Title: Rejected To Fate by Lasophie79
Source (1): Gardenia: A Review Shop by -Chrysalis_Realm
Genre: Werewolf/Paranormal
Subgenre: Mystery/Thriller
Mature: Y (blood, death, mention of child abuse, sexual references, strong profanity, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N

Status: Ongoing

First impressions: 30/40

Digging deeper: 51/100

Final thoughts: Complete

Special note: Chapter 36 was the last available chapter as of the completion of this review.

Source (2): ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by @TheCieloCommunity
Category: Fantasy
Score: 44/100

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 total: 30/40

Title: 10/10
This is a thought-provoking title. Usually, I'd hear "abandoned to fate," or I'd expect maybe "rejected by fate," and just the slight change of wording brings different connotations. It makes me curious to see where this goes.

Blurb/synopsis: 6/10
This is tricky for me, because your line formatting and word choice makes this blurb very poetic, and I'm not a poet. So, I don't feel entirely comfortable making any recommendations about major changes to words or lines, but there are punctuation and grammar issues I can address, and hopefully that won't impact the lyrical flow (or negatively impact it, anyway).

First thing, no double punctuation. If there's a question mark, you don't need a comma. The only exception to this rule (aside from dialogue, which isn't in play here) is ellipses (...). Having that trailing effect with a question mark to indicate the slight upturn in tone that marks a hesitant question is really handy. But I'd flip it around so the ellipsis comes before the question mark (...?). And when you're using those trailing periods, make sure it's just three. No more, no less. As far as commas...if this were prose, I'd say you're overusing commas, but poetic use is much more stylistic. In poetry, commas are used to introduce pauses for the reader to ensure they read at the cadence you want to get the effect you want. So, I'm not touching those here.

Okay, now onto the grammar. I'm going to take this paragraph-by-paragraph instead of line-by-line, since it all flows together. My biggest overall problem here is figuring out tense. It feels like the tense is ambiguous because it changes from present to past so often, but I think that comes from all the reflections of the past happening in the present, and the contractions to start this off don't help. So...I guess I'll figure that out as I go.

"How'd you feel?" throws me right away. "How'd" is a contraction of "how did," "how would," or "how had," but the "you" also adds in the possibility of reading this as a contraction of "How do you." The next sentence starting with "When you're" doesn't help me much with figuring that out, because then I get stuck trying to decide if this is the contraction of "you are" or "you were." My mind automatically goes to the present tense when I see contractions. I get the feeling "if" may work better than "when" here, because it seems like the protagonist is talking directly to the reader. "A reason unknown" is probably fine for poetic use, but it feels more natural for me to say "an unknown reason." "Will it be" confuses me, because we've strayed from "How'd you feel?" enough that I have to look back to realize this is suggesting feelings I could have if I experienced the things listed.

So, I think it's best to treat this as a break in the fourth wall with the protagonist talking directly to the reader and asking hypothetical questions about what they would feel and do if they experienced what the protagonist experienced. This is what I came up with to make this clearer:

How would you feel? If you were treated like dirt, a liar, an unwanted, a runt...
If you were orphaned by the very ones that haunt you, and you took it all as your weight?
How would you feel if it all seemed like a lie?
Your life and all?
If you were just punished for a reason unknown...?
Would you feel despair or fear?
Pain or self criticism...?

I went with "how would," and I changed "when" to "if" to make it clearer this is the protagonist posing hypothetical questions to the reader. I also condensed "then you take" down to "you took" for clarity, and I changed all the verbs for the things the protagonist experienced to past tense. And, finally, I changed "Will it be" to "would you feel" for clarity.

In the next paragraph, there are a few lines (3, 6, and 7) that are in present tense but I think should be in past tense, since they're part of the recap of how the protagonist responded in the past:

3: And it all seemed to take place when mysteries unraveled, stones turned, stories awoke, hatred abounded and love vanquished.
6: Everything was reversed when I found out who I really was...
7: What I really was, and who I could trust.

Oh, and I put "every thing" together into the compound word "everything." Also, "underlyings" should be "underlings." And that takes care of the first section of the blurb.

Then we get to the section divider and the next bit. I don't really think you need this, actually. It feels almost like a book excerpt, but it's not (I don't think, anyway), and this is all a repetition of what you already told us in the first part of the blurb. Maybe you didn't spell it out this way, but it was implied. I also feel like this dulls the hook you sharpened and stabbed into a potential reader with the first bit. You already have a strong pull in that first section, and running too long can give the impression that maybe this will happen in the story, too, where there are sections that drag on excessively. So, if it were me, I'd cut this, but you're the author and the poet, and it's up to you.

Cover: 9/10
The color scheme with blues and that small brush of pink at the bottom is just gorgeous, and all the imagery blends and flows together so well. Font type, color, size, and placement are great, too. My only suggestion would be to bump up the font size just a touch for the subtitle at the bottom, because it's a bit too small on the table of contents page of your book, but I can read it just fine when I click your book title on your profile and get that pop-up box. Ah, the joys of Wattpad image compression.

First chapter: 5/10
Okay, so, in that first paragraph, is she saying being a werewolf was no different from being a human before she shifted for the first time? Because it seems like some serious changes (to her physical appearance, at least) happened after she shifted for the first time. Or are a werewolf's abilities in human form the same as any other human, regardless of shifting? If you're talking about pre-shifting, I'd change "it's" to "it was," because although that contraction can technically mean "it is" or "it was," it's usually read as "it is." Just writing it out will eliminate any confusion here.

