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You
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Author :: _JKZSFF

Reviewer :: BerryStrawberryy

First Impression :: 6.5/20

Initially, I was under the impression that I was in for a mystery thriller, or something dark at the very least; I
was strongly mistaken. Though you have attempted to include certain heavy themes in your story, your
cover, title and blurb are very misleading. I would've given you the benefit of the doubt because your story is still ongoing, but nearly 40 chapters in… I still don't see any signs of the book as promised by the title and blurb.

» Cover :: 5/10

Look and Style: The very first thing I noticed about your cover was the simplicity; not too heavily edited and modest fonts. It was very subtle and pleasing to the eyes. And I liked the font placement—the translucent 'Park Jimin' on the side, the title, everything. But the subtitle/quote and the author's name weren't readable. I suggest enlarging the font size.
Theme and relevance: I don't see how the cover holds any relevance to the story. It's very generic and can probably be used for a number of other books. It isn't necessary to use Jimin as a face claim either. You could probably include a girl (y/n) or maybe even Taehyung, since he plays a major role in the story — anything to make it more relevant.

» Title :: 0.5/5

I'm sorry, but the title in no way deserves any points. There's absolutely no effort put into it. The book isn't as dark and mysterious, or focuses solely on one character like the title suggests. Having a common title isn't a bad thing, but it should at least sound interesting… or reflect your story in some manner.

Coming up with the perfect title can be very tricky; I'd suggest you think back to a particular moment/scene/theme (something that is present in your story only) and name the book after that.

» Blurb :: ⅕

A blurb for a book is basically what a trailer is for a movie. It is not only supposed to stir interest in the readers towards the plot but also showcase the best of the author's writing. That being said, although the synopsis did intrigue me slightly… I was still not convinced enough to continue further with your story. The description was too short. The ideal length for a blurb is 130-160 words. Not only should you include a little bit about the plot, but also introduce the characters slightly. Wouldn't it be weird to have a picture of Jimin on the cover, but no mention of him in the blurb? As we've already established, both Taehyung and Jimin are prominent characters in the story—it does not focus on Y/N alone—so it is only normal for them to be involved in the description.

Beginning of a new start :: 3/10

I'm not going to write much here because there isn't much to say. I'm sorry but the book really didn't make a good first impression on me. Be it plot-wise, writing-wise, grammar-wise or anything else, the first few chapters (still better than the story that followed) did absolutely nothing to make me want to continue
reading. But I'm not going to comment on the grammar and writing right now, since I'll be talking about those in detail in their respective sections that follow. The first chapter (or the first 3 chapters) are supposed to be like an introduction to the story. They're supposed to start off vague, just set up a general background for the rest of the story to unfold. Whereas your beginning was kind of an info-dump.
The note/disclaimer thing at the start was good and to the point, good job on that. But when the actual story began… it was a lot to take in. In the first 5-8 paragraphs, Y/N basically narrated her entire life in one breath. You shouldn't do that. You don't have to write everything at once, there's a lot of time and a lot of chapters for the story to unfold; if you reveal everything in the beginning, it will destroy the joy of discovering the characters' personalities for the audience.

Concept and plot :: 5.5/25

Once again, I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt here, since the story is still ongoing… so I'm not going to talk about any potential or existing plot holes that I noticed in your book. It is possible that things
might get cleared up at the end, so I'm gonna talk about the other elements of your plot.

