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The Silent Voice by EtherealMoon2kx

Title: THE SILENT VOICE by EtherealMoon2kx
Source: Review Shop by TheBlossomCommunity_
Genre: Dark romance
Mature: Y (blood, depression, emotional abuse, murder, physical abuse, strong swearing, suicidal ideation, torture, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 31/40
Digging deeper: 30/100
Final thoughts: Complete
Special note: Chapter 18 was the last available chapter as of the completion of this review.

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: 31/40

Title: 9/10
Good title, and it matches the blurb and cover, adding to the impression of a woman suffering in silence. My only nit-picky thing about the title is that it's in all caps. I'd swap it out to match what you did with the cover, so only the first letters of each word are uppercase.

Blurb/synopsis: 6/10
I would save all the questions for the end of the blurb. They're a great way to hook a potential reader by prompting them to seek answers in the story—after the main section of the blurb has introduced the characters and plot. They're not as good at starting off a blurb as straight statements, and if you use too many questions, that dulls the hook. So, I'd move the third paragraph up to the top of the blurb, and I think you can incorporate some of the questions into that statement/paragraph really well to sharpen the initial hook and pave the way for the last questions. There are also some verb tense issues here, fluctuating from future to present to past tense. This is overall in present tense, I think, and future tense is fine for the questions, but the past tense feels messy.

So, I'm going to start with the third paragraph. First thing, punctuation. You shouldn't have any spaces before punctuation (except for opening quotation marks for dialogue, but that doesn't apply here), so no space before the second comma. Also, dependent clauses (or small bits of info that describe a noun but can't stand on their own as a complete sentence) should be offset by commas on both sides. So, there should be a comma after "aunt." You also don't need "being." And this is in past tense, but I'm also going to try to merge it with some questions, just to make this a fuller, more informative paragraph that gives potential readers more info so they start asking questions on their own. That will probably negate some of the editing suggestions here, but they apply in many situations, so I thought it would be good to include them for future reference.

There are a lot of ways to flip and reorder words and sentences, so I'd encourage you to play with this yourself, but this is what I came up with. It merges the first four paragraphs into one, so the blurb ends with just two questions:

"Athena Everhart is the victim of a scheme by her grandmother and aunt, who force her to become the fake wife of Mikhail Cassius, the CEO of Infernotech and an elite mafia bigshot. She is terrified of him, knowing he's a bloodthirsty tyrant who will kill anyone who displeases him, but he is madly in love with her."

Then, for the questions, I'd recommend changing "How would" to "Can." That changes the meaning in a way that makes the reader even more curious. Instead of saying he will do these things and prompting the reader to wonder how he'll do them, now you're saying he wants to do these things, prompting the reader to wonder if that's possible, and if so, how he'll do them.

Cover: 10/10
This is a gorgeous cover. I love the white and off-white theme and the very simple design. A woman in a wedding dress, standing with her back turned to the camera, beautiful flowers, the title and your name in stylized font that isn't too fancy—perfect. It all works together to create a serene beauty, and her posture leaves the image open to interpretation, allowing room for the possibility that, although she may look great, she may not be too happy about this wedding.

First chapter: 6/10
Well, this is a nice intro to Mikhail. I can see why Athena is scared of him. This feels like more of a prologue than a first chapter, since Athena is only mentioned, her meddling grandmother and aunt aren't shown, and Mikhail clearly hasn't met her yet, but I guess I'll find that out in the next chapter.

There are quite a few grammatical errors here. Fluctuating verb tense is still a problem, as with the blurb, and issues with commas are still going on, too. This is in past tense, so stick with that outside of the dialogue (which can be present tense, since the conversations are in the present for the speakers). As far as commas, my best recommendation would be to use an editing tool that supports your English usage. There are places commas should always be used, places they should never be used, and places where they're okay to use but not necessary, based on your preference, so...they're a pain. I use the free version of ProWritingAid, which calls me out on commas all the time, and that would probably help with a bunch of the stuff I'll point out here, too.