In the third paragraph, "supposedly" makes it sound like she was supposed to move into the pack house, but she didn't. Except she did. So cut "supposedly."

Three paragraphs down, the sentence about what the Alpha knew and didn't know is pretty convoluted and confusing. I think you're saying he didn't know, but when he found out, he looked the other way and didn't care to interfere. So...I'd reword to say that: "The Alpha didn't know about this, but when he found out, he did nothing."

Then the next line doesn't fit here, and we run into paragraph issues from here on. I don't know if this line is supposed to be part of this paragraph, or if it's supposed to start the next paragraph. This happens a lot following this point with these lines that are one space below the previous line without the typical space for a paragraph gap. If it's a continuation of a paragraph, don't start a new line. Just continue the paragraph. If it's supposed to be a new paragraph, do a full paragraph space to show that.

While I'm on the subject of paragraphs, you have a lot of single-sentence paragraphs that would work better merged into one larger paragraph. Basically, one sentence can serve as the first line of a paragraph when it denotes a thought change from the previous paragraph and several sentences following it all flow from the same thought. Then, when the subject/thought changes, start a new paragraph. It gets kind of choppy and jumbled if there are only single-sentence paragraphs in a story. And, saying this, I realize this may be a case of Wattpad messing up your formatting during copy/paste, which does happen quite often. If that's the case, I know it's a pain, but going back in to fix any formatting issues manually would improve the flow.

There are also quite a few areas in this chapter where shuffling sentences around would improve the flow. There's kind of an ABAB feel going on in a lot of places, but since this is prose and not poetry, that lends a jumpy, choppy feel to the story. Moving things around to put a bunch of As in one paragraph and a bunch of Bs in another would make this a smoother read.

Anyway, back to this line in particular: "Expectantly, I was supposed to be in great grief and sorrow." That doesn't flow from the same thought as the previous sentence about the Alpha not knowing and then not caring about her abuse at the hands of his family, so this should be its own paragraph. It's a full subject change. But it feels awkward, and you can condense it down to "I was expected to be in great grief and sorrow" for a smoother read.

In the next paragraph, we start running into issues with commas. People tend to go one way or another with commas—over-use (me) or under-use. I thought from the blurb you'd be one that overuses them, but that was also a poem, and it looks like in prose you tend to under-use them. Commas are annoying in that there are rules about where you should always and should never have them, but then there's a lot of room for stylistic choice, too. My best recommendation here is to use an editing tool that supports your English usage to help you navigate the weirdness. I use the free version of ProWritingAid, which allows you to select American or UK English (and maybe other usages; I'm not sure, but those are the two you list using). It will also catch a lot of the other things I'm mentioning here, so it's a nice overall polishing tool I always use when I finish writing anything (like this feedback, actually).

"Of course" should almost always be offset with commas, as should "yes" and "no" when they're used to start a sentence. So, this next sentence should be: "I helped, of course, with cooking and cleaning." I added "with" and "and" as well. Then, in the next line, there should be a comma after "Yes," and "greatful" should be "grateful."

There's a missing space between sentences in the next paragraph, but this isn't a common mistake for you, so I think it was just overlooked in proofreading.

In the next paragraph, you need a comparison word to make the first sentence make sense, so I'd add "more" before "hysterical." And in the next line, "of" should be "off."

In the next paragraph, I'd add "or" before "couldn't," and "my self" should be put together for the compound word "myself."

"Maids clothes" should have an apostrophe to make "maids" possessive. I think it's your choice if you want the apostrophe to come after "maid" or after "maids," as it doesn't really make that much difference, although I usually see the plural possessive for a group descriptor like this.

You don't need to italicize the shifting at all. It flows well from the narrative, so you don't need to do something to set it apart, like a section divider or anything. That also means you don't need the quotation mark. She's still telling the story in chronological order, and this is just the next part of the story in order.

"Temperance" feels weird to me, because I hear that, and I think of the temperance movement to ban alcohol. I looked the word up just to check, and it means moderation or self-restraint, so "low temperance" does mean "low self-control." It's up to you if you want to leave it as is or change it to "self-control." Also, words starting with "self" are often hyphenated, although I think that's a flexible rule based on English usage and stylistic choice, so that's another thing that's up to you. "Over ride" should be put together in the compound word "override," though.

I'd cut "of some sort" after "itchy," or maybe move the words around to say "I felt sort of itchy." "Dwindled" means to diminish gradually, and based on context, her uneasiness is growing, not diminishing. Maybe you mean something like "tingling?" The uneasiness is making her spine tingle?

"Every one" is another compound word to put together as "everyone." You don't need the comma after "opening," and "over seeing" has the connotation of a person watching other people and ensuring they're doing their job (like an overseer), so I'd change it to "overlooking." There's a random extra space before the period at the end of that sentence, which is not a common mistake you make, so I'm pretty sure you just missed it in proofreading.

When she stretches her arms, you don't need "fort" (which should have been "forth," anyway). It's just unnecessary repetition, as stretching your arms means you're reaching out. Unless you want to specifically say she's stretching them in a forward direction. If that's the case, I'd say "stretched my arms forward."

The next sentence is actually two complete sentences, so swap the comma for a semicolon or a period.

When the shifting starts (which sounds incredibly painful, by the way), you don't need "me" after "The pain stung," since that's pretty well implied. "Arced" should be "arched." "Along side" should be put together to make "alongside." There should probably be more commas throughout this section before some of the "ands," too.

Instead of "floor," I'd say she fell to the "ground," since "floor" is a part of a room, and she's outside.

