Title: Chained hearts by FrankHardy1
Series: Untitled (book one)
Source: Feedback request
Genre: Fanfiction
Secondary/subgenre(s): Fantasy, Mafia, Romance, Thriller
Fandom: The Camorra Chronicles book series by Cora Reilly
Mature: Y (abduction, attempted rape, child abuse, drug abuse, explicit sexual content, hostage situation, loss of a loved one, mental health issues, misogyny, strong profanity, torture, violence; mentions of abortion, infidelity, prostitution, rape)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Complete
First impressions: 27/40
Digging deeper: 63/100
Final thoughts: Complete

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. → 

*****

First impressions: 27/40

Title: 9/10
It's a nitpicky thing, but I prefer capitalization of most words in the title, like you did on the cover and with your other books.

Story description: 8/10
I love this blurb, except for three things. First, the text saying "Synopsis" needs to go. That's a given, and it takes up valuable space in the limited blurb preview. Second, all the way at the bottom, "Nino" and "Cora" need to be capitalized.

Third, and this is only a suggestion that you're free to ignore, but I'd rework this so Hope's name comes first. She's the main character, so you want her name to stick in a potential reader's mind immediately. But she's the fourth name mentioned. Once her name comes into play, the tone of the blurb shifts to center on her and Nino, which is good; however, she is the center of the story from the start, and I think the blurb should reflect that.

Yes, I know Nino is the other main character, but I feel like Hope is more central and more important than him, if only just slightly. The two go together, anyway, so elevating her importance in the blurb would elevate his, too.

But otherwise, there are no grammatical errors, and I already know from reading the story this blurb is accurate. You give away just the right amount of information without giving away too much, which hooks a potential reader and encourages them to start reading.

Cover: 3/10
This is a pretty basic cover of a single image with the title typed across it, and I'd recommend doing more with it. It isn't very eye-catching, and it's missing your name, which is a really important detail. You could just upload the background image to Canva and then play with its free tools, graphics, and fonts to spruce it up a bit. I think if you found the right font, you could get away with only changing the text and not have to add a border or frame or any other graphics. The space on the right is perfect for the text. You could stack the title in the upper right-hand side, maybe one word above the other, with the text large enough to fill a quarter or a third of that gap, and then fill in your name down at the bottom, or even following that faint curved line on the lower right-hand side.

Or, if you don't want to deal with all that, just put it an order at one of the many graphics shops around the site.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 7/10
Character list: Have you updated this since I first saw it? Or has it just been so long that I forgot? Oh, my goodness. I deeply apologize for how long this has taken, and I will definitely be changing my process up in the future to (hopefully) prevent lengthy delays in the future.

Anyway, I love the images, although the pictures of the underage teenage boys are rather mature and masculine for their ages. There are some places where you're missing the space between the colon and what comes next, most commonly with ages, and Dean's hair color is lowercase, which sticks out because you've capitalized the first word after the colon everywhere else on this page. Also, I love Ava's picture, but that is not a picture of a one-year-old. I would guess she was five, based on that image.

Aesthetics: These are a nice blend of sweet and spicy. I'm not much of an aesthetics person, so I can't really comment further than that.

Prologue: The content of the prologue sets the rest of the story up really well, doing exactly what a prologue is supposed to do. We get an introduction to Nino and the Falcone brothers, providing the rationale for why they're about to kidnap Serafina, all while creating a mystique about Hope and hinting at Nino's future attraction to her.

The grammatical errors here are mostly with dialogue tags, and I know I've pointed them out elsewhere in my feedback, so I'll just do a quick recap. When dialogue leads into a partial sentence that describes who is speaking and how they're speaking, start that partial sentence with a lowercase letter (unless the first word is a name or a proper noun), and if the dialogue would have normally ended with a period, change it to a comma. You don't have to change any other punctuation marks, but you still have to watch capitalization for the dialogue tag.

Another thing to watch is commas. People usually go one of two ways with commas: they under-use them, or they over-use them. You have a tendency to under-use them, and an editing tool could help you pick up on those areas where they're missing. Lastly, there's one piece of dialogue that's missing a closing punctuation mark, and in this specific instance, it's a question mark.

