Title: Live to Tell the Tale by DeathBlade__
Source: ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by TheCieloCommunity

Category: Thriller

Mature: Y (abduction, blood, death, domestic abuse, gore, guns, illicit drug use, loss of a loved one, murder, strong profanity, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing

Special note (judging): I had four books in this category, and the other judges (HavvySnow, prk_hoonieee, TJDW1989) had four books each.
Result: 92/100

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*****

Rubric:
- Title: 5
- Book cover: 5
- Description (blurb): 5
- Plot & storytelling: 15
- Character development: 10
- Writing style: 10
- Grammar: 10
- Originality & creativity: 10
- Emotional impact: 10
- Pacing & structure: 5
- Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5
- Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10
Total: 100

*****

Total: 92/100

Title: 5/5
Instant thriller vibes. Love it.

Cover: 3/5
I like the imagery, with the black background, the glowing cards, the falling money, and the blood coating the last word of the title. I'm not 100% sold on the font for that word, though. It's one of those fonts you have to really look at to decipher, because it isn't the easiest to read. I also don't see your name anywhere on here. You're the author, so you should give yourself credit! Slotting your name into a bottom corner in a small but still visible font should be easy enough.

Blurb: 3/5
The content of your blurb is good, but you flip-flop from past to present tense, which gets confusing. Choosing one and sticking to it is important for clarity. You could go either way, but most of this is in the present tense, even though you start in the past tense, so I'll go with present tense for my editing suggestions.

In the first line, then, the verbs should be "relishes" and "is." In the second paragraph, "was" in the first sentence should be "is" again. The last sentence slips into past tense, too, and it doesn't make sense. There is no "latter." The only option you gave was "negative reading," so there's no list to draw from or anything for comparison. I think you could just cut "than the latter," unless you want to add in something about (I assume) positive readings, but if you do that, I think you'll need to explain why negative readings are easier than positive readings, so I'm not sure that's the best option. And then the verbs should be "gives" and "is." Finally, in the last sentence of the blurb, I'd change the semicolon to a period.

But, as I said, the content here is good. It has a decent hook, introduces the main character and the plot conflict, and sets the reader up for a thrilling story I'm curious to read.

Plot & storytelling: 15/15
I would like to let you know I typed the numbers backwards here, so it said "51/15," and it would have been appropriate. You knocked this out of the park. The plot is so streamlined and polished, and obviously, you've done a lot of work preparing this book to make everything work. I like to pride myself on picking up hints of foreshadowing and tiny, apparently insignificant details, but I keep missing the ones you're dropping until you point them out later. It's rather embarrassing, actually. Stop it! 😉

No, don't. I like to be surprised.

Anyway, you have this story laid out so well. I didn't expect most of it (so far, anyway) would take place in a single room, like a real-life escape room situation, and it would be easy for dialogue to get repetitive and the pace to drag in that setting, but you keep it fresh and moving the whole time. My only critique is a detail people usually forget, and I understand why, although it always bugs me.

What about going to the bathroom?

These people are trapped in a single room for days on end, and they never have to go? That could introduce a new layer to this as well, because every short journey to the bathroom would present an opportunity for them to pick up clues. And this would be something Bane could have scheduled, like the meal deliveries, with strict monitoring to keep anybody from trying anything.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, Bane never gives them anything to drink, either. Water is a requirement for life. They'd probably die without water before the waning food supply runs out.

Anyway, those are a couple of ideas to think about, but everything else is fantastic here.

Character development: 10/10
And you nailed this one, too. The slow development of each character, with every revelation bringing up more questions and often providing hints about the plot, is just so well done. I love Carmen's inner dilemma about Emily and the baby. She's a con artist, and she doesn't care for babies, but seeing the baby crawling toward his mother's body breaks her heart, and she can't get away from the guilt gnawing at her. And then you tell us this is not the first time she's dealt with guilt at this level, or with situations involving the life or death of other people.

The way you shift the third person perspective to each character as needed is really, really good. We get insight into each of the other characters to add to the profile Carmen is building, although you still leave plenty of mystery, so I'm not convinced everybody is who they say they are. Carmen's intimate knowledge of body language allows you to add so much depth to each dialogue tag and each description, bringing complexity and realism to each character. This is a stellar example of showing and not telling. You don't say Carmen is fighting to hide her anxiety. You show me what's going on in her mind, her physical reactions to stress, and then you show me the body language she consciously uses to hide the truth, complete with a little crack nobody would notice unless they looked that shows where she can't quite pull it off completely.