The descriptions of the twins are dependent clauses, which means they can't stand on their own, so they need to be offset with commas. Also, you start the sentence talking about smell, so it feels weird to describe the sound of the second twin without stating that's what you're doing in a way that balances out the first description. There's also a possessive that needs an apostrophe, an informal slang word that is fine in dialogue but doesn't work well in narrative, and an adjective with an unnecessary "y." So, fixing all that and putting it all together: "but I could smell the scent of Jordan, one of the beta's twins, and I could hear the shrill voice of Joyce, his twin sister."

The next paragraph could use some more commas, and "plus" doesn't really add much to this, because I don't know why a strong scent would make her more uneasy, especially when the scent described isn't offensive. I'd change "so" to "and" for a slightly different emphasis. I don't really know why, but it feels like "and" adds a little more suspense and shows her fear a little better than "so."

The next morning, when she's looking in the mirror, I don't have any comparison. I don't know what she looked like before she shifted, so the only thing that really stands out here is the eye color change from sapphire to midnight blue. The wounds and scars could be from her scraping her legs up when she was walking through the forest. Having her look in a mirror before she left the pack and experienced her first shift would be a nice touch, because then the reader can see the change as vividly as her pack does, and if the wounds and scars are from abuse, we need to be told that, too. Right now, I don't understand the pack's reactions to her new look, because I don't know what she looked like before.

The first letter of a name should always be capitalized, and the line introducing Mia made me think the protagonist's shifted form had a special name that she discovered during the shift, and that name was Mia. But then the story continues, and it sounded more like Mia was her best friend and also a subject of abuse from the rest of the pack. I actually had a whole bunch of stuff typed here about that, and then I read chapter two and realized I had to scrap it all. Maybe this is something that would be obvious to people who normally read werewolf romance, but it wasn't for me at all, so some sort of clarification would be good here.

For thoughts, I'd just use italics and no quotation marks. The use of quotation marks makes me think this is spoken dialogue, and I actually didn't realize the italicized words in single quotation marks were thoughts until I got to chapter give. But the other rules of dialogue still apply. The first word of the thought needs to be capitalized, just like you would for any other sentence. Also, the dialogue tag needs to be in the same line as the dialogue, and if it's an incomplete sentence without the dialogue, the first letter of the first word needs to be lowercase. So, for Mia's thoughts here:

Yes, we are beautiful! she said with pride behind me.

I also changed "would say" to "said" because it's not a future thought. She just thought it.

After the section divider, we find out that the protagonist had a plan of escape, and the wording makes it sound like we should have known about this already. This is another thing that should have been mentioned earlier in the chapter. Until this point, it sounded like the protagonist was content to live her abusive life without even trying to stand up for herself, so saying "The next part of the plan was set in motion" sounds really weird. The next paragraph says waiting to shift for the first time was the first part of the plan, so I'd cut "The next part" sentence and replace it with the second paragraph. That works really well merged into this first paragraph.

"Lose the excess guards" feels like slang, so I'd change that to something more proper and fitting the tone, maybe something like "decrease the guards." You only need one preposition after "slip," so just cut "through."

"Liberate" should be "liberating," and you don't need "more" before "happier." The next sentence is a run-on sentence that should be split into multiple sentences, and it has some word choice issues as well. Splitting it up and fixing it: "We had nothing to lose, anyway. Best of all, we would be free from this miserable life. Rogues were the next problem, but we'd figure that out."

And, since this entire section didn't need to be in italics or quotes, you can cut the ending quote after the periods, and add another period to make a full ellipsis. There should be a section divider here, though, because now we're jumping to the present. You can cut "those memories," because that's implied just by saying she "reminisced."

The next paragraph has some awkward and confusing lines, and I had to play with them to decipher the meaning and make that clear. This is what I came up with: "Today was the day of execution, but fate had to butt in and flip my plans upside-down like a silly pancake. Of all the times to think twice about my decision, it had to be now."

For the second to last paragraph, no period after the question mark, and it should be "You've got that right," since this is narrative and not dialogue, so slang isn't appropriate here.

So, overall, this is a decent first chapter. More detail about the kind of abuse she suffered would be good to improve the reader's ability to connect with her, especially if that abuse caused the wounds and scars that were suddenly gone after she shifted for the first time. If she's going to be a dark antihero character, taking vengeance on her enemies and making a name for herself, the reader needs to really know and feel why she's doing that. Otherwise, she'll come off as a villain that's harder to sympathize with. And, as I said earlier, the transition from the shift to her escape plan with Mia feels very strange, in large part because the protagonist never even hinted at wanting anything to change, and because it was really unclear that Mia was her wolf form and was now a part of her. She was grateful to the others for taking care of her at first, and then as the abuse worsened, she grew to dislike it more, but there's no indication she had decided enough was enough. Adding more about her growing discontent, along with thoughts about maybe running away to start over somewhere else, would fix that and make her a more relatable, sympathetic character.

*****

Digging deeper: 51/100

Cover & title: 9/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Blurb: 2/5
See "First Impressions" feedback. The SPAG errors are what brought the number down a bit more here.

Grammar & voice: 5/20
The grammar issues in chapters two through five are basically the same issues I saw in the blurb and the first chapter. The story is now in past tense, and there are a few slips into present tense, so be careful about that. You consistently use double punctuation, which is unnecessary. Periods, exclamation marks, question marks, and ellipses can all stand on their own. There are still some areas of awkward phrasing with odd word choice or excessive words. Wordiness isn't necessarily bad, but there are times when extra words cloud the meaning, and it's better to condense a little. In the blurb, you used two periods instead of an ellipsis, and from chapter two on, you use multiple strings of periods, so just a reminder to stick with three for an ellipsis. Same kind of issues with paragraphs as before, and make sure to keep all dialogue or thoughts from one speaker in one paragraph. There are compound words that are split up and should be together, and some misspellings here or there. And there's a break in the italics in the middle of Mia's thoughts, so be careful to stay in italics for that.

