Please remember that my reviews are just my takes on things, you do not have to take my advice at all if you don't feel it fits the essence of your story. After all, I am only reading a few chapters, other readers might have different takes.

Reverie's Review

Your opening paragraph was solid, I enjoyed your style in describing the Helper. The staccato-like sentences lend to a disjointed read that makes the character seem supernatural and gives your book its place in the thriller genre. What I would recommend is keeping that style used exclusively when describing that character's actions or scenes involving him. While it may be difficult switching between two writing styles it is possible to execute it seamlessly and can be a very good writing exercise.

I found your descriptions could use some work on the other hand. Other than the descriptions of your characters there is not much left for the readers to pick up on for the most part. Consider making your narrative less sequential. You follow a linear structure to the bone, which does work in some cases but in this particular one works against you. The actions you describe that build up the plot of your book do not lead into eachother. It's a case of A happened. Then B happened. Then C happened. Rather than A led to B happening which inevitably caused C. I know this is a strange way of describing it but I'm going to focus the majority of this review on this factor as I found it was the aspect of your work which held you back the most. Essentially I managed to deduce the heart of the issue; the lack of sensory input leads to a lack of emotional input which causes the work to sometimes read a little minimalistically. You point out things that would otherwise be assumed because you are not describing things. Describe things, emotions, actions, using adjectives- not just verbs, will solve a large part of your problems. Take time to consider the senses when moving forward with your narrative. Not only on how characters look, you've covered that aspect well by creating your distinctive and memorable cast. I would strongly advise you to reread your scenes and make note of areas wherein you can interject with either a character's emotional description of how they react to something in a manner that is not seen through action but described visually or texturally, sound like, taste like, etc. While the stipped-back style does work extremely well for the scenes where the Helper is mentioned its effect is lessened by its presence in the rest of the narrative. The best way to highlight the presence of one thing is to include an excess of its opposite. This creates for a juxtaposition of sorts allowing for a more engaging read. Think of salted caramel, the salt allows you to taste the sweet more profoundly and vice versa. Your stripped-back style would allow for the addition of a highly emotional sequence to balance it out.

I do feel like I need to highlight that I thoroughly enjoyed your unusual subversion of depicting an engagement as a negative event. The referral to the ring as "That damn ring", her imagining stomping on it was very intriguing. This bleak outlook on what should be something that brings a lot of joy surprised me- especially the fact that Zorah's friends were more excited for her than she was. It was a little confusing though, to see her relationship be depicted as such a positive and happy one, given this information. Her fiancee seemed to be a healthy partner who was attentive and was described as loving her more or less unconditionally. Unless there are aspects of the relationship past the point in which I read that explain this I must admit it left me feeling a little confused when confronted with this relationship.

Your plot needs some clarification. I read through the seven chapters that I do for these reviews but was still left in the dark as to what the main thread of conflict would be, given the blurb you have provided I was left a little perplexed as to what was going on in the grander scheme of the narrative.

Your characters are very well-executed and very memorable. Gigi's especially, I enjoyed reading her segments and find her to be a compelling character. Your concept of her more or less collecting children from different continents was a point of interest. Her confirmation of the rumours that are associated with her effectively works to discredit them in an unusual manner of, accepting all to be true, even the most outlandish of things, to disprove them all. I would be interested in having an entire novella dedicated to this woman's backstory and life. It would be cool to see how she became who she was, and what choices led her down the path that led her to be a successful billionaire with a collection of children.

On a final note, your tagline of "We all eat lies when we are hungry." is chilling and rather thematically perfect for a thriller.