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Toxic Love
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Author :: YoIamnicepaprika_7

Reviewer :: hongsanii

First Impression :: 8/20

» Cover :: 4/10

If we’re talking about the most basic aspects of a cover, Toxic Love has got it all — a picture, a title, and an author’s name. But, if we’re seeing this from an implicit point of view, the cover doesn’t carry much. For starters, I thought the story mainly revolves around Jimin despite saying that there are three different stories, and this is because of your cover showing only Jimin. It would have made so much more impact if you used a picture with all of the maknae-line in it. Next is your cover being a little too… empty. If you think about it, the cover is basically just a cropped photo shoot picture with some fonts on it which makes it generic. Try to add some unique elements to your cover that will make it stand out. I’m not quite fond of the fonts either because they’re too small. It is fitting for the contemporary theme of your book, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t go well with the picture used, not to mention, the color doesn’t match the theme of the cover, either. Overall, I’d suggest you use a completely different cover rather than going with this.

» Title :: ⅖

I wouldn’t say it’s a very unique or catchy title. Frankly, I couldn’t really see the toxicity in the story until the last chapter when it’s introduced through Taehyung, so I’m going to assume there’s more where that came from and the title is fitting to the storyline. But, after reading your blurb, it’s more like you’re asking your readers to find out whether love is toxic or not, so in that sense, the title doesn’t seem very relevant to the storyline after all. Nonetheless, the title is so common that it might push people away without even reading the blurb.

» Blurb :: ⅖

In all honesty, the blurb raises more unnecessary questions than giving me an insight into what to look for when reading the book. I’m all about vagueness in a blurb (because that way you’re not even aware of what’s about to hit you and I just love it) but your blurb is a little too vague. I don’t really like the fact that you made love seem like something that has to be investigated by outsiders to see if it’s valid or not because, no matter the type (except for toxic ones), all forms of love are valid. So really, it shows a sort of a misconception with the way you worded it. Another thing is mentioning readers in your blurb; mentioning readers as you did feels a little unprofessional, so avoid doing that. But even if it was all worded properly, the blurb tells me next to nothing about what to expect from this book. If I was a reader and not a critique, I actually wouldn’t have given this a second glance solely for the blurb.

When writing a description, keep in mind that there are four major parts to a traditional Wattpad blurb: a quote from the book, the briefest introductions of characters that you can put together (not all the characters, though, just the main characters, and in our situation, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook), the conflict, and the stakes. 

Beginning of a new start :: 7/10

First of all, I am in love with the layout of the opening chapter. It looks so aesthetic with how everything is presented! It’s definitely ought to pull in the readers. There’s also a prologue (which I really appreciate) where you show how the characters meet. There are a few grammatical errors here and there, some questionable word choices and sentence structures, and lack of variation in the tags, but overall, I think it’s a good start. It’s giving us brief scenes of how the characters meet, and the way you have put it down is unique. I don’t see a lot of Wattpad authors that go for a book with three different storylines in it.

I’ll talk more about the mistakes I’ve pointed out in the other categories.  

Concept and plot :: 20/25

The story is about three different pairs in three different cities who have no connection to each other whatsoever falling in love around the same time, and you’ve posed the idea of whether their love will spiral into a toxic relationship or not as a question. While it’s not very apparent in the story at this stage, I do see some of the relationships heading for that toxicity.

Concepts like this are not new or uncommon, but I love your interpretation of it. You don’t see one book telling three different stories with the same concept on Wattpad every day. Frankly, the plot isn’t new either. Jimin and Hyejin meet in a cafe, Jiah works for Taehyung, and Jungkook is Minji’s trainer at work. These aren’t new, but I love how you’ve executed them.

I do have qualms about the pace of your story though, the main one being how all of their relationships are advancing. There are too many time skips, and we’re seeing only flashes of what’s going on in their story. While the idea of it is certainly unique (showing glimpses of the relationship from the narrator’s point of view as we head onwards) it would have been better if you took the time to show how and when the characters’ feelings were shifting and developing.

Overall, I like the idea of this — the narrator telling a story about three different loves. It has a classical non-fiction vibe to it.

Characters and emotions :: 10/15

Because you weren’t taking the time to focus on the scenes, the characters’ emotional development seems awkward for the most part. Even though you did a splendid job at describing the emotions, because of the constant scene changes from one person to another, the emotional development feels a little off. If we take Taehyung as an example, Jiah and Taehyung start with an employer-employee relationship. A few scenes later, they’re acquaintances, and then in the next scene, they’re confessing and already dating? It all seems a little too rushed with no breather at all. Like I advised in <<Concept and plot>>, take your time to build up the emotions of the characters.

Tone and style :: 3/10

I love your writing, I really do, but most of your writing would have been more fitting if your story was taking place in the 1900s, and this shows best in the way the characters talk. Let’s take this dialogue from Chapter 5 for example.

"Since the moment I laid my eyes on you, a feeling unknown yet exhilarating washed upon me, and I debated over them for quite a long time with my brain. And the only conclusion I reached was something worth another debate. The debate has sojourned inside my brain until this moment, and seeing it's amaranthine nature, I suppose the whole velitation is pointless because what the debate was held on, could be true."

This is what Taehyung says to Lee Jiah while confessing to her. Your book takes place in the 21st century, and I can assure you no one, even if they are adults and past, say, mid-twenties, talks like that. No one, in today’s generation, no matter the age, would rake through their minds for words like “sojourned” or “velitation”, or phrases like “amaranthine nature” to confess to someone even if they are trying to get deep and emotional. There are so many similar issues like this that, at one point, it felt as if you went through Thesaurus to get fancy synonyms for simple words just so your book stood out. Really, there’s nothing wrong with your way of writing, it’s just that it’s not genre-appropriate.

Another thing I noticed is the redundancy in your writing. Redundancy is when you’re unnecessarily repeating something within a sentence. There are quite a lot of instances where you do this, but I’ll give one example.

“…slightly curled his lips a bit, but not much.”

Here, “slightly” and “a bit” have the same intention, and that is to show that there’s only a ghost of a smile there. Redundancy is something that even I, as a writer myself, struggle with. It’s something readers usually don’t notice, but eagle-eyed readers and critiques surely do.

Other than that, I’ve also noticed the lack of action beats in your story. Most of it heavily relies on dialogue tags. There should be a balance between action beats and dialogue tags to show variation. Also, most of your contractions come before the dialogues and at some point, it becomes kinda boring and monotonous. You should switch it all up every few dialogues.

Lastly, there is that one picture you have in your prologue. Remember, you are writing a novel, not a children’s book. Novels never have pictures in them to describe something. Instead of using a picture to tell what the logo looks like, use words. If required, you can even use fonts and change alignments and such to tell, but avoid using pictures at all costs.

Grammar :: 15/20

You have pretty good grammar, overall, but there are cases of misuse of commas, comma splices, and some of your sentence structures. I did notice that in some places, you use more than one punctuation together. You can use two punctuations together if the situation calls for it, but that’s the limit. I also noticed that you use the wrong punctuations and capitalizations for the pronouns in your dialogue tags, so I suggest you go through your book and edit it.

Extra note :: I hope I was able to give you a fair review of your book. You’ve got a good story, just focus on your writing style and grammar and you’re good to go! Do let me know if you have any questions :)

Total :: 63/100