For POV changes midway through a chapter, I'd add a section divider and set the note about the POV change apart in bold. I think chapter two is the only place where this happens in chapters two through five, but without a section divider and bold, the change blends into the narrative.

Chapter one is really a prologue, so I'd change the chapter title to that and make chapter two the new chapter one. There's a lot of background info in chapter one and also a different style to the narrative, and the change in voice is very apparent from the end of chapter one to the beginning of chapter two. Chapter one at the end was also in present tense, making me think the rest of the story would be in present tense, but it's solidly in past tense, starting with chapter two. That isn't really an issue if chapter one is a prologue, though. It can be different from the rest of the story. However, chapter one is the protagonist reminiscing about her past, and it feels like she's thinking about the distant past. But chapter two starts before she makes her escape. I have some thoughts about that in the next section.

Plot & pacing: 5/10
This feels rushed to me. First, as I said earlier, I got the impression from the end of chapter one that she'd escaped already, time had passed, and she was looking back at her horrible childhood through that lens. And then chapter two started, and it took me a moment to realize she hadn't escaped yet. It also feels like there's not enough lead up from the opening of chapter two to her smelling her mate. Give us more about the preparations for the celebration, her inner plotting of her escape, her internal thoughts mocking everybody else and rehashing all her anger and pain. That will slow this down so it doesn't feel so out of nowhere when suddenly meets her mate.

I'll go into that meeting more in the next section, but it wasn't clear at all that she already knew Marcus. It felt like she was meeting him for the first time. That contributed to the rushed feel, because it seemed like he was a complete stranger who's suddenly the most important person in her life. But he's the current Alpha's son, and the Alpha's family were the first listed abusers in chapter one. So, she knows him, and she knows him well, and she should absolutely hate him.

The pace slows down and feels more appropriate after she wakes up from her capture. It felt like you threw the reader into the deep end with chapter two, and we were just struggling to keep afloat, but now we've got time to breathe and really take in what's going on. Action scenes should be faster than other scenes, but slowing down the chapter where she finds her mate and where she's fleeing rogues would be helpful.

In general, this needs more description to flesh the narrative out. You don't even have to change the timeline or the basic content of each chapter to get the right feel to the pacing. Just add more description. You describe Marcus' appearance and Gina's emotions well, but there really isn't much else in the way of visual description. I can't picture most of the characters or their surroundings. Your scent descriptions are great, though, which makes sense with this genre and makes an interesting change for me, since most authors are best at visual descriptions.

As far as the plot, I've never read werewolf stories before, but I've sure seen them advertised on Wattpad and other reading platforms. They're really popular. I know I've seen blurbs about someone of lower rank who ended up mated to the Alpha, or someone rejected by the Alpha who is out for revenge and power, but without having read any of those stories, I can't say yours is just like anybody else's. To me, this feels and reads as a unique story that is of your creation in your preferred genre, of which you are well read, and you're utilizing common tropes to engage reader interest.

Characterization: 5/20
We don't learn Gina's name until chapter three, which feels very weird, especially since we learn her wolf's name, Mia, in the prologue. That in itself was very confusing to me, and I had to go back and change quite a bit of my first chapter feedback in "First Impressions" to reflect that revelation. But other than that, Gina's character leaves me in conflict. As I noted in my "First Impressions" feedback, she never seemed to have much of a backbone or a desire to improve her life in the first chapter, and I still don't have a handle on her. Her reaction to Marcus being her mate is a big part of that. I understand the scent and the pull are strong, but I feel like she should be just as revolted at the idea of mating with him as he is of her. He abused her. She shouldn't want to mate with him, and there should be a lot more conflict within her because of the physical pull contrasting so sharply with her personal feelings from her painful past. There's physical pain with his rejection, of course, but I think she should also feel a little relieved, too. I don't really know why she would worry about him thinking something's wrong with her or she's not good enough. He's always treated her like something's wrong with her and she's not good enough. That's nothing new.

The way you dive into her pain whenever she shifts and when she's attacked is the way you need to explore her emotions the rest of the time, and the same with Marcus. I really feel what she's feeling in those high-tension moments, but in the in-between, not so much. And Marcus hasn't had much screen time yet, so obviously, I don't know as much about him, but more for when he is the central POV would be good.

Also...clothes? She was naked after her first experience shifting, and I assume that happens with every shift. Was she just walking around the new place naked after she woke up? There was no mention of clothes, and adding a note about that would actually bring a lot of life to this section. It's really telling if someone took the time to dress her so she wouldn't feel humiliated because everybody saw her naked. Or, if they didn't dress her, but they left her a pile of clothes, that tells something about her captor, too. They didn't want to embarrass her by dressing her themselves. There are slightly different connotations either way, and that gives us a little more info about the man who visited her and spoke as if he cared about her when she was sick.

