Shattered Hearts

Sure to make your heart swell, until it shatters. Kulin delivers Shattered Hearts with artful writing that stays true to grief, pain, and love.

Opening Comments:

Hello! Sorry if it's late, like, really late. I don't really have anything to say for myself other than Reading Burnout is real and has been beating me up since I don't know when. Also that I had to write my reviews on my laptop now because my Google Docs doesn't work on the phone and usually, I could just read and review through my phone anywhere and anytime. Other than that though, thank you for letting me review another book of yours! It is an honor. Again, sorry for the very late review and I hope you understand. Enjoy the review!

Don't feel shy; add inline comments if you have any inquiries, reactions, or PM me if you have anything you can't understand in my review.

First Impressions:

The Cover is absolutely beautiful. I really like the faded red silhouettes and the cracks running through the cover. It's just really beautiful and fits the book nicely. The fonts are good, and the color scheme is pleasant and consistent through the cover.

Update: I see you've changed the cover. I don't really like this new one. The setting of Shattered Hearts isn't at the beach. Sure the ending scene is the beach, but it isn't the whole setting of the book. The bright fonts and seashells also don't go well with the story at all; it gives off a warm sunny feeling (which we do get at the middle part of the story), but the whole theme of the book is grief, and how much the human heart can be shattered yet pieced back together again. The book is more sentimental than the fun, colorful cover now. The old cover captured the feelings more in my opinion.

The Title is good too, I have nothing against it.

The Description is nice, it paints a clear picture of what your book is going to be about. However, it builds too much of a tension that the book itself couldn't hold up to. I will be talking more about this in the plot part of the review, as the description isn't the problem here at all.

Although upon closer inspection, there are some things you need to be less vague of. I'm going to put up a screenshot of the description here so we can see what we're dealing with.

Sorry for the unedited screenshot; I don't know how to edit pictures on my laptop.

Anyway! Here we can see I highlighted 'Sa ilang taon', that's because I think specifying how many years it has been will make it more shocking. I don't remember the exact number of years you've provided in the book, but I do remember being shocked at how long that time was and it created a sort of empathic impact on the readers. Adding that fact here would be a good move.

Also, 'sa panibagong lugar' can just be 'Santa Clara'. It isn't much but I think adding this detail would make the description sound more concrete and would create an impression that the story knows where it's going, which would be more explored in the plot section of this critique.

The opening chapter introduces us to two crucial people in our story and gives us enough time, pacing, and material to sympathize with the main character. Starting the story at school was a nice way of starting a book too as it introduces the reader to a familiar environment. The feel and vibe itself was good, with Samantha walking to her job and meeting up with a guy we're introduced to as her friend and co-worker, Gerald. We then get to know more about these two characters and get to like Gerald for how even though this is only the first chapter, you've already established their friendship and how much Gerald cared for Samantha. It is also within the same chapter that the inciting incident, where her beloved father dies, happened. I think starting the story from her going about at work and her usual day is a good start to a story, rather than starting it with her instant grief for the father dying. So it's good you started it where it should be started!

Characterization:

Okay the characters are amazing! I love how Samantha has her own personality rather than just being the grievous character we're supposed to sympathize with because oh so many

bad things happened to her. She actually has a personality and honestly feels like a real person.

Samantha can sometimes be too kind and understanding, despite her circumstances and grief constantly weighing her down. She's someone sentimental and emotional, who's crying almost becomes a gag through the book (which I loved, it's rare to find emotional women in fiction nowadays). Despite that, we know she just really loves the people who gave her new life, who saved her in a time of grief. Her kindness also was the right amount (or is it?). I knew I wasn't annoyed at all with how much she understood Xander's immaturity. Probably because she still did listen to Gerald's advice at that time and decided for herself that she's not gonna let herself suffer in his place anymore.

I also really loved the side characters. Mainly Erika. She's fun and kind.

Xander, I didn't really like him as much. Even in his time with Samantha, he never struck me as anything other than the label 'love interest'. True, his relationship with Samantha before the conflict was healthy and all that, but it's just that it looked too good to be true, and even though we spent so much time with him in the middle part of the story, I never really connected to him.

I think one of the aspects that made it so hard to read the middle part of the story was because of him. His character felt butchered, like he was too much of a robot or someone speaking out of a how-to-get-a-girlfriend textbook chapter 5: tell her flowery things.

At some parts of the story, he did start growing on me more, but now that I've finished it it's like I can't be shattered that he's not actually the male lead. I was more shattered for Samantha, because she didn't deserve any of this.