Writing style: 8/10
You have a beautiful, descriptive writing style, but there are places where the description hides the action. For instance, when Carmen's grandmother told her to run into the road—what happened there? It's not clear. I read it and reread it several times, wondering if the person running away had knifed the target, or if the traffic light turn, or if Carmen actually ran into the road, because I thought she was still just standing there. The emphasis on describing singular details like color and how the blood felt clouded the broader details about the event itself, and that happens with most action scenes.

Another issue is awkward phrasing, which I pointed out in the blurb, too. Sometimes, more toward the beginning, I ran into sentences I couldn't quite understand, like these two: "All while having a reputation for treating the people of her negative readings, she simply was a concealed devil. She was also right, as that was all that mattered to the city folk, and Carmen ate that up." The wording and phrasing are odd. What was she "also right" about? "Also" means she was right about something else, but this is the first mention of her being right about something. What was "all that mattered to the city folk?" The "negative readings?" The "reputation for treating the people?" Again, it's unclear.

Another issue that was more of a problem at the beginning of the story than in the later chapters is the plethora of italicized words. There was at least one per paragraph for a while. I know you were using the italics to tell the reader where to place the stress in a sentence, but I think it's better to lead the reader to do so through your words rather than flat-out tell them, and your writing is already great at showing instead of telling without italics. Also, italics lose their specialness if they're overused, which definitely happened in those first chapters.

I love your vocabulary. Looking up words is always a plus for me, and it's not something I have to do too often on Wattpad, so I enjoyed the diversity in your language. Beyond reacquainting myself with some words I haven't seen for a while, I got an introduction to some new words, too, and I'm thinking I should resubscribe to a daily vocab word email list again, just for fun.

Grammar: 8/10
Your grammar is overall solid. There are mistakes throughout the story, but most of them are minor, and they're things you do right most of the time. Your biggest consistent issue is with run-on sentences where you should probably use semicolons instead of commas. Here's one example: "A failed business, a tragic accident, an economic crisis, she foresaw it all." The comma after "crisis" should be a semicolon.

There are also some issues with hyphens as well. In one area, you're missing the paired hyphen to offset a phrase, and in another, you used a hyphen where a colon would have been a better choice. There are also occasional singular/plural mismatches with verbs and pronouns, and there are rare pronoun mixups and name mixups, too (like Rylen talking about Bane, but the dialogue tag says, "Bane said.").

There's an abbreviation at one point in the story that feels out of place to me: "sq. ft." It may be fine, but I think it would be better to spell it out. Also, while most heights are in centimeters, there's one listed in feet/inches format, which also feels weird. I'd stick to centimeters throughout.

You use the phrase "the both of them," which is fine in dialect, but it's actually incorrect to include "the" before "both," so in the narrative, it should just be "both of them." There's also the word "mal-intent," which I believe is a shortening of "malicious intent," and I think it would be better to spell that out.

There are some slips into present tense, but the last and probably most subtle mistake comes with dialogue tags in the middle of dialogue. Sometimes, the punctuation and capitalization are questionable. A middle dialogue tag does not necessarily relate to both the dialogue preceding it and the dialogue following it. It may just go with the preceding dialogue, in which case the dialogue tag should end with a period (or other ending punctuation), and the next set of dialogue should start with an uppercase letter, as it marks a new sentence. Or the dialogue tag may go with the following dialogue only, in which case the preceding dialogue should end with a period (or other ending punctuation mark), the dialogue tag should begin with an uppercase letter because it marks a new sentence, and the dialogue should still begin with an uppercase letter. The only time the following dialogue will not begin with an uppercase letter is when the dialogue tag literally splits a single sentence of dialogue up.

"She said no," Zane stated. "So, leave her alone."
"She said no." Zane glared at the baby monitor and added, "So, leave her alone."
"She said no," Zane stated, gritting the rest of his words out from between his teeth, "so, leave her alone."

Originality & creativity: 10/10
This is an incredibly unique story, and the level of creativity is off the charts. There's no dispute in this category.

Emotional impact: 10/10
While I can't personally relate to a con artist like Carmen, you make it easy to know her, understand her, and empathize with her, and that is the key to forging an emotional connection with the reader.

Pacing & structure: 5/5
This is so well-structured, and as I said earlier, it would be easy for the pace to drag in the movie theater, but it doesn't. You keep the pace up throughout.

Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5/5
Free points. Yay! 🙂

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10/10
This is a really great, gripping story. I was not looking forward to the lengthy reading time, but it's so well done that the time seemed to fly by. And this is a story I could possibly use to tempt my mystery buff mom back to Wattpad. I think you'd have to finish it before I could truly convince her, though, so get on it! 😉