Harmony within genre: 15/15
I feel like a lot of my problem reading this is just that I haven't read werewolf stories before. You clearly have. This is a story that clearly caters to readers of werewolf stories. For instance, with all the talk of marking and my past experience of working for many years with animals, I was totally picturing a wolf peeing on another wolf. I figured that wouldn't happen, though, so then my next thought was actual mating for the first time. Marking with tooth marks was nowhere on my radar. I'll probably be really comfortable with this story and genre by the end of it (and calling myself an idiot for not knowing certain things), but filling in the blanks for people who are interested but don't know a lot of the terminology and concepts in these stories can broaden your reader base and also create a more well-rounded story.

Originality: 10/20
Descriptive elements are the biggest point deductions here, and I've discussed those elsewhere. As far as concept originality, I've also touched on that before. To my knowledge, this seems original to you, although perhaps word choice could be more unique. This story is very focused on Gina's journey to revenge and filling it in with descriptive details will make that journey come to life while also ensuring nobody can say this is relying too heavily on tropes. Environment, characters other than her and Marcus, thoughts and emotions when she's not physically in pain. Paint the readers a picture, drop them in the landscape of the story, and see what happens.

*****

Final thoughts:

Gina has been through a lot. Her parents died when she was a child, leaving her an orphan with no status in her pack, and she's endured abuse for years in silence. Shifting for the first time and meeting her wolf, Mia, gives her the strength to make a change, but she suffers an even larger insult when her new mate rejects her before she can even escape the pack. She isn't your average rogue or reject, though. Gina has secrets and power beyond comprehension, and her pack will regret the day they cast her aside. For lovers of werewolf stories with plenty of other paranormal activity and plot twists, this story from a new, emerging author is for you. Strap yourselves in. It's going to be a wild ride.

*****

Total Score (Elganza, Inc. | Awards): 44/100

Title: 5/5
This is a thought-provoking title. Usually, I'd hear "abandoned to fate," or I'd expect maybe "rejected by fate," and just the slight change of wording brings different connotations. It makes me curious to see where this goes.

Cover: 4/5
The color scheme with blues and that small brush of pink at the bottom is just gorgeous, and all the imagery blends and flows together so well. Font type, color, size, and placement are great, too. My only suggestion would be to bump up the font size just a touch for the subtitle at the bottom, because it's a bit too small on the table of contents page of your book, but I can read it just fine when I click your book title on your profile and get that pop-up box. Ah, the joys of Wattpad image compression.

Blurb: 3/5
This is tricky for me, because your line formatting and word choice makes this blurb very poetic, and I'm not a poet. So, I don't feel entirely comfortable making any recommendations about major changes to words or lines, but there are punctuation and grammar issues I can address, and hopefully that won't impact the lyrical flow (or negatively impact it, anyway).

First thing, no double punctuation. If there's a question mark, you don't need a comma. The only exception to this rule (aside from dialogue, which isn't in play here) is ellipses (...). Having that trailing effect with a question mark to indicate the slight upturn in tone that marks a hesitant question is really handy. But I'd flip it around so the ellipsis comes before the question mark (...?). And when you're using those trailing periods, make sure it's just three. No more, no less. As far as commas...if this were prose, I'd say you're overusing commas, but poetic use is much more stylistic. In poetry, commas are used to introduce pauses for the reader to ensure they read at the cadence you want to get the effect you want. So, I'm not touching those here.

Okay, now onto the grammar. I'm going to take this paragraph-by-paragraph instead of line-by-line, since it all flows together. My biggest overall problem here is figuring out tense. It feels like the tense is ambiguous because it changes from present to past so often, but I think that comes from all the reflections of the past happening in the present, and the contractions to start this off don't help. So...I guess I'll figure that out as I go.

"How'd you feel?" throws me right away. "How'd" is a contraction of "how did," "how would," or "how had," but the "you" also adds in the possibility of reading this as a contraction of "How do you." The next sentence starting with "When you're" doesn't help me much with figuring that out, because then I get stuck trying to decide if this is the contraction of "you are" or "you were." My mind automatically goes to the present tense when I see contractions. I get the feeling "if" may work better than "when" here, because it seems like the protagonist is talking directly to the reader. "A reason unknown" is probably fine for poetic use, but it feels more natural for me to say "an unknown reason." "Will it be" confuses me, because we've strayed from "How'd you feel?" enough that I have to look back to realize this is suggesting feelings I could have if I experienced the things listed.

So, I think it's best to treat this as a break in the fourth wall with the protagonist talking directly to the reader and asking hypothetical questions about what they would feel and do if they experienced what the protagonist experienced. This is what I came up with to make this clearer:

How would you feel? If you were treated like dirt, a liar, an unwanted, a runt...
If you were orphaned by the very ones that haunt you, and you took it all as your weight?
How would you feel if it all seemed like a lie?
Your life and all?
If you were just punished for a reason unknown...?
Would you feel despair or fear?
Pain or self criticism...?

I went with "how would," and I changed "when" to "if" to make it clearer this is the protagonist posing hypothetical questions to the reader. I also condensed "then you take" down to "you took" for clarity, and I changed all the verbs for the things the protagonist experienced to past tense. And, finally, I changed "Will it be" to "would you feel" for clarity.

In the next paragraph, there are a few lines (3, 6, and 7) that are in present tense but I think should be in past tense, since they're part of the recap of how the protagonist responded in the past:

3: And it all seemed to take place when mysteries unraveled, stones turned, stories awoke, hatred abounded and love vanquished.
6: Everything was reversed when I found out who I really was...
7: What I really was, and who I could trust.

Oh, and I put "every thing" together into the compound word "everything." Also, "underlyings" should be "underlings." And that takes care of the first section of the blurb.