There are some run-on sentences, which should be split into multiple sentences. For example: "As the grand door of the lavish ballroom swung open, all eyes turned to see the man who showered in the glow of luxury light, Mikhail Cassius, the infamous president of the 'Infernotech' strode forward with an impossibly imposing aura." Swap either the comma after "light" or the comma after "Cassius" for a period to split this into two sentences. Also, I'd probably change "who showered" to "bathed," since that's the more common usage for this kind of phrase, and "luxury" should be "luxurious." And you don't need quotation marks around "Infernotech."

There are some incomplete sentences, too, which basically need to be merged with a complete sentence or need something added to make them complete. For example: "Dressed spotlessly in a tailored suite along with his well-groomed blond hair, adorned his heavenly figure." This reads like a series of descriptive clauses describing a subject, which is missing, and a big part of the problem here is the clauses don't work well together, grammatically speaking. They're not written in the same format. Also, "suite" should be "suit." So, I played with this and tried a few different things, and this is what I came up with: "He had well-groomed blond hair, and his heavenly figure was dressed spotlessly in a tailor suit."

That illustrates another common problem, which is awkward or convoluted phrasing, often due to word choice combined with grammatical errors. For example: "Well...i was never concerned about him, but still ,someone sharing the same blood as mine died due to some worm made me quite angry." First, the proper noun "I" should always be capitalized, and there's an extra space before a comma here, too. The way this is currently worded made very little sense to me, but once I flipped some words around and rearranged a little, I think I got the gist of it. This is what I came up with: "Well, I was never concerned about him, but having someone who shares the same blood as me dying because of some worm still makes me angry."

All those examples illustrate some other issues, like word choice issues (for another example, "pray" should be "prey" later in this chapter), spacing (with punctuation, but there are also occasional double spaces separating words in a sentence), and capitalization (first words of sentences and names should always be capitalized).

You also use some double punctuation (,...), which is incorrect. The only time you should use two different punctuation marks side-by-side is when you're closing out dialogue or using parentheses at the end of a sentence. Otherwise, periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks, ellipses (...) should always be by themselves. In the place where you use the comma and ellipsis, it should just be the ellipsis with no comma.

Another thing is hyphenating certain words. This is kind of like commas in that it's tricky, and there are instances where hyphens are optional, but an age like "50 year old" should be hyphenated (50-year-old).

The last big thing is dialogue. Don't put dialogue in italics. It's already set apart by double quotation marks, which is enough, and that means you can reserve italics for things like thoughts or dreams or something completely different. In a dialogue tag, "asked" is only used when someone is asking a question. It doesn't go with statements. Also, dialogue should stay with its speaker. Never end a paragraph with a comma and put the dialogue in a new paragraph. It all needs to stay together. Separating speakers from their dialogue makes it hard to follow the conversation, because the reader has trouble determining who is saying what, and keeping actions with their respective speakers is important, too. So, for example:

Mikhail smirked and said, "I'm marrying your daughter."
"I won't allow that," Jacob Everhart said.
"You don't have a choice," Mikhail replied.
"Haven't you looked at the contract?" Jacob asked.
"I wrote the contract."

You'd do the normal paragraph breaks between lines, but I only did single-line breaks to save space here. But you can see that it's easy to follow, because you know who says and does what. And you don't have to say so-and-so is the speaker every time this way, either, because it's obvious. You can tell that the last line is said by Mikhail.

But, anyway, as I said at the start of this section, Mikhail is a scary guy, and I'm curious to see how his first meeting with Athena goes, so moving on to the next chapter.

*****

Digging deeper: 30/100

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

Blurb: 2/5
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Grammar & voice: 5/20
Most of this is the same stuff I talked about in my previous feedback, but there are a few new things I noticed in chapters two through five. First, chapter one is definitely a prologue. It feels entirely different from chapter two, and although part of that is the change in perspective, what I mentioned before about key plot details that are missing really makes this a prologue. So, I'd rename chapter one as "Prologue," and change chapter two to chapter one.

