover: 10/10
Yep yep yep. So, so creepy. Honestly, this looks like it could be a movie poster. The look of shock in her eyes, the dark, inky hands wrapped around her face, the glowing white font—again, nailed it. My only complaint here, and this is more a lament courtesy of Wattpad, is the subtitle. It's a bit too small to really read from the title page of the book, at least on the website. It's better when I click the book on your profile and get that pop-up box. But I don't know that I would bump the size up, because if you did that, you'd have to bump up the size of your name and the graphics credit for storytellernat (great job, btw).

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 9/10
Content warning: Everybody knows I love a good list of content warnings, and yours is extremely detailed, which is much appreciated.

Dedication: I have not even attempted to come up with a dedication for any of my stories, because I don't have a specific person in mind, and I just don't think of writing something like this to my readers. But I like this. Pulling the reader down in darkness before the story even starts. Just a note, there's a missing space after the last comma, though.

Prologue: Well, that's one way to start this. Holy cow. The creep factor is through the roof, and your imagery is spot on. There are a couple of issues with the second paragraph, but otherwise, your SPAG is flawless. In the first sentence of that second paragraph, I'd add "away" after "6 feet." In the second sentence, you're missing something before "mouth," something like "facial feature, his." But your description of that smile, the blood on his teeth and dripping from the knife, her inner terror as she sticks to her training to try to apprehend him—although I don't see why she doesn't just shoot to kill, since he's trying to kill her. I think I'd feel safer about Shadowfell's streets with him dead than I would with him behind bars. But that speaks to her resolve and her integrity, which I can already see will be severely tested in the chapters to come.

Chapter 1: Hm. The plot thickens. This is an interesting way to start. It had me wondering for a second if you were repeating the prologue, or picking up that scene from a different point, but the italics made it clear this is a dream or a memory. Or both, as it turns out. And the ending with her in the hospital bed makes me wonder, again, if this comes shortly after the events of the prologue. If her parents were murdered in the same way or for the same reason as the victim in the prologue...hm...and the symbols in his eyes that match those on his weapon. That weapon is very ambiguous, but I'm guessing that's intentional. Very, very mysterious. Which is the point. You should be piling on the questions and not giving any answers this early in the story, which is exactly what you're doing.

A few editing observations. You slip into the present tense a couple of times, so be careful to stick with the past tense. I'd probably end Damien's dialogue with a period instead of a comma. In the fourth paragraph, you say she "couldn't stop even if she wanted to," which doesn't really make sense. She's frozen with fear, so she is already stopped, and I don't get the impression you're trying to say she wants to try to stop her parents' murder. I think you mean she couldn't "move" even if she wanted to. And there is a random set of closing quotation marks at the end of the dream sequence that shouldn't be there.

This might be a book I don't want to read before bedtime. 😅

*****

Digging deeper: 95/100

Cover & title: 10/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Story description: 4/5
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Grammar & voice: 17/20
Overall, you have excellent grammar, and most of the (rare) issues I found are probably proofreading misses more than anything else. Your writing style and voice are very distinct, with a heavy emphasis on vivid imagery and a complex exploration of thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, it almost feels like you're going too deep, which is an interesting problem I don't see very often.

As for the grammar issues I found, there's the occasional slip into the present tense, and there's one bit of dialogue in chapter four where you slip into the past tense where it should be the present tense, so that's an interesting oops. In chapter four, there's a paragraph that slips briefly from the first person perspective to the third person.

The last paragraph in Sarah's POV in chapter five goes into the third person, which is intentional and makes sense, but it looks weird. There's no visual indication for the POV change, and although the tone change makes clear what's going on, I think it needs something else here. Not a heading to set it apart. I don't think inserting a heading to break the flow and label just this one paragraph would be helpful. Maybe you could italicize that paragraph to set it apart? That doesn't feel like the best solution here, either. Not sure, but it's something to look into.

In chapter three, there are a couple of instances where Xander's dialogue is split between two consecutive paragraphs, and then that happens with Victoria's dialogue, too. I'd keep the dialogue together in one paragraph or, if you want to keep the split, insert more non-dialogue content between the distinct sections to make that split make sense. Having at least one paragraph without dialogue in between would be fine, but it gets confusing to the reader if there are back-to-back paragraphs with the same person's dialogue and no reason for that split. I had to scroll back up to double-check that I hadn't missed something, because I normally expect alternating paragraphs to be alternating speakers.