Then we get to the section divider and the next bit. I don't really think you need this, actually. It feels almost like a book excerpt, but it's not (I don't think, anyway), and this is all a repetition of what you already told us in the first part of the blurb. Maybe you didn't spell it out this way, but it was implied. I also feel like this dulls the hook you sharpened and stabbed into a potential reader with the first bit. You already have a strong pull in that first section, and running too long can give the impression that maybe this will happen in the story, too, where there are sections that drag on excessively. So, if it were me, I'd cut this, but you're the author and the poet, and it's up to you.

Plot & storytelling: 5/15
I have really detailed notes covering chapters one through five in my review, which I completed while I was judging, so most of my feedback here and in the following sections will pertain to chapters six through 36, with some summarizing of the first chapters as necessary.

The plot is very convoluted and incoherent. Gina's parents died, and she suffered abuse at the hands of the other pack members for years, so it makes sense that she wants to escape after she shifts for the first time. Of course, feeling the urge to bond with the Alpha's next-in-line, a boy who was one of her abusers based on context (although never explicitly stated), wasn't part of the plan, and I have more detailed thoughts about how the characters respond to that in the "character development" section. Anyway, he rejects her, she runs away, gets attacked by rogues, gets captured by...other rogues, who then...do nothing with her. At all. Somebody must have taken care of her during the week that she was unconscious, and unless she's fine with walking around naked, somebody must have dressed her, too, since everybody loses their clothes when they shift back to human form (most of the time). But then, nothing. They don't talk to her, they don't care about her, they don't want her around, and they don't guard her.

She wakes up alone, presumably clothed, completely healthy, with no negative repercussions at all after being unconscious and near death for a week, and then she strolls around camp. Not really bothered. Not worried about why they captured her, what they injected her with when they captured her (although it seems later on in the story she forgot about that, which needs to be clarified here), not scared or nervous or mad or anything. Just walking around. She thinks about escaping, but...she doesn't. She stays for another week. Without bathing. Why didn't she bathe? Nobody's guarding her. What's stopping her from wandering off to find a lake or something?

And then, of course, there's a fire in her tent while she's sitting there looking at clean clothes someone left for her, and she doesn't notice the tent is on fire until right before she blacks out from smoke inhalation.

Then, things get really, really muddled. The conversations in her head with her wolf Mia are very confusing and hard to follow, as is whatever is happening around her, and I really don't understand why she gets the urge to protect these people who don't physically abuse her like her previous pack, but verbally and emotionally abuse her by treating her like crap (when they're not ignoring her, anyway). Her thoughts take over, and it's almost like reading stream-of-consciousness stuff that hasn't been edited into story format. It's just gibberish. She ends up with crazy weird powers (which change and get more powerful as the story progresses, however needed to get her out of whatever mess she's in with very little logic applied), and she ends up the trusted leader of a pack that she hates and that hates her, except now they all love each other. It would be more realistic for her to take over the pack out of cold ambition for power, and it would be more realistic for the pack to accept her because they're just plain terrified of her. After all, the girl breaks her back in battle and still stands up and kills multiple people without healing.

The injuries are a big inconsistency, too. Swatting one wolf away kills him, but tearing out the throat of the guy who rejected her, shredding him to pieces with her claws, picking him and pounding him against a rock multiple times, and then stomping and kicking at him doesn't kill him. Oh, and then he just casually gets out of bed to talk to his dad when his scouts get him home. There are later notes that it takes a week for werewolves to heal from much more minor injuries than that, so...?

So, anyway, she's a female Alpha now with crazy powers that just happen and change whenever to make her invincible, living in tents in the forest with her pack, except now, they're in a cave, and then another pack attacks, and she teleports them outside a city. Prior to this, I got the impression everybody is just kind of living in little communes in the forest, but now we have multi-million dollar corporations around and fancy cities. Oh, and the little pack she took over has one hundred wolves she can train as warriors to protect the rest of the pack. Lot of multiplication going on here to suit her needs.

That happens with other packs, too. They just explode like popcorn. And then witches, vampires, and demons suddenly arrive on the scene, too, just...because, and there are huge pack units that are all under the umbrella of one larger, stronger pack. So...now, she has the knowledge to write up complex business contracts and take over larger and larger packs, with the goal of taking over the pack that rejected her, although I don't know why she didn't just do that when the scouts arrived and she pulverized the Alpha-to-be. She took on 50+ witches and vampires by herself just for funnsies, and she can now exercise mind control and emit an aura that makes even the strongest Alphas submit to her, so it seems like it would be a lot quicker to just attack her old pack directly.

The lore is really convoluted. It feels like things are being added to the story on the fly, which is how I write, and this is a first draft that you're still writing, so maybe that's what's happening. Whatever the case, when you finish the story, I'd recommend going back to the beginning for a major edit to smooth everything out and make it all go together. Lore about witches, vampires, demons, other packs, large groupings of smaller, weaker packs led by stronger, larger packs, living accommodations (cities, towns, tents, whatever)—this is all really important stuff that needs to show up earlier in the story so the rest of the story makes sense.

So, when she starts gaining power, the story switches into a lot of third person scenes to show what others are seeing her do, and I really like that switch. It was getting very hard to follow her extremely twisted and scattered thoughts and schizophrenic back-and-forth with Mia, who she may or may not still be in contact with, along with visions of times past and future from the eyes of people who may or may not be dead. Her random teleportation doesn't help, either, because I never can get a handle on the scene. It's a cave—nope, teleported again, skyscraper—nope, forest—nope—oh, and her hair and eye colors change constantly. That continues in third person, which at first you used just to show others' perceptions of Gina, but then you transitioned into using third person most of the time, and I prefer that. There's still a lot of confusion regarding the scene and what form Gina's taking today, especially when Brucella enters the changing hair and eye color game. Names are really important with all that happening. There are scenes where both Gina and Brucella are dealing with the next Alpha to bring under their control, and neither girl is named, but the hair and eye color descriptions can go either way, so I don't know who's doing what.

