Title: Beyond the Veil

Author: cool_reader_

Summary: 5/5

I think your summary is pretty spot on. You introduce your protagonist, you introduce a bit of her relevant backstory (her abilities), and then the major conflict is outlined. And, obviously, the stakes are clear – her life is literally on the line. I really like the recurring theme of secrets and truths, and I'm actually very excited to read this. That is a sign of a good summary – well done!

Not sure if this was an accident or whether Wattpad was formatting weirdly, but for some reason, the part, 'she faces the worst truths of her life...' is divided into two lines. Maybe consider fixing that up? It could always just be my laptop messing with me, of course. I thought I'd mention it, just in case. 

Grammar: 3/5

Overall, I noticed that your first few chapters were a lot more polished than your last few. But, don't worry, I'm here to break the general rules down for you.

First of all, we'll talk about dialogue. Whenever a character is speaking and their dialogue extends over a few paragraphs, you still need the quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph to indicate this. For example, you wrote:

"The murderer always leaves the knife behind. So far, we couldn't find anything about the killer. But we'll find him soon. That's my promise to you.

Until then, please don't go out with strangers."

It should be:

"The murderer always leaves the knife behind. So far, we couldn't find anything about the killer. But we'll find him soon. That's my promise to you.

"Until then, please don't go out with strangers."

While we are still onto dialogue, let's talk about dialogue and punctuation. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"If you don't, my confession will be useless." she said.

It should be:

"If you don't, my confession will be useless," she said.

Another example:

"... at least you know now that your mother wasn't always a monster.", Edna said.

It should be:

"... at least you know now that your mother wasn't always a monster," Edna said.

And, an addition to that, since it is a comma instead of a period, you assume it is all one sentence. So, let's look at the following example:

"Liz," She said more firmly this time.

Since it is one sentence, you do not need to capitalise 'she'. It should be:

"Liz," she said more firmly this time.

Next – and this happened only in the later few chapters – you changed tense. For example:

"Our little princess is finally awake," a womanly voice blooms while cackling loudly. [blooms = present tense. Also, how does a voice bloom? Did you mean boom?]

The woman stifled a laugh. [stifled = past tense]

Since most of the story is in past tense, you need to go back and make sure it is consistent.

Finally, you need to go over the basic errors within the story. You have a missing period in the final chapter before the epilogue (during the sentence "we are the one to blame"). You have sentences that don't quite make sense because the tenses are all over the place, such as:

How could have she not know that he had chosen her as his fate already?

You have incomplete sentences with words that don't exist, such as:

Whoever was killing those girls progressing ever so fastly, making each death worse than the others.

You're missing a word that makes the sentence complete, and since the word 'fast' is both an adjective and an adverb, there is no such thing as 'fastly'. It should be:

Whoever was killing those girls was progressing every so quickly, making each death worse than the others.

And, finally, you have instances where you are missing commas to make the sentences more fluent. For example:

"If you calm down I'll not hurt you."

It should be:

"If you calm down, I'll not hurt you."

Characterisation: 4/5

What I really enjoyed about your story was the unpredictability of your characters. Edna is painted to be a terrible mother, but we learn that she really does love Elizabeth and was doing her best to protect her. Maxon, who seemed like a more reliable parent, ends up killing Edna and trying to kidnap his own daughter. Even Elizabeth herself is an unreliable protagonist – she always has another secret hiding away from the reader.

Now, let's talk about Annie. This may disappoint you, but I guessed Annie was the killer straight away. I think it's partly because I've read too many mysteries in the past few years, but I heard warning bells as soon as Annie 'caressed Elizabeth's cheek' and also with the interesting notion of her telling Liz a story to cheer her up – plus, there was a clear and easy motive regarding the jealousy. That being said, the killer itself wasn't the only plot twists, so the experience wasn't spoiled for me.

Be careful with showing vs telling when it comes to characterisation. Even in instances such as:

He knew she was angry.

Don't just tell us that. Show it to us. How does he know that? What about her face revealed it? Show it to us and take us there.

Apart from that, I had a few more issues with characterisation, but they were also partially due to both writing style and plot. To limit repetition, I'll be discussing those below. 