I don't think much can be done for Xander though, I could see your efforts of making him likable to the readers. And it did work, if for a short time, he just doesn't have as much of a lasting impact as say, Gerald, Erika, or Samantha.

Speaking of Gerald, I can only say praises for him. Though his character, in a wider point of view, sounds like another too good to be true love interest, he still felt much more real and authentic than Xander. He waited so long for Samantha, and only wanted the best for her. He's also much more mature than Xander, and their relationship felt a lot more real and a lot less like fantasy. Gerald is just such a good character, and the fact that you managed to get that in a couple chapters (because he had less screen time than anyone else in the cast) was amazing.

Conflict and plot:

Okay now here we might have some problems. Your beginning and end is good, amazing actually. The premise isn't that exciting or interesting, but for a more laid back read it's alright. I really loved the beginning though, with this grim, grieving atmosphere. I loved Samantha going to Santa Clara for a new beginning too; the friends she met there were amazing and as they had fun and cherished each other, I as the reader cherished it too.

The ending was beautiful and just really fitting of the story. You gave justice to Samantha and her shattered heart, as well as wrapped the story up nicely.

However, it's the middle that I didn't like that much. Shattered Hearts suffer from this common phenomenon in the writing world: the sagging middle syndrome. Sure the beginning set us up for some pretty laid back experiences, and of course we didn't come into this book expecting a thriller when it isn't in the genre.

But still, a book needs to be entertaining. Whether it be a slice of life, comedy, thriller, horror, whatever it may be. We came into this book to be entertained. And entertainment needs tension.

The middle focused on establishing relations between the main cast–which was alright, ideal even. We want our main cast to have strong relations with each other in order for us to care for them. Except it was really kind of boring. Even though yes it was fun and wholesome in a sense that I did enjoy reading it to some extent, or that I really loved how everyone was having fun and wholesome moments. With each passing chapter and each second I spent reading all of it, it was like I felt betrayed each time.

You 'closed' the story around two times before the actual ending of the book: when the doctor called back to the first chapters and how Samantha now looks so much more happy; and when Xander and Samantha said 'I love you!' to each other. In both plot points, the story could end. In fact, to the reader it does feel like the end.

That's because nothing seems to be happening from a reader's standpoint. Upon closer look I can understand how and why you structured your book as such: for building character relationships, interactions, and deepening the characters. Presumably to make the ending more shattering.

But there are two problems here: one the middle sagged, and two the end could've stood just the same without that much filler in the middle.

On our first point:

As I was showering, muling over how I will approach this in the critique, a lightbulb lit up and I almost slipped and fell. The solution for the Sagging Middle Syndrome is to create mini arcs, or subplots. Yet subplots that feel like they still connect to the story. But for that to happen, we still need a clear goal for the ending of the story.

I suggest creating a goal. Something, even if it's just a facade, to tell the readers we are going somewhere.

This goal could be as simple as Samantha wanting to have one hundred friends by the end of the year. The middle part of Shattered Hearts could definitely go somewhere, there is so much material and even more that we can insert in between.

Here are some suggestions for the middle:

An idealistic and overachieving yet wholesome goal for Samantha. Eg. Her wanting to succeed in her studies and keep the squad safe and tightly knitted. This could then introduce us to subplots in the chapters yet still have the same scenes you've already written, just with more tension. For example instead of the simple fluff-filled shenanigans, you could inject a bit of anxiety within Samantha, or some scenes where she thinks their squad is 'at stake of breaking apart.' This could cause some extreme tension and anxiety not only in her part but in the readers as well, but only if you've also injected some scenes that does make it seem like it'll break the squad even in the reader's point of view. This'll make the almost squad-breaking conflict between Bianca and Tristan more tension filled too, and by the end of it, it could even serve as the ending of this little mini arc on Samantha's fear of losing her happiness.

Then, just as she thought she could be more comfortable and assured that her happiness won't leave her, hit her with the whole Xander conflict, and the ending ends just as usual, just that now there's a single thread of character-plot going through and serving as the spine for the story now. The best part is you don't even need to change as much in the ending parts, you could just insert a bit of emotional line there (*some line referring that Samantha has found a new, but secure, happiness)

A more mysterious yet still wholesome way where Samantha finds some mysterious item, tape, or something that somehow has to do with the big reveal in the last parts. Let's say it's a puzzle left by her father, or better yet a letter written in a peculiar language (but this language of symbols is actually a language made by their parents to communicate with each other). This would likely not do much for more of the fluff parts of the story, but it's a firmer middle. With this approach, you are more likely to get a concrete, multiple-threaded story. Except it would take a lot more time to revise and edit it with this one, since it's an almost complete overhaul.

