Valence - Aarya2103

Reviewer - Xanatos_Gambit

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Title / Cover

Valence definitely makes me think of like "valence electrons" LOL. Gives me *a little* PTSD but also piqued my interest, since it's an odd title. I love the cover; the font and the mirror image concepts are both cool. I also like how the title is reflected in the blurb as well.

Blurb

I think you reveal too much in your blurb. Like you tell us a giant amount of stuff that would be better left up to the reader to discover while reading the book, since none of this is revealed in chapters one or two. I would take out the "parents are alive.....shift worlds because she was a valence" and make it more suspenseful, like "find out the truth of her parents' death....a journey created only by her powers as a valence". Something like that which practically says the same thing but leaves some more ambiguity.

Genre

Seems to fit in fantasy, thriller, and adventure. If you had to do contests, I'd put it in fantasy :)

Originality

I've not heard of a mirror dimension quite like the one in this novel!

Descriptions

I like your descriptions: I can really visualize the house and whatnot. Personally I think you could be a little more tactful in your descriptions of Brielle's clothing and whatnot; for example, instead of just listing off what Brielle is wearing in like a paragraph or so, you could work the details in throughout the whole chapter. This way it's not a mini info dump and still conveys the description you wanted.

Character Development

You introduced a character named Ryan in Chapter 11 who it seemed we were supposed to know, but I either missed or you didn't.

Update: we meet Ryan in Chapter 16, so I don't know why you mentioned him earlier, since we didn't know he existed. It just confused me.

I like how both Brielle and Ace are developed, but you relatively gloss over Scarlett's and Ryan's pasts, despite having Brielle comment on how that they all have difficult pasts.

Plot

OKAY she loses consciousness like every end to the chapters... That is getting a little excessive. In at least ten of your chapter endings (probably more but I was not keeping track... this happens in).

Other than that, I like the pace of the plot, how Brielle learns things, and your technique of having Brielle have internal monologues to keep in perspective what you want the readers to be thinking about.

Grammar / Structure

For not being an native English speaker... you have better grammar than most of the native English speakers here on wattpad. Haha. So good job for that. That being said, I'm still going to recommend that you get an editor... since you miss lots of commas, capitalization, and have run-on sentences all over the book. I would point them out, but it would be a little harpy from me.

Note: I don't know if you got an editor for the first couple chapters and then they just didn't finish the rest or something... because in the first five chapters your grammar is WORLDS different and better from the rest of your book.

In chapter two, you have a paragraph where you fall into second person (Caleb is pretty tall so you can guess how huge and grand this mirror is). It flows better to describe things without using this second person "you".

I would also take out the *creak* *creak* and say the door creaked or something or at least take the bold and ** off of it. Way better flow.

Excessive letters (Ahhhh.....Whaaaat) and punctuation (why the hell is he helping me??) are not necessary to convey the emotions you want to convey.

Don't use "Lol" in an actual novel unless you're representing text. Just don't LOL.

Another thing I would suggest is to keep the dialogue format consistent. Sometimes you use like regular font for everyone's dialogue, and then like the conversation between Brielle and Ayra when Ayra was threatening her you start using italics for dialogue. This switch happens in other places during the book, and it reads very confusing.

Overall, I suggest an editor, and that would MASSIVELY improve the quality of your novel.

Vocab

You have a relatively simple vocab style. This isn't bad by any means, but I suggest using a thesaurus every once in a while to spice up verbs and enhance your descriptions!

Enjoyment

I did end up enjoying this book, plot and pace wise! The main factor that detracted me from it, however, was the grammar. I can't handle the *tink* *tink* and the "Lol I mean" in actual novels, in addition to the quotation marks lack of grammar. If that was fixed, along with the constant black outs of hers, that would be much better! :)