Reviewer: kinalhariya

Review: The Disappearance 

Client: Jasmlee181

🌻

Title and cover

The title gives off the mysterious vibes, so good job on that.

From the title I could gather that the story revolves around missing cases. Although the blurb mentioned murder cases. If both are intertwined, then this would be a perfect title.

Cover is attractive to see, but it doesn't really tell anything about the story. Apart from that, I would suggest writing the title in the middle instead of putting it at the top.

Blurb

Blurb is really intriguing but it needs to be made more interesting. The same information but written a little differently.

The information provided is really good. It isn't too much but provides a gist of what to expect from the story.

Look out for the switching tenses. The blurb started off with present tense but then it was abruptly switched to past tense.

Prologue,

Nice way to start a prologue. It gives off a dramatic feeling. I would just suggest capitalizing the starting letter.

Short yet very intriguing prologue. It shows us that within the story there are creatures which aren't visible to the human eye. The description of the forest, moon, etc is done really well. It gives off an eerie feeling. I absolutely loved the way Author showed the pleas getting quietened down slowly. The effect given off really connects and makes us imagine the scene. The ending sentence really hit it off.

Look out for these things:

There are too many periods used in almost all the paragraphs. Its use wouldn't have that much effect if it is used everywhere. Also look out for fluctuating tenses.

Moving towards the chapters,

Your writing style seems a little different, with all the sound effects. I am not sure about others, but I personally enjoyed the effects like tap tap tap, snap snap snap, Drrr drrr, etc.

I feel that in chapter three the paragraph starting with Eventually should either come at the start of chapter or it should be in past tense to show that this happened before the dialogues that were written above the paragraph. Because at this moment, what I felt while reading was that they were discussing the case while eating and then they decided to go and eat. This makes the whole situation weird as they were already eating.

(I am not sure if I was able to properly convey what I wanted to say, so let me know if you are confused).

*****

The concept is great but there are few things that seemed unusual to me.

1) They started off the investigation and went to inform the families after such a long time. I understand the first victim couldn't be identified. But the other one, that should have been done as soon as they found out.

2) When both the murders are so different, then how did they come to the conclusion that it was done by the same murderer.

****

Investigation part of the story is good, but there has to be something else other than their discussions. Not too much but some part of the main lead's personal lives can be shown, so that the readers would connect more with them.

Right now, it is mostly about them investigating, discussing and eating. A little more exposure is needed as that's not all a police officer does while living. So, a bit more work is needed in characterization.

*****

The crime scenes are described so well that we can picture the scene while reading. However, the same cannot be told while they are discussing things. Dialogues are good but there needs to be some description around them.

****

Grammatical errors

Many dialogues seemed weird because of the present tense used to discuss something that had already happened and to refer to someone who was dead.

Wrong use of tenses, missing commas, missing quotation marks at some places.

I have pointed out some mistakes in the earlier chapters. Same type of mistakes were repeated in other chapters too. So look out for them.

First chapter

★ A typo, saids is written in one place.

★"According to weather report last night, it is raining heavily....

The sentence is talking about last night, so 'it was raining heavily' should be written as the night has already passed away.

★She sighs as she says again.

Here, you can just end it at she sighs. It gives off the same meaning.

Chapter two

★Shouldn't you be concerned where she goes that night? John said...

It should be written as-

Shouldn't you be concerned where she went that night? John asked/questioned.

Chapter three

★Sue asks louder, making the guy opposite look up with his mouth full of spaghettis.

Here, I would suggest removing the word opposite or write something like' sitting opposite to her' as using only the opposite makes the sentence look weird.

★She is a young adult.....so she probably leaves with her parents...

Here you need to use live instead of leave.

→.....so she probably lives with her parents.

Same mistake with this sentence too.

★Or does she leave somewhere else?

It should be- Or does she live somewhere else?

Chapter four

★Eric said. Giving him a ridiculous look.

★The guy said. Correcting Eric on his words.

In both the situations, there would be a comma after said instead of full stop.

More than once, the use of the word 'literally' is done where it is not really needed.

★Everybody is now literally staring at....

There's no change in the meaning of the sentence if you cut out the word 'literally'.

Chapter five

★Even Susan who is at the front even let out a small giggle.

Even is used two times making the sentence weird. Cut out the one after the word 'front'.

Suggestion

★Most of the dialogue tags are responds back and said...they are right but it can get monotonous. See if you can use other tags, and also if they could provide more details on their expression.

★I would suggest not writing abbreviations unless they are texting each other.

★Not all, but end the few chapters with cliff-hangers to keep the readers on edge.

*****

Over all,

There are some improvements needed in presenting the story. Grammar errors were too many but none of them were restricting the understanding of the story. So that's not a huge problem.

For mystery, you need to hook the readers by making them want for more. Giving some details but withholding the other to raise curiosity. Emotions are also needed to be put across nicely for the readers to feel sad about the victims and pride for the ones who are trying to solve the case.

I feel that the Author has a great story in her mind. With codes, the victims, investigations, the story has a potential of becoming a really interesting and intriguing story.

Thanks for choosing me. Keep writing!!