Okay a little commercial. Why am I doing this? And have I even explained the situation of the middle enough? Okay here's a little symbolistic thing. I think of your story as three blocks, now actually, two blocks. One block for the beginning, and another for the end. They are both firm and can stand nicely. Your middle should be another block too, or more likely a set of smaller blocks. For our story to be complete and for it to stand, we need to lift all parts at the same time and neither would fall. Think of it as something akin to lifting a barbeque stick on both ends.

For stories with a concrete middle, their three (or more) parts could be lifted and it won't fall apart. But for the stories with sagging middle syndrome, they only have the beginning and the end blocks to be lifted, but the middle would just sag.

In your case, your middle is a piece of separate files connected only by a single measly string. And for us to fix that, we need a thread or even a stick to go through the beginning, through all the pieces of separate files, and out the back of the end. With that, we can lift the story and the middle won't fall apart. Because it has this stick or thread of story linking it with the beginning and end.

Now the examples I gave you are some suggestions for that thread. Think and decide for yourself whether you're going to use one or think of other threads.

Pacing:

Okay at first I couldn't figure out if the pacing was too fast but now I realized it's actually kind of alright. The beginning and end had great pacing, it was again the middle that felt like creeping through mud. But then again we've already established that and what we need to do with it in the 'plot' category of this critique, so I'm not going to repeat myself.

Theme:

The theme was beautiful.

You portrayed what you wanted to portray and tell what you wanted to tell in such an interesting way. What I find so unique about it is you didn't go by and had a concrete theme through the whole book like how any other story is. For example is the friendship theme where it works a lot like story building: the main characters are friends and then something happens that threatens their friendship and they start questioning if they were ever friends to begin with, ladida dida, and then by the end of the book it all gets resolved with them realizing that friendship is better than this conflict that threatened them in the first place.

Another example would be a rowdy, rude, and naive main character that screws things up every time learns a lesson to control himself and become a better person.

But on Shattered Hearts, you tricked (almost gaslighted actually) the readers into thinking 'this is the right way to think; this is the theme of this story' right around the middle. And by that I'm referring to Xander telling Samantha 'sometimes love isn't slow, sometimes it's just this quick and sudden.' I don't remember the exact words but that was what it summed up to.

And it works because right before that I was questioning, even creeped out at how fast their romance is going. It isn't even 'development' at that point, I just felt like I was in a racing car. And then Xander drops this line and makes me surprisingly accept the race.

The fact is at some point he made sense, and this sense has actually already been thrown around in a couple of movies and books. They all always tell us that 'love is blind,' 'love is sudden,' 'love can be quick.' So even though I was a firm believer of slow burn love, I decided to just accept it as the theme of the story.

And then, you hit us with the ending. It's revealed that the theme of the story was never about quick love, but love that encompasses years and years of waiting and spending time with each other. I loved it.

Writing:

The writing was good. I loved the MMK-like format of sitting down and talking to someone about your story. I already talked much about this in the chapter-by-chapter review so I won't repeat myself here.

The writing style was definitely unique and fitting for the story, and there were also not many typos that I saw so a great job on this!

However, there are some things that do need to be corrected. The most recurring problem is stating the obvious. I wasn't able to screenshot it but most of the time I could see the writing getting too clunky because of obvious telling. There are a lot of times where you tell and not show, but there are also more times of you showing and telling. I know this is a kind of counter for the 'show vs tell' debate and it obviously does make sense, but overusing it is a no go.

If you need to show, show. If you need to tell, tell. If you need to do both, do so. A mixture of all of this will help the writing become less clunky and make the reader not go 'well duh' every time we read something. Again, I've written more on this in the chapter-by-chapter review.

Dialogue:

The dialogue, like in December Tryst, is as good as it has always been. Very natural and authentic, it sounds very Filipino, if that's a thing XD. Again, like with your other book, you managed to make me hear the Characters' voices. Except as I read on there seems to be something amiss.

I first have to address Xander, especially Xander when he's saying romantic things. It sounds like something off a romance catalog, or like a script he reads off. It feels inauthentic and when bad things happen and there's this emotional moment with characters, their dialogue would sometimes sound out-of-character.

And I understand that, there are just some very quotable emotional lines we as the writers come up with and want to add in our story. But there are limits to that, including how accurate this quotable line would be for the character and for the scene.

