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Love doesn't understand words
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Author :: _Jaeminmarryme_

Reviewer :: bykhongjoong

First Impression :: 1/20

Cover :: 0/10
First of all, please remember that you are NOT allowed to make any kind of changes whatsoever to your book while it's undergoing a review. You changed the cover of your book when I was almost done with my review, and you did not bother to inform or take permission from me or the shop before doing so. Hence, I'm giving a zero for this category.

Title :: 1/5
To be honest, I don't like the title all that much; it's wordy and did not pique my interest as it should have. It's not a title I've seen before, but sentence-like titles such as yours are a turn-off because they're too wordy and as a result, pushes readers away instead of pulling them in. Frankly, the title does not reflect on your story either because there are about fifteen chapters published, and I don't think anything within those chapters told me, "Love Doesn't Understand Words." But what I did gather after reading your book is that it's quite humorous because the characters are playful and it's how you've executed most of the plot, so your title could have been something witty. I suggest you change your title to something shorter that reflects your story. Smaller, one-worded titles or phrasal ones can have more impact than longer, wordy ones.

Blurb :: 0/5
As I mentioned in <<COVER>>, you are not allowed to make any changes to your book when it's up for review. When your book was assigned to me, the blurb only had a quote from your book. But when I was almost done with my review, you went ahead and added more to it. Hence, I'm giving a zero here as well.

Beginning of a start :: 5/10

The book did not start with a prologue, so I was hoping the first chapter would have the oomph factor to it that would make me stay, but it starts just like any other typical, cliche teen-fiction or YA novel; the protagonist wakes up in the morning, stalls for a little doing things not relevant to the story, then proceeds to realize they're late for classes so they hurry and reaches school/college with only minutes to spare, then has a bad day because their classes are 'boring', and then finally meets the other protagonist. I'm not saying cliches are a bad thing because they are not, but every cliche has something special in it, something that makes it stand out among hundreds of other executions of the same plot; yours does not have that special something. Despite all that, the first chapter did lay out a base for future chapters to be built on, so there's that.

Something that put me off was the excessive change of point of view within a single chapter; having more than one change of point of view is extremely confusing and ruins the story's flow.

Overall, if we look past the grammatical errors and the questionable execution of the chapters, the beginning of your book is decent.

Concept and plot :: 10/25

As far as the concept is concerned, this is a classic enemies-to-lovers trope, and I just want to mention that I am a sucker for these. I promise your book could have kept me hooked right till the end if only everything unfolded a little more naturally.

From what I've seen in the fifteen chapters published, you focus more on building the side characters' romantic relationships instead of putting more effort to describe on what grounds Ahnjong and Jungkook stand, and it's making the flow of the story go a little off-track. Now, I'm not saying that building relationship dynamics between the side characters is wrong; it's not, it's extremely important. But you have to keep in mind that Ahnjong and Jungkook are your main characters, so they need to be in the spotlight. If your book is a slow burn, you gradually build side characters' relationship dynamics or introduce them And if it's a fast-paced one, you introduce them as your main characters' relationship unfolds. Reading your book made me feel as if Ahnjong's friends were the main characters instead of her.

But keeping all that aside, it seems like there is no conflict in your book, or that's what I've gathered from those fifteen chapters. I'm hoping it's not the case and it's yet to be introduced because every story must have a conflict, be it one of the main characters having an irrational fear of something that's stopping them from diving into a relationship, or a bitchy ex from the past returning. In short, anything that stops the main characters from achieving something.

Something that bugs me a little is how all of them are college students (at least that's what I've gathered) and they actually wear uniforms. This may not be applied to some universities, but the majority of universities across the globe do not really require their students to wear uniforms. Another thing I noted was Ahnjong went to detention for being late after talking to the 'Principal'. First of all, universities have Deans, not Principals. Second, professors do not usually bother sending university kids to detention - they don't even notice half the time. What they do instead is deduct the 'points' in their credits. I understand this is fiction, but small things like these do make a big difference from a reader's point of view.