Also, people are sometimes not nude when they shift back into human form now. Although I guess they probably don't mind nudity, since lower-ranking wolves can't keep their clothes on when they shift back, which adds another layer of weirdness when you're talking about a 15-year-old girl (who is a late shifter, I might add) wandering around naked after she shifts.

The Alphas are another confusing bit. Men in general are, actually. They're all misogynistic pigs who think they can seduce or master Gina (who they see as an attractive little girl, so they may be pedophiles, too) and then make her do their bidding, and when she conquers them, they turn into mindless puppies. I'm thinking specifically of Dylan following Brucella around with a lovesick expression here. I don't know why Gina suddenly gets mad enough to try to kill him after she already brought him under her control, and I also don't know why she doesn't just use her aura or mind control to overpower him again instead of attacking him, because she's already shown that she's very capable of doing that.

Elenore and Gina's backstory is a whole new kettle of worms that adds more confusion to everything and seems like a really convenient way to explain why Gina's basically invincible. And to introduce more craziness among other characters who are secretly hybrids or imbued with some power that nobody else has. Also, I have no idea when Mia came back and why she flipped her entire personality. She was the one wanting to mate with Marcus, and now she's the one trying to kill him (again)? It seems like she took lessons in evil seductress while she was MIA.

(Sorry-not-sorry for the pun on her name. I saw the opportunity and had to take it.) 😉

So...yeah. I am a certified pantser, so I know what it's like to write a story and then go back and read it and be like, "What? That doesn't make sense. Didn't I kill him?" I actually keep a running list of inconsistencies in my stories for me to work out the next edit, so it happens. And this is your first story on Wattpad, too, so you're getting into your groove and figuring it out. The story got much better and easier to follow after you switched to third person, so there is definite improvement already. You're almost done with it, so when you finish and you feel like it, just go through for editing. Some restructuring and ironing out will help bring this story into its own.

Character development: 2/10
The characters need some work. I can't understand or relate to any of them, especially Gina. She's basically a psychopath, from what I can tell. The story starts off with her being used and abused just because her parents died, with her never standing up for herself and no indication even from inner dialogue that she has a backbone or wants things to change. Then, she shifts for the first time, and we suddenly find out that she's been waiting for that to happen so she can escape. But then the whole mating bond with the Alpha-to-be happens, and...well, I don't understand that at all. I know the physical pull is very strong between them, but there should be nothing in her that wants to be mated to him. He abused her. She should be as revolted by the thought of mating with him as he is of mating with her, and when he rejects her, yes, it physically hurts, but she should not be surprised, and she should probably be relieved.

Greenie is another weird one. He's the creep who's kissing her and whispering to her when she's in-and-out of consciousness on the verge of death for a week, but then he doesn't even tell her where she can take a bath over the next week? And he's apparently turned on by her rage, which makes me concerned for his mental health, especially since she kills (or nearly kills?) his brother, and he still stays on and becomes her Beta. And then her mate.

And why can't she use his name? Jason. Is that so hard? She uses everybody else's name. There's nothing sentimental about "Greenie" to her.

As I mentioned above, I don't understand why she feels compelled to protect the second pack to revile her, and I don't understand why they suddenly trust her and become so devoted to her. Yeah, she saved them, but she's also clearly a maniac with exponential uncontrolled power.

That kind of continues throughout with all the characters. Beyond descriptions of physical pain, there is little to no exploration of any other aspects of their personalities or inner thoughts, so I can't connect or relate to any of them. I don't have to know what it's like to be abused and rejected like Gina, but I should be able to feel what she's feeling in the story and empathize with her so I can understand why she does what she does, but I can't. The only thing I can feel is her pain, and I have to agree with her enemies' assessment that she's a monster.

Writing style: 2/10
There are very few visual descriptions of anything except Gina's physical appearance, with the occasional smattering of another person's physical appearance. Scent gets pretty good descriptions, which is appropriate for this genre, and you invoke touch with every excruciating description of shifting or injuries sustained in battle, but visual and sound descriptions are often little more than "a tent" and "a crack." They're very bare bones, and I can't picture most of the settings in the story, although I will say that your visual descriptions do improve as the story progresses. Elenore's cave is probably the best visual environmental description in the story. Fleshing out your descriptions is also a great way to develop your characters and set an appropriate pace for the story.

As I noted above, the first person chapters become more and more convoluted and informal in tone as they progress, almost like we're getting a stream-of-consciousness dictation of Gina's thoughts, so I'd actually recommend changing the entire story over to third person. You do a much better job of regulating the language and tone in a way that makes sense in third person.

There are some rare uses of bold font in the early chapters for emphasis, and I would cut those out. None of the words in bold warranted that much emphasis, and every incidence is jarring to the reader.

As far as italics, I would only use those for thoughts. The flashbacks, visions, and dreams all flow with the narrative, so changing the font to italics for those actually upsets the story more than it explains it.