Dialogue is also an amazing place to start with the uniqueness of character, the charm. Charm is especially important for male leads, and it's easy to pull off in visual stories like movies or animation. But for books, they have dialogue.

I'm not quite the kind of author to ask how to charm readers into liking a character by dialogue alone, but I sure was on the receiving end of this. And by receiving end, I mean Gerald.

Gerald's speech, paired by his kindness, caring, and an almost mysterious aura, makes the reader want to know about him more. This is the first step to charm, and you just achieved it. I love Gerald's character, and I do want to know him more. But with Xander, this desire to know a character more and create a connection between the reader and the character falls flat.

In the first parts though, you did manage to charm me into being intrigued with Xander's character. I wanted to know more about him, I was at first eager to jump into this story hoping to know more about him. However, it just falls at that because the reader started feeling like there's nothing interesting to discover about him after all.

It's because Xander's character was almost 'wired' to be the mysterious, cold, bad boy with a soft heart. However, it doesn't give us much of him, do you get what I mean? Despite the writer pulling obvious mysterious tropes for him, it doesn't make us want to spend time with this character. It doesn't achieve that goal of making the characters appear complex and worth spending time on in the reader's perspective.

And the answer to why that is is simple. It doesn't show us enough charm. Unlike with Gerald, who we at first thought was the supportive guy best friend of the main character, or the poor second lead. This innocent and non-mysterious approach itself is what builds up to the reader caring about him more.

We thought we knew him, until the very end where we still wanted to know more.

This creates a desire and care for a character. It makes spending chapters and chapters of a book more enjoyable. Unfortunately though, it only happened toward the end, because we spent more time with the true second lead: Xander.

There's no real need to change that though, as it might change the whole point, theme, and story of the book if we try to make Gerald the male lead in the first place. It is just worth thinking about and taking care to remember this when writing a character. Not to mention it would also create a lot of theme problems in Shattered Hearts as of the moment. Yet again, I'm sure you've already done your best to try and make us care for Xander, and I suppose that's enough. The middle could just be more enjoyable if you added some thread there as I've said earlier.

Oh well! We've kind of segwayed to character charm here instead of dialogue XD. That's probably because I've also talked a lot more about dialogue in the chapter-by-chapter review. This was just one of the more major things I've found.

Accuracy and originality:

So far I didn't really see any inaccuracies in setting or anything. My mother was an architecture major though so maybe I could lend some help there?

I'm not quite sure how I would go about this–but don't be nervous! I'm not saying anything's wrong with how majoring in architecture is written here. I would simply like to lend a helping hand if it is needed. If it is not then please, disregard this little thing.

My mother always complained about the high standards of her professor (not to mention how they'd just roll dice for grades), and how she'd fall asleep at around four in the morning or get no sleep at all. It is quite a stressful course. More than that, she also talked about how it's hard to find a job in a company where it actually pays you decently. They work you to the bone, with no sleep, and regard your plates as simple as kindergarten drawings, and pay less or none at all.

I'm not sure if that helped, and I'm pretty sure you've already portrayed a great amount of stress and no sleep in the latter parts of the story when they were drinking coffee and instant ramen I believe? So I'm not sure if this is needed.

Personal enjoyment:

I really enjoyed Shattered Hearts. More than that, I was grateful to critique a book from an author who genuinely wants to improve their book. In all of my critiques, only around two people (including you) had ever really messaged me privately to ask more questions about their book, and their other books too. It truly is something admirable, and I would always be happy to help even if I reply a little too late XD. I'm not as active on Wattpad as I had been before.

Moreover, I loved Shattered Hearts and its unique writing, its characters, and its ending. I loved the theme as well; the last five chapters were just so enjoyable and wrapped up the story so well. The only thing I do find that you can work on improving is the middle. Remember too, there's many other approaches to it, so don't restrain yourself to the ones I presented.

Closing comments:

Again, thank you very much for letting me critique another one of your books. It has been an honor (even if it took so long). Also, about the 'chapter-by-chapter' review I added with this, please consider it an early Christmas gift. A thank you gift for being a loyal and kind customer ^-^

However, I won't be adding that in my other critiques, I only actually did it as a personal thank you gift for offering to pay for my services. Thank you very much! It means a lot.

Recap:

The new cover

Less vague blurb

Creating a firmer middle

Suggestions for middle

Streamlining/omitting the 'well duh' effect in writing; limiting the overuse of show and tell

Character charm

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