First off—the idea or concept. I have barely given you any points for this part because the core concept of your story seemed neither original nor interesting. It was very cliché tbh. That's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes I read such books even though I know what would happen, just for the emotions and enjoyment I get out of it; unfortunately this book wasn't one of those, it was way too predictable and monotonous. See, I'm a writer too, so I understand that you might not like your book being called a cliché, especially not when you've put so much effort into it, but you have to admit that nearly all the elements in your plot were something that pop up in every second wattpad book. Bestfriends where one of them is in love with the other and the other doesn't know (Jimin and Y/N); the whole parent-child fight where parents control their kid's life and try to get them married "for the company" (Jimin); two people who are supposed to hate each other but one of them is secretly in love (Taehyung and Y/N)—all of these are chewed up concepts and they're the core elements of your story! It's okay to include a few small cliché moments in the book, or even to have just one such core concept. But when every part of your book is that, then it becomes so predictable that it takes the fun out of reading it. Do you understand? Secondly, the pace of the story and its execution. After the info-dump at the beginning, the story kind of just stopped moving forward. I was actually kind of intrigued about Y/N's past, wanting to know what the whole thing was about. But as the story progressed, her grandmother's death and that whole thing was just neglected and pushed to the side, to the point where I kind of forgot about it. The book then became about Jimin and Y/n simply continuing with their daily lives. I mean, it's not bad, there were a few incidents that took place, and the plot did continue to unfold a little, but it was very slow. Come to think of it, I think you have probably included a lot of unnecessary scenes and filler chapters. At the beginning you seemed to know where you were going with the story, but as it went on, you kept introducing one cliché (sorry to be using this word again and again ;-;) after the other and branched out into way too many storylines, all of which became stagnant. I'm going to stop myself from writing more because, again, the story is still incomplete. Who knows, maybe it will come together again. But I still suggest editing the middle part and rethinking it, because even if you manage to make the further chapters better, people might still get put off by the previous part and leave the story half way.

Characters and emotions :: 4/15

Okay so two things—the characters and their emotions. Full disclosure, you could've done a better job with both the elements, but I can see that you at least put a lot of effort into it, so points for that.

For the characters—one thing you need to ask yourself before introducing a character in your story (or even in a particular scene)... "is this character necessary?" "could the story/scene be told without them in it?". In most cases, the fewer characters you have, the better, because too many characters cause a lot of confusion, for the readers and the author both. The author may have trouble handling so many characters and end up forgetting them and not see their story through or do them proper justice. This results in some characters just popping in and out of nowhere, causing confusion for the readers too. That being said, amongst other unnecessary characters, Jackson was one. Just because every other kpop ff has Jackson Wang in it, doesn't mean yours has to. From the way I see it, there was no contribution to the story from his character. Jimin could've been jealous of any of the other existing characters. There also seems to be only one side to every character. Like, Jungkook and the rest just exist to hang out with Jimin, Jimin's dad just to command him around, and I've already explained about Jackson. You need to focus more on the quality of characters rather than the quantity. Other than this, I think you've done an okay job with the rest. The characters are fine, real upto an extent and somewhat likable. But the emotions are all over the place. I never really understand when to feel how, it's like you include a joke in one scene and a breakdown in the next. Even though the pace of your plot is slow, the descriptions and scenes and the emotions in them are in some sort of a race. And all of it just ends up in more chaotic confusion. Again, it isn't exactly because of your lack of trying; your characters didn't reach out to me, or I couldn't connect with the emotions and intensity of some scenes, due to your writing style. I have explained about it further in the next section, but I still had to cut some points for it in this one.