Chapter 1: And here she is! Hope, witch, best friend, and unsuspecting member of a forbidden romance. Again, this is a good introduction to her and Serafina, providing a little background information for both of them and setting the stage nicely for the difficulties we know from the prologue are coming their way.

Dialogue tags are still an issue here, along with occasional slips into the present tense, and there's one random space after an opening quotation mark. One other thing, and I'm not sure if I pointed it out when I first read this, is the double punctuation (!!). Exclamation marks carry a lot of weight, especially if you don't use them too often, which you don't, so only one is necessary here. When you want to add extra emphasis, I prefer adding that into the dialogue tag instead of relying on punctuation marks, because dialogue tags allow you to show more depth in your characters. Here, she only calls out to her brother, so you don't need anything else. In the future, when people are shouting in heated arguments or screaming in fear or whatever, just describe that in the dialogue tag. I think that's a more effective way to lead the reader to imagine what you want them to imagine.

*****

Digging deeper: 63/100

Cover & title: 4/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

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

Grammar & voice: 15/20
The issues with slipping into the present tense, dialogue tags, and under-use of commas continue, but they don't detract from the narrative. As far as your voice, I feel like I don't get as much room to "hear" it as I'd like because of the pace, which I'll get into in the next category. You have a very clean, crisp style, and I think adding more detail would help flesh out the story and bring your voice out more.

Plot & pacing: 5/10
This isn't something I noticed when I was taking more time between reading chapters, but re-reading the first five chapters back-to-back, I realized the story feels rushed at first. The plot moves from point A to point B with very little in between, which limits your characterizations and mutes your voice, like I mentioned above. But the plot itself is good. It's already obvious this early in the story where you're going with it, at least where Hope and Nino are concerned. And I don't think you need to alter your chapter divisions or structuring to slow the pace. Just filling in the blanks with more descriptive detail would give the reader more time to settle into each scene before the next scene change, and that would slow the pace down to something that doesn't feel quite so rushed.

Characterization: 15/20
Hope's character is the most defined, which makes sense, because she is the main character. She's strong, sassy, spunky; a good friend to Serafina; an intelligent powerhouse with a deceptively weak exterior. The rest of the characters could use more description through dialogue tags and notation of tone, facial expressions, and body language, as most of them feel like black-and-white sketches with small sections colored in and larger areas left plain. Seraphina's family, in particular, feels very flat, and if you didn't tell me it was her mother speaking here, or her father speaking there, I really wouldn't be able to tell them apart. But Seraphina, Nino, and Remo all have some detail to set them apart from the rest, and they're definitely the more important characters to focus on.

Harmony within genre: 15/15
Yep. Fanfiction of The Camorra Chronicles by Cora Reilly. Check.

Originality: 5/20
Your originality is not in question here. This is more about the lack of descriptive detail. Images of your characters are nice, but it's better if you can incorporate their physical descriptions into the text, and adding in more details in general would be a good idea. What does Serafina's bedroom look like? Does she display any nervous habits while they're talking about her upcoming wedding, like fidgeting with her fingers or biting her lip? What about sounds? When Hope saw something outside the window, did she hear a bush rustling, too? After Serafina gets kidnapped, did the room the Falcone brothers take her to smell like blood or antiseptic after stitching up that wound? You don't have to go into long, poetic detail, but just adding little notes here or there about seemingly insignificant things can add a lot of depth to your story.

*****

Final thoughts:
What happens when a mafia family abducts a bride from another outfit right before her arranged marriage? Well, if that bride is Serafina, then the Falcone family is in trouble, because Fina's best friend, Hope, is secretly a powerful witch. The Falcone brothers want Fina so they can force a trade for a captive member of their outfit. They never expected a woman who isn't even part of the mafia to retaliate by abducting Nino, the second-oldest brother. She won't release him until his brothers release Fina, and they won't give in to her demands. A tense, lengthy standoff ensues. But as surprising as it is for one woman to stand on equal footing with made mafia men, it's even more surprising when romance blossoms on both sides. Hope and her captive, Nino. Fina and her captor, Remo. Their forbidden love is doomed to end with a prisoner exchange. Or is it?