Second, I mentioned the perspective change there, and that's what I'll go into next. So, chapter one is written in third person, but chapter two switches into first person from Athena's point of view, and that continues in chapter two. But then chapter three switches back to third person, and that continues in chapters four and five. I'd recommend picking one and sticking with it. In this case, I'd recommend third person, because that gives you room to write chapters where Athena isn't present without you having to bother with changing your writing style to match the tone of whoever has the main point of view. The two chapters from Athena's point of view don't feel different in writing style from the third person chapters, anyway, and that's an important thing to consider, because Athena is going to think differently than an overall narrator. It feels like you have a better handle on writing in third person, too, so it comes off more naturally than the first person chapters.

And third (and last), when you have a word or a phrase in quotes, the punctuation rules are the same as with dialogue. So, if the quoted word/phrase is at the end of a sentence, the period would be inside the last quotation mark, not outside of it. I also prefer using double quotation marks for these, but that's your choice.

Plot & pacing: 3/10
This is really, really fast. There's no room for the reader to get to know Athena before the marriage, there's very little descriptive detail, and it's hard to get engaged with this story. Everything is just moving too quickly. You're doing a lot of telling instead of showing the story, and that makes everything 2D words on a page. Give us more details. Explore that snapshot of Athena's last conversation with her mother. What were they doing when they had that conversation? Was Athena getting ready for school, or were they getting ready for a party? What did her mother look like? How did Athena feel about that conversation? Did she feel insulted and put-down, or did she laugh off her mother's comments because she knew her mother didn't mean them negatively? Was her mother smiling? Frowning? All these details bring a scene to life and pull the reader into the story.

And it's the same throughout. You don't need to go into great detail with the backstory that happens between that cut scene and the beginning of the plot, but take the time to show us Athena before she finds out she's engaged. Show us the place where she lives. What's her work schedule? You say she works multiple part-time jobs, but what are those jobs? If she's saved enough money from those jobs to buy back her old house, then she must be living with basically nothing, because you can't save that kind of money if you're splurging on Starbucks every day. That also shows her persistence and dedication. But why does she want to buy the house back? What is she feeling? Does she think she'll feel closer to her late parents if she's living there? Why isn't she trying to get further away from her grandmother and aunt? Fill in the details. This is all very bare-bones right now.

The whole wedding thing doesn't make much sense right now. For one thing, why would her aunt beat her on her wedding day? Aren't her relatives trying to butter up Mikhail? They'd want her to look her best so he doesn't get angry at them. Athena trying to run away and then being caught and beaten would work better somewhere in between her finding out about her engagement and the wedding day, like right after she finds out. Most places (in America, anyway) won't let you get married at the drop of a hat like that. You have to get a license together, at the very least, and having some time to really explore Athena's depression and desperation would really help the reader get to know her. Maybe you could have her family kidnap her when she tries to run away and then lock her up somewhere until the wedding day, which is only a week away, so there's no time for her to get out of it. That would definitely fit the situation, and it would further show how despicable her family is. Also...how can they get married if he's not even there? I don't think that's legally possible (again, in America, anyway).

Take the time to explore Athena's first two days at Mikhail's mansion. Right now, she arrives, and then, suddenly, the maid who hated her loves her, and Mikhail is back. Just appearing in her room. Was he already there? Did he come through the door? And what does that last bit mean about his touch marking her? Did he actually leave a mark, or did she just feel like it's all more real to her now that she's met him?

Also, is this a fake marriage, or a real marriage? The blurb says both.

So, yeah, overall, more details, please. That will slow this down and bring the reader into the story better.