There's an order of priority issue that comes up frequently with Victoria and Xander. Whenever you're talking about yourself and another person, or a character is talking about themself and another person, the other person always comes first: Xander and I, Xander and me. I suppose you could flip it for a particularly narcissistic character, but Victoria isn't narcissistic or excessively selfish, so I'd flip it around every time she says "me and Xander."

The "Oh No" line in chapter three feels out of place. It's very informal and feels a bit too immature for something Victoria would say or think, and honestly, I think that's just because "No" is capitalized when it shouldn't be. Although changing it to something else, or adding something to it, like, "Oh, no. Not again," would fit better with the overall tone, I think.

There's a scene transition with a heading that just says "The next night," and that, too, feels out of place in this story. You usually use section dividers and don't state any time or place changes, instead allowing your writing to show it, so you don't have to tell it. In this case, I'd just do with that what you usually do—incorporate that into the text.

Otherwise, there's a random "her's" that should be "hers," a rare unnecessary comma, and some occasional repetition, like using "echoing" and "echoed" in the same sentence. You also like to use the phrase "voice tinged with" a lot, so you might want to keep an eye on that and try mixing that up a bit, like using "a hint of ___ in his/her voice" or some other similar phrase instead.

Plot & pacing: 9/10
Remember when I said sometimes it feels like you're going too deep into thoughts and emotions? That's where the point deduction comes from here. It isn't a common issue, but there are occasional areas where this drags the pacing down. In my opinion, of course. Others may disagree. But otherwise, I think the pacing is perfect. You're introducing new threads at just the right frequency to keep the pace up without overwhelming the reader, semi-answering questions while introducing more, and driving the action through your characters. The main plotline is obvious right from the start, though not entirely understandable, because this is a mystery/thriller story, after all. We're not supposed to fully know or fully understand the plot yet. Basically, police detective chasing serial killer. At its most basic, that's the plot. But it also has a ton of ulterior motives, backstory, underlying issues, coinciding incidents—plenty of stuff to complicate things.

Characterization: 20/20
This is where this story really shines. There's no way someone could read this story and not know these characters. Victoria and Dominic both experienced the same trauma of seeing their parents murdered by the same man for the same reason, and they've taken that pain in two completely different directions. She became a dedicated police officer, fighting evil and trying to keep citizens safe. She doesn't want what happened to her to happen to anybody else. Meanwhile, he became a serial killer working on some sinister plot to get back at the man who killed his parents. What's truly terrifying about how you've written him is how rational this all seems to him. His side almost seems logical. This is how he thinks, and this is justified. Killing people and using their blood in his paintings is a very reasonable thing to him. Toying with the police detective who's trying to catch him is just part of the game.

If I could find any flaw with your characterizations, it would be a lack of physical description for your characters, but you describe what's important as it becomes important. The tattoos on the victims' necks. The pendant Victoria wears. When Dominic is watching her, he isn't interested in her appearance so much as her mind, and so your emphasis on internal descriptions over physical descriptions is entirely appropriate for this story.

Harmony within genre: 15/15
This is Thriller, through and through. The Dark Romance aspect hasn't really come into play yet as of chapter five, since the relationship between Victoria and Dominic is still strictly occupational, but it's easy to see how Dominic's stalking behavior and predator/prey attitude could turn her into an obsession in his twisted version of romance. Which isn't romantic at all, but he's such a messed-up character, it's probably the closest he can get. I don't see Victoria reciprocating willingly, but it's still early in the story, and combating the mysterious Prophecy may require enemies to become bedfellows...

Originality: 20/20
I've already said that, at its most basic, the plot is a police detective chasing a serial killer. But it's not that basic at all. I've really never read anything like this. The mysterious Prophecy, Dominic's psychotic behavior, the murdered parents who tie Victoria and Dominic together—everything is completely unique and original to you. Your imagery is spot-on, encompassing sight, sound, touch, and smell, and if I've missed taste, it's only because there hasn't been a scenario yet requiring you to include that detail. The city of Shadowfell is alive and descending further into darkness with every chapter, and although I can often make predictions about where I think a plot is going, I have no idea here. Wherever it goes, it's sure to be a twisted ride.

Chapters 6-15:
I don't normally make a section for this, because what I see in the first five chapters is usually pretty consistent through the rest of the story, but I noticed some things with chapters 6-10 that I wanted to point out here. The main thing was an increase in repetition of words, phrases, and sentence structure.