Tone and Style :: 2/10

You tried writing the story in a narrative manner, which was the correct choice for storytelling like yours, but it didn't come through as nicely as it should've. The one word that would perfectly describe your writing style is *inconsistent*. The emotions, the mood, the way of writing, the length, the POVs, everything keeps changing, and not in a systematic manner. As I mentioned before, due to the lack of an appropriate writing technique, both your plot and character failed to have a proper impact. You have put in a lot of effort to bring out different elements in your story with your attempted descriptions; I can definitely see that. But I don't think you are sure of what you are writing to be honest. Like I said, the plot seems a little imbalanced… and because of that, so does the writing. You try to make your story come off as an angsty romance, but your writing style is completely light and casual (and it most certainly does not match the story description). I understand you have tried to give a humorous twist to your writing, but it's not really coming off that well. If you want to involve so many different emotions in your story, you need to learn how to balance them. There are a number of 'inside jokes' of BTS members (not suitable for an actual book) which seem quite cringe and forced sometimes (example, the Jungkook and microwave thing). It is because of things like this that I can't take your writing seriously; after writing something like this, suddenly a serious scene will come up about y/n having a flashback of the past or something, and it will have absolutely no impact because of your previous unpolished writing. I'm not saying that you can't involve multiple elements or emotions in your book, you just need to make your transitions smoother. You also need to learn when to switch paragraphs. There are 2-3 things/actions happening in some paragraphs which not only seems rushed but also confusing, and in some places there are 2 line paragraphs for two three pages at a stretch. There are also a number of unnecessary POV changes (also very inconsistent). You don't need to keep switching between 2-3 POVs every two chapters. It gets very annoying and confusing for the readers. Pick a POV and finish telling the story (or at least a part of it) through it first, then move on to the next and present their perspective. You also seem to be unsure of how to write from the second person's point of view, and I'd suggest not using it all. Some chapters are longer; some are super short. Sometimes it's a lame comedy; sometimes aheart-wrenching mystery. You really need to be decisive while writing. I suggest you start fixating on things. First of all, finalize a genre for your story, then choose a writing style according to that genre. (Your vocabulary could also use some work, but again, it depends on the type of book you're attempting to write) There are a lot of other things, but there's only so much I can state in my review. I tried covering most of the major failings. Overall, I think reading more books (outside of Wattpad) will really help you get an idea of what writing style would suit your book best and how to make complete use of it. Once you read and explore real writing styles, you'll understand where you're lacking. This will help you improve greatly.

Grammar :: 3/20

Having good grammar is a very important criterion, the very base of your book. Bad grammar can be such a turn off to readers sometimes that it will affect every aspect of your story. Honestly, I believe your plot, tone
and style, characters and even the blurb criteria could've gotten more points if it wasn't for your lack of grammatical knowledge. But it was very difficult to ignore these mistakes as an avid reader. Even one misplaced comma can change the entire meaning of your sentence.

Since I cannot correct/teach you about everything, I will list out some of the most basic things you need to learn about, and I will also be mentioning how/where you can learn them from.
↬First and foremost, you need to start with punctuation. Your story seriously lacks punctuation and you have been making constant spacing errors, leaving no space after commas or periods, using ellipses in the wrong manner, using the wrong dashes, lack of punctuation with action/dialogue tags and many more.
↬Rules about capitalization: you keep capitalizing random words in the middle of a sentence, sometimes using uppercase for entire sentences or words in one go, all of which is grammatically incorrect. You have also barely used capitalization for proper nouns, which is inappropriate.
↬Tenses: tense consistency is a very important factor. Some of the less critical readers may overlook
punctuational errors for once, but tense inconsistency and tonal errors are never overlooked, because they either change the interpretation of sentences or render them totally meaningless.
↬Parts of speech: this is another basic thing, and you may think you know it already. But PoS is something that will present a lot of new choices to you about how to frame your sentences.
↬Literary devices: these will, once again, help you a lot with descriptive writing. Acting more like adornation and frame your story better, making it more effective.
↬Spelling errors: I think this one's pretty self explanatory. Where to learn from: You can use MLA or APA grammar guides; handbooks or print guides like 'Merriam-Webster's dictionary' or 'Garner's Modern English Usage'; or internet websites like grammarly.

Extra note :: The review was pretty harsh, but one thing that I kept repeating, and I'll say it again, I appreciate your effort. Writing a book for almost 40 chapters is a long term commitment and it couldn't have been easy. I also understand that English may not be your first language, hence you had some difficulty with the grammar and stuff. But I wanna tell you that it's okay; just follow my advice—read a lot, explore more and you're good to go. It will take some time and a lot of patience, but I promise that slowly, you'll see
the improvement in yourself. I am sorry if anything I said hurt your feelings; it was not my intention. I hope you take my words sportingly
and understand that as a reviewer it is my duty to inform you about your mistakes. I hope you don't get discouraged, and instead choose to take my criticism in a sporting manner! PM me if you have any doubts! All the best!

TOTAL :: 24/100.