Characters and emotions :: 6/15

First of all, your characters are two-dimensional. They lack depth, their actions seem vague at some places, and there aren't enough explanations behind those actions. As for how they speak, some of these dialogues seem unnatural and forced, especially the ones between Taehyung and Jungkook.

Look at this conversation between them, for example.

"Oh, Jungkook, my man! How are you?" Taehyung asked as he came towards me with some juice in his hand.

"Oh hey there, Tae. I'm fine, what about you?" I asked the man in front of me.

I know this is fiction, but a friendly reminder, they're college kids; almost adults, if you may. This seems like a textbook conversation between two made-up persons. In reality, people don't start conversations like that - especially not best friends.

Besides that, you seem to have introduced lots of characters into the story with no apparent role, so it feels like they're just floating around. And when they disappear from the story out of the blue, it'll leave your readers wondering what happened to them.

For example, the introduction of Yunho and his friends. I'm guessing Yunho has a role in this book, but his friends, Wooyoung, Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yeosang, San, and Jongho, do not. You're naming these characters but you are not giving them a proper role. If a character has nothing to do with the plot, or will not drive it further, then there's no reason to introduce them with names. You can simply substitute it with 'his/her/their friend.'

As for emotions, I could feel nothing. Sure, there are verbs like protested, glared, smiled, and whatnot, but you are not describing each emotion. You're not describing how they are glaring or how they are smiling, and that makes your character two-dimensional. Describe each emotion so that your readers can feel them along with the characters.

Tone and style :: 4/10

You chose a descriptive style of writing for your story, and I wouldn't really suggest that because you change the point of view to even minor characters with no apparent roles in the book. For example, Yeosang. Instead of switching the POV so many times, write in a narrative style. You would be able to describe so many scenes even better with a third-person POV. Despite the incessant number of POV changes, you did manage to use different writing styles for each character, so good job!

Another thing I'd like to point out is the lack of action beats. Your book heavily relies on dialogue tags, and I don't think I have found even a single action beat in all the fifteen chapters published. There must be a balance throughout the book between the use of dialogue tags and action beats.

You do use a big range of vocabulary for descriptions, and that's nice, but there aren't enough descriptions. Like I said in <<Characters and emotions>>, you need to describe everything vividly so that readers can imagine themselves in the story. As a writer, it's your job to breathe life into your story with your words, and your writing style is not doing that.

Before I finish it up here, take a look at this extract from one of the paragraphs in your story.

-relatives which I didn't know existed would come and say, "YoU'rE sO oLd! ThE LaSt TiMe I sAw YoU, yOu WeRe tHiS LiTtLe!" which was extremely annoying, like, does a 'tHiS sMaLL' child remember anything?

When quoting something in a mocking way that someone has said, you can simply put it in dialogue and explain it with a dialogue tag or an action beat. Using toggle words is wrong; it's just something social media invented.

Grammar :: 11/20

Although there are some errors, you do have good basic grammar. What you need to focus on are punctuation and dialogue structure.

Throughout the book, there are many punctuation errors like misusage of commas, semi-colons, ellipses, em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens. There are many of them, so it's not possible to point everything out here.

As for dialogue structure, I noticed you often use semi-colons in them. Semi-colons are used for visual understanding of a sentence structure, so, audibly, there's no use of them. Where there's semi-colon used, you can use an em dash (-) instead.

Besides that, you also punctuate and capitalize some of your dialogue tags wrong. If a line of dialogue is followed by a dialogue tag, use a comma (or a question mark or exclamation mark) before the closing quotation, and lowercase the dialogue tag if the first word is a pronoun. If the dialogue tag precedes the line of dialogue, use a comma before the opening quotation, and lowercase the dialogue tag (unless it's a name). If the dialogue tag is inserted in the middle of a sentence, use a comma before the first closing quotation mark and after the dialogue tag. Lowercase the dialogue tag. If the dialogue tag follows a complete sentence and the character continues speaking after the tag, use a period after the dialogue tag.

Remember these rules for dialogue tags, and you're good to go.

Extra Note :: I hope this review is helpful to you. Focus on everything I pointed out and work on them, and I suggest you add a twist or a conflict to your story, or else it will be just like any other book.

TOTAL :: 37/100