Characterization: 2/20
This is basically everything I said above, since the plot is very character-driven. I can't relate to Athena at all. I can sympathize with her, in a distant, bystander sympathy sort of way, but I don't know her at all. Her parents died when she was a child, and I don't know how that made her feel. Her family took her home and kicked her out, and I don't know how that affected her. She worked multiple part-time jobs to buy that house back, although I don't know why she'd want to, and that shows persistence and determination, strong characteristics that should mean she'd fight for herself, but she isn't a strong character, and she's not meant to be. She gives up and gives in right away.

The only interaction we see of her with her mother is one where her mother apparently insults her appearance. We don't know what her relationship with her father was like. We don't know what her grandmother did while he was alive to make her think she loved her. It sounds like things were better for her once, but all I see is people cutting her down and abusing her at every turn.

What does her family get out of her marriage to Mikhail? How do they know him? Are they involved in illegal activities? Athena doesn't have to know all the details, but she should know something about them, since they seem to be very involved in her life. They couldn't just call her up out of the blue and tell her she's marrying someone if they haven't been calling the shots in her life already. That also makes them kicking her out of her house and her working part-time jobs seem out of place. It feels like them locking her in a basement and never letting her out into the world would fit better with the way they're treating her. That would also explain why her spirit is already so broken.

Her relationship with Clara is weird to me. Clara seems to hate her, or at least strongly dislike her, from the moment she arrives, and then suddenly, two days into her life at the mansion, Clara cares about her. How did that happen?

And Mikhail...well, I know next to nothing about him. He's scary in the first chapter, and then he doesn't show up until the end of the fifth chapter, when he's the creepy stalker walking up behind her and thinking she looks good from the back. And then leaves. Why didn't he make her turn around? Why would he be satisfied with just that?

When Athena's researching him to find out what she's been locked into, that's a great opportunity to tell us more about him. What does he look like? Tall, blue eyes, blond hair. That's all I know, and I only got that much from the first chapter. What does his company do? What kind of reputation does he have?

I've already said there's very little descriptive detail, but we don't even get to see what Athena looks like until the fifth chapter. Until that point, she's a woman with a pock-marked face from acne as a kid. That's all. I don't know why Mikhail would want to marry that, and I'm sure her family isn't stupid enough to try marrying an ugly girl off to him. But you can actually use his description of her beauty to show how ugly she thinks she is. When she's looking in the mirror, she can say she sees dull black hair, tan skin that's hard to match with concealer so she can hide the scars, boring brown eyes, something like that. It's the same basic description with a different spin.

Harmony within genre: 7/15
I'm not sure I'd classify this as romance just based on the first five chapters. I guess you could call it dark romance, since it's either going that way or into some weird thriller plot where she's trying to escape the lot she's been given, and we know that won't happen, because she's too weak to even fight back. But a forced marriage does not automatically make a romance. If you explore her thoughts on love, especially while describing her life right before this all happened, that would really push this in the right direction by getting the reader to start thinking about love. Did her parents love each other? Did she see that and want that for herself? You could talk about whether she's dated prior to this, if she has any goals in mind for marriage and family, that kind of thing. Then, when everything she wants is flipped on its head and seems like it will never happen because of this forced marriage, you could talk about her longing for something she thinks she'll never get, foreshadowing the possibility that she will still get that.

Having her reluctantly admiring Mikhail will also increase the romance element. Begrudgingly admitting she likes the mansion, her room, and all the amenities she has. Looking him up on the internet and noticing how handsome he is. Things like that. It feels very weird for her to describe his voice as seductive when she's shown no interest in him at all, and the only thing she should feel from hearing his voice is fear.

Originality: 2/20
Right now, this just feels like the skeletal plot for any forced marriage story. Girl's parents died, evil family members took over, and they forced her to marry a scary mob boss. It's been done before. The way to make it your own is to fill in the details. Descriptions, characterization, introducing new plot elements (like really exploring Athena's life before this happened and Clara's attempts at friendship)—that's how you make this unique and yours.