So, adjectives like "chilled/chilling," "grim," "stark," "sinister," and the like were extremely commonplace, and while those are apt adjectives in a thriller story of this kind, I felt certain words were overused. Same thing with phrases like "a _____ reminder," "a testament to," "determined to/determination," "shroud of/shrouded," "with a mixture of," etc. (and I already mentioned "voice tinged with _____"). The blank is where you'd insert a descriptor. There were also a lot of summary statements that are very out-of-place in the context of an ongoing narrative, things like "for in the _____ and _____," again, filling in adjectives like "sinister" and "deceptive." Summaries don't typically happen mid-text. They happen at the end of a chapter or a story, and while there are always exceptions, they definitely happen way too frequently here.

Descriptions were also vague, especially where there's supposed to be action. There was a focus on over-describing nouns and under-describing specific aspects of movement. The area where this is very obvious is when Victoria first wakes up after Dominic abducts her. She has a bizarre physical reaction to his presence, even though he's not doing anything to her that would cause that. When you boil the action down to what actually happens, he touches her raw skin—so that's where the ropes bound her—then he picks up the bucket of blood from Sarah and walks away. That ends his POV, and then we switch over to Victoria's. But...he's still there? There's a lot of flowery language in his section and hers, but when you strip that away, nothing really seems to be happening here that would explain her physical reaction to him. If he's doing something to her here, that needs to be made clear. Later, when they have their next erotic encounter, his intentional stimulation is very clear, so her physical reaction makes sense, so just add more action detail like you did the second time to clarify what's happening the first time.

There were also some textual changes that look like different slices of text from different sources or edits were spliced together, like long sections of present tense in an otherwise past tense story, slips into the third person for a few paragraphs, a single person's dialogue split into multiple paragraphs with no response in between, although the dialogue clearly calls for a response and then clearly replies to it, that sort of thing. So, that just needs some smoothing out to make everything fit together.

Like I said, that was all mostly in chapter 6-10. All those things kind of tapered off in chapters 11-15 until I barely saw any of them. The main consistent issue I saw throughout all available chapters is with descriptive detail within a first person format. In a first person perspective, you can describe the central character's thoughts and feelings, and you can describe the things they see and hear and experience, which would be everybody else's facial expressions, tone, and body language. It should be rare to flip that around, because the first person perspective does not allow for omniscient narration the way the third person does. So, you also have to keep in mind the central character's perceptive limitations in your descriptions.

In practice, that means you shouldn't describe the central character's facial expressions the same way you do everyone around them. Unless I'm looking in a mirror, I'm not offering elaborate poetic imagery to describe my own facial expressions, or even my own voice. I'm describing other people's facial expressions, other people's voices. Similar thing with chills running up and down people's spines. I can feel that in myself, but I can't feel that in another person unless I'm actually touching them (and unless it physically happens, because that's often a mental response and not a physical one), and I certainly can't name the specific adjective that describes why they're feeling that. And when it comes to limits on descriptions of others, if the central character can't experience it, they can't describe it. So, when Victoria was blindfolded, there should not have been any visual description of Dominic's facial features and expressions, because she couldn't see him. But there was a lot of visual imagery there.

But, overall, this is still a really well-written story with a compelling, thrilling plotline and complex characters. I happened to stumble across another review of this story today, and it stated the prologue wasn't thrilling and didn't have a hook; you did too much telling and not enough showing; and your characters don't have distinct voices. I disagree with all of that. Just flip it around, and that's what I think. Thrilling prologue with a strong hook. Tons of showing and not telling. Distinct characters with distinct voices in their individual perspectives. I'm not a huge fan of dark content, but this is basically candy for thriller lovers.

*****

Final thoughts: Complete
Lovers of darkness unite. I present to you a thriller that will drag you down to the depths right from the start and then just keep descending. Mysteries upon mysteries, a strange Prophecy, a determined police detective, and an equally determined serial killer are just the beginning. There's plenty of room in his sinister plan to play games with her, but she's well on her way to becoming less of an amusing toy and more of a dangerous, psychotic obsession. Their ties run deeper than present crimes, and now, her painful, forgotten memories are tormenting her dreams as much as he's tormenting her waking moments. So many questions, no answers. Who will undo who first? Just how many bodies will drop before anybody figures out what's really going on?