Writing Style: 3.5/5

You have some clever moments of description within your story! I loved the way you described Elizabeth's room as a way to ground herself after the dream, because that, in turn, grounded the reader into the setting of the story. Be careful that your descriptions don't end up being too vague, however. For example:

She was wearing a rather normal outfit.

What is normal? Everyone has a different definition of normal, and also, since it was near the beginning of the story, we are still unfamiliar with the exact setting. Avoid vague descriptions such as that, and try to just extend a bit more.

I mentioned above that part of the issue I had with characterisation was due to the writing. My issue was that some moments were presented in limited third person, where we had a very clear view of what a certain character was thinking – but then it would switch to another character within the same few paragraphs. In a story like this, where it is heavily character-driven and the secrets and lies of each character makes the story, this was quite disconnecting. For example:

The muffled cries of the girl felt like music to her ears. [perspective of the killer]

Her body was sore from all the pain she was feeling in her limbs. [perspective of the victim]

The switch between the two characters make it slightly less easy to engage with the characters, too.

Be careful of redundancy and incomplete sentences. Let's go through an example from your story:

At first, she thought that it was probably nothing, but as time passed and the nightmares started getting worse. She had convinced herself that it was nothing serious.

The 'she thought that it was probably nothing' and the 'she had convinced herself that it was nothing seriously' both basically reinforce the same thing. Also, the first sentence isn't quite complete. My advice? Make sure you aren't repeating yourself, and in moments of narration where you are recounting things, be careful to make sure things are chronological.

Finally, beware of a repetitive sentence structure. Let's look at these sentences, which are all one after the other in the story itself:

She glanced at the clock.

It read at 4am.

She had been getting those...

It's the same dream...

It troubled her.

It was one of the main reasons she read at night.

She shouldn't have picked...

It was a really bad choice...

She stood from her...

She knew it was useless...

As I was reading, I started to feel a disconnect, and realised that it was because the sentences were too repetitive. All sentences in that excerpt started with either 'it' or 'she', and led to a very repetitive structure that made the writing slightly less engaging. I encourage you to play around with sentence structure more to avoid this. 

Plot + Originality: 4/5

Your prologue is excellent, and I like how the dreams didn't just occur once – it occurred a few times, and each death presented within was different. We have a fork in the throat, we have suffocating, and this made the dreams feel so real that it was quite shocking when it turned out to be one big charade. More on this in just a second!

Annie, the killer, is quick and ruthless – even surprising the reader by making a kill at Marina's funeral. I think this was actually fantastic – it kept the sense of tension and thrill throughout the entire story, and kept the pace going steadily.

I also simply adored the overall message of who to blame – not the individual killers, but society itself. It reminded me quite a bit of the recent Joker film, actually. Anyways, I loved how the thematic elements of lies ad secrets turn out to be even bigger than the reader thought, with the letter revealing that the foundation of the story – the dreaming of the future – was all a lie, and that Elizabeth knew it was Annie all along. I thought that was a great twist. While I saw Annie's betrayal coming, I did not see Elizabeth's charade coming at all.

However, just a warning – not really anything of major concern: be careful about using psychological disorders such as multiple personality disorder as a sort of sign-off. I know that's your way of almost explaining the violent behaviours, but it starts to feel like a cop-out when this is revealed after the characters are gone. I think it would have been more effective to see Annie grappling with her disorder a bit more in the chapter when she killed Elizabeth (we saw bits of it, like when she blamed herself, but not enough to make it feel impactful). Again, this wasn't something I noticed straight away. I just took a break after finishing your story because something was bugging me about it, and I'm pretty sure this was what it was.

Also, there were some things the characters did that just did not quite make sense to me. For example, when Detective Alex Ricosta suspected that it was Elizabeth's mother who had locked her in the room, why didn't he think it was necessary to take Elizabeth away from the area immediately? I just found that quite odd.

Anyways, well done with the twists and turns – it's obvious this story took a lot of thought.

OVERALL SCORE: 19.5/25

Overall, a story full of twists that really keeps the reader on their toes. Honestly, I imagine you must have had a lot of fun writing this! Make sure you polish your grammar and punctuation, and you should be good to go. I hope this review helps.