Chapters 6-18:
I normally don't go back and add things after the fifth chapter, but there are a lot of contradictions in this story, and the biggest one is Athena's relationship with Mikhail. That makes no sense. In chapter six, it's stated that his attention is healing her, but he ignores her existence, and then he goes out of his way to put her in a situation that will humiliate her. He laughs when another woman throws her drink at Athena and then leaves with that woman while Athena passes out from sheer emotional distress. Why would that heal her? And she's not healing, not even by chapter 18. She's only sinking deeper into despair, to the point of suicidal ideation. Later in the story, it's even said that he's only spoken gently to her, which is a complete lie. He mocked her and insulted her at the start, and while that didn't continue, I'd say him speaking gently to her is a very rare and recent occurrence by chapter 18.

Why would he begin to feel something for her when he obviously despises her? She's far too weak for a man like him. He doesn't love her, and he doesn't even pity her. I could maybe believe him obsessing over her because he's used to women fawning over him, and she doesn't do that, but it's more realistic to believe he hates her for her weakness and wants nothing to do with her. At best, he would lock her away so he wouldn't have to see her, but given what we know about him, I wouldn't be surprised if he arranged her "accidental" death so he could marry a stronger woman.

So, when he does lock her up, that makes sense, as does his dark, insane turn. But then...she's not locked up anymore? And he's not a psychotic maniac anymore? She's free to roam the house and do housework (although why she would be doing that in a mansion full of servants is beyond me)? And he takes her shopping? And she considers herself lucky, even though nothing good has happened to change her perspective since she told him she wanted to die?

Why does she still have bruises on her hands? Mikhail hasn't been beating her, and anything from her aunt should have healed well before now (bruises heal within about two weeks). And why does she need money when she doesn't go anywhere and Mikhail takes care of everything?

Mikhail handles his own torturing and murdering? A mafioso wouldn't dirty his hands with that. And he hates his parents, and then he loves them, all in the same chapter. His mother is just like him, and his father's the nice one, but then his mother is nothing like him when she arrives, and his father...doesn't even talk, much less appear after they initially arrive at the mansion. It's later reiterated that his mother is a "lady Dracula," although she hasn't done or said anything to give anybody that impression (and I don't know where Athena got that idea, either, since she didn't even know who Mikhail was before she married him).

The personality info for Mikhail doesn't match what's in the story. It's been stated multiple times that he despised his brother. He has never displayed any sweet behavior, but then again, he's never been shown to care for anything or anyone, except maybe his parents. The interests and goals are completely new info, and based on what we've seen of his personality, if he wanted to kiss Athena or sleep with her, he would have forced her by now. As for her, bruises are not a long-standing physical descriptor unless there's constant physical abuse. And her interests and goals haven't been shown at all. There's been rare mention of books, at least...

Athena is really Grace? That should have been mentioned well before now, along with threats from her family not to reveal her true identity, and this should be a huge deal, not a side note. And why was his nose bleeding when she bumped his chin with her head? She'd have a really bad headache if she hit him hard enough for that to happen.

Overall, I'd say this is the definition of an unhealthy, toxic relationship. There is supposed to be a gradual shift in their feelings, so he's changing and becoming softer, at least where she is concerned, but I just don't see it. Every change is sudden, unexplained, and extremely far-fetched. To make this more realistic, I think her asking him to kill her and put her out of her misery should be the turning point, although it would take an awful lot to make it believable that he would even care about her saying that, let alone start thinking differently about her and develop feelings for her. I really can't see him hearing that and doing anything but laughing in her face, and I really can't see her feeling anything but intense fear for him, which she should feel. He is absolutely someone who will kill her when he's tired of playing with her.

*****

Final thoughts:
Athena's life has been one miserable turn after another, and now, her family has forced her into a marriage with a mafioso. Predictably, that doesn't start well. Mikhail insults and mocks her as much as her family used to do, but at least he doesn't beat her. And yet gradually, inexplicably, he begins to care for this beautiful, fragile woman, and the fear he savors in others is something he hates to see in her. Maybe there's a chance that something good will come of this. Maybe...

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