There are also a lot of larger words used that aren't actual words, or they're used incorrectly. I didn't jot down every instance, but I'll list a few here so you can kind of see what I mean. "Sclerotisity" isn't a word, and in the context that you used it, I think you meant "velocity." "Nymphomaniac" is used a few times when referring to oversexed men, but the word actually means a woman with excessive sexual desire and does not apply to men. "Delude" means to fool someone into believing a lie, and that's used in several places where I think you mean "deduce." So, my best recommendation is just to use spell check. It will catch a lot of these. And, whenever you're in doubt, just Google the definition really quick.

Grammar: 2/10
I have really detailed notes about grammar issues in my review, but I'll list the general areas of most concern here. Similar to my note about spell check above, my best recommendation is to use at least spell check and review in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, although using an editing tool that supports your English usage would catch a lot more errors. The one I use is the free version of ProWritingAid, which supports American, UK, and probably other variations of English. I'll actually run all this feedback through that before I submit it, and I guarantee it will catch me out on multiple little mistakes throughout this text. (Addendum: Three mistakes alone in this paragraph. 😅)

Chapter one is in present tense, although Gina is reminiscing about the past, so most of it is actually in the past tense. But the story swaps over to present tense in chapter two. I forgot to mention this earlier, but the change in tone from chapter one to chapter two is significant enough that I actually think chapter one should be renamed as Prologue, and chapter two should become chapter one. That makes the change in tone and tense fine. But, anyway, there are frequent slips into present tense throughout the rest of the story, and it's important to maintain consistency to eliminate reader confusion.

You consistently use double punctuation, which is incorrect. Periods, exclamation marks, question marks, and ellipses all stand on their own. They should never be followed by commas or periods, and if somebody exclaims or shouts a question, you only need a question mark, not a question mark and exclamation mark. If you feel like the question mark isn't strong enough, then use a dialogue tag to describe how the person is speaking. And I'll get into dialogue and dialogue tags at the end of this section, because that's kind of a monster on its own.

There are areas of awkward phrasing with odd word choice or excessive words. Wordiness isn't necessarily bad, but there are times when extra words cloud the meaning, and it's better to condense a little.

You use a lot of single-sentence paragraphs, and you often put each sentence of a paragraph on its own line instead of keeping it all together. The only times you should be hitting "enter" is when you're creating a new paragraph. If it's all in one paragraph, just space each sentence apart with one space. It gets confusing when individual sentences of a paragraph are separated into individual lines, and it breaks the flow of the paragraph. Frequent single-sentence paragraphs give a really choppy, jumpy feel to the story in general, and that applies with splitting paragraphs this way, too. I know Wattpad is infamous for messing up formatting when people copy/paste their stories into the Wattpad editor, and if that's what happened with yours, you just have to bite the bullet and go through and check the formatting manually. Yeah, I know, it's a pain, but it makes a big difference to the readability of the story.

For POV changes midway through a chapter, I'd add a section divider and set the note about the POV change apart in bold. It happens a few times where this isn't done, and since the POV change is in the same font style as everything else, it's easy to overlook it. Also, there are a few times when it just says "POV" without a name, so that's not really helpful.

Okay. Dialogue and thoughts. These get really confusing. For thoughts, just use italics. Don't use single quotation marks. That looks too much like dialogue in the double quotation marks, and especially when Gina's having a thought conversation with Mia while other people are trying to physically talk to her, it gets really hard to follow. Also, similar to what I said with paragraphs, all dialogue belonging to one speaker needs to be on the same line. And keep actions with their speakers. This makes it easier for the reader to follow the conversation and know who is saying and doing what. The rules for thoughts are the same as they are for dialogue, just without the quotation marks. So, a few examples, and I'll include question marks and exclamation marks so you can see how to use those effectively without double punctuation or any additional emphasis:

"Gina? Are you listening to me?" Brucella asked.

No, Mia, you can't do that. You can't kill him, Gina thought frantically.

We can't let him live after what he did to us, Mia retorted. He rejected us. Don't you remember how much that hurt? How bad he made us feel? Doesn't that mean anything to you?

But to kill him...

Brucella touched Gina's shoulder. "Gina? Gina! What's going on? Talk to me!"

Originality & creativity: 10/10
This is actually the first werewolf story I've read, and while I've seen plenty of advertisements for stories about downtrodden women who were rejected by their mates and then come back to fight for power and recognition, that is not all that's going on here. Gina is a tribrid, for crying out loud. Part werewolf, part witch, and part demon. She'd be messed up even if she had a happy childhood. The girl's power is almost limitless, and it's no wonder she's taking control of everything, especially since her mate's rejection was the breaking point for her. She snapped, she's scary, and I don't think this fictional world will ever be the same again.

Emotional impact: 2/10
This goes back to lack of character development. I can't relate to any of the characters, so I can't connect with them emotionally. The best I can do is wince when somebody gets injured in battle, because I know, logically, that hurts, but I don't feel it, and I don't feel much more than bystander sympathy.

Pacing & structure: 2/5
This is really, really rushed, especially right at the beginning, and I've already commented about the convoluted structure and plot. Restructuring, adding important lore earlier in the story, adding more descriptive elements, developing the characters and better portraying their thoughts and emotions, will all fix the pacing, without you having to change the timeline at all.

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

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 2/10So, as I said, this is my first werewolf story. And this is interesting. Gina is a terrifying character, and I would hate to live in this world where strict pack hierarchy promotes abuse and mating bonds hold way too much power over a person's choice for their future happiness. The threat of dying from rival packs or other paranormals also hangs over everything, and combining all of those paranormals into hybrids and tribrids seems to be essentially the same as dropping an atomic bomb in the world and saying, "Good luck!" There's too much power with too little control. The plot and Gina's powers also seem to change on a whim to suit her needs.