Reviewer: 08_Umm_Waraqah

Review: Warrior's Mates

Client: Curiouswords27

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COVER/TITLE: 2/5

Your cover is too dark, that was one of the thoughts that popped in my mind when I took a good look at it. Dark is good. Dark is great. But when a cover doesn't have much going for it except black spaces, dark images, blah blah, then you have a problem. Because it then falls on the unattractive side, and someone like me would scroll past your book based on the cover alone. I also do not think that the cover fits that well with the title and genre, like I said, there's not much going on in the cover. Now, I really wish I had a suggestion as to how to fix this cover, but I'm not good at aesthetics and all that, so my best suggestion would be to request a better cover from a professional graphic designer (there are loads of them on Wattpad, and some of them would give you a great cover without collecting more than a follow or credits as payment.) I see you've garnered a lot of reads already, but I promise you, with a better cover, you can get even more.

I think your title may be on the generic side, though it gives me werewolf vibes (because of the mate thingy I think). The title would be work really well with a better and more alluring cover, however. As covers and titles work hand in hand. You may have a gripping title that'll fall short due to a bland cover. And you may have a bland title that'll become captivating due to a hooking cover. The former might just be your problem. So work on your cover, and your title may shine.

BLURB: 4/5

Okay, so your blurb is nice, has all the bits and pieces that makes a good blurb, doesn't have glaring grammatical errors, but could be restructured better. I'm not a blurb expert, but I know the first line of your blurb should be as hooking as the opening line of a first chapter. Wait, what am I saying, it should be more gripping, because I'll need to get past the blurb to reach the first chapter, right. And if this first line I'm talking about falls flat, or has the same info has ninety percent of books on Wattpad, I may just scroll past your book. So I'll try to restructure this blurb, and I hope to God I won't be spoiling it in the process.

All Jia Davis ever wanted was endless love from her mate, and to be a good fighter for her pack and family. She got it, but it was short-lived. Thrown into a pit of darkness and emptiness by her loss, Jia was not ready to accept what fate had in store for her. Will she survive and come out of it? Will she ever find happiness?

Now, I cut away the ordinary eighteen year old girl part. Because almost every female protagonist on Wattpad is ordinary and eighteen. One glimpse of that in your blurb, and potential readers may roll their eyes, think, yeah, another ordinary character, and walk away.

Now, it's standard practice to wrote a blurb in present tense as it's claimed that that gives off a sense of urgency. So, here we go:

All Jia Davis wants is endless love from her mate, and to be a good fighter for her pack and family. She gets it, but it's short-lived. Thrown into a pit of darkness and emptiness by her loss, Jia isn't ready to accept what fate has in store for her. Will she survive, crawl out of the bottomless abyss she's holed in, and find happiness? Or will she succumb and allow herself be swept away by sorrow?

Okay, I probably overdid this version, but I added all I added to make the blurb more exciting. You're welcome to use my fixed version of you like, and you're welcome to switch it up to fit your style and tone if you want.

PROLOGUE : 4/8.3

I commend you on a prologue well done. It's short, as it should be. Intriguing, as it should be. And it alludes to the character's depressive state of mind that was mentioned in the blurb. I don't read that much shape-shifter stories. However, I know this business of an MC losing her pack and family to war or a disease, or thereabouts, is common, but I think I like the angle you're tackling this trope from. A character-driven angle, I'm suspecting, from what we've got here and in the blurb.

GRAMMAR: The main problem here is with your tenses. You can't seem to decide which tense your story should be written in. Or you can, you just mix it all up. I'll tell you that your prologue could be written in present tense and the other parts of your story in past tense, that's okay. You can also have it vice versa. Or you may write the prologue and the whole book in the same tense. I'm guessing you went with the last option. And you've chosen past tense. I'll give you examples of places in this prologue where you switched to present tense.

Original: Was I ok? Will I ever be okay? ... My life is shattered.

Fixed: Was I ok? Would I ever be okay? ... My life was shattered.

Original: No I don't have a life now. There is no life left in me.

Fixed: No, I didn't have a life now. There was no life left in me.

Original: Maybe death was easier than the life I see ahead.

Fixed: Maybe death was easier than the life I saw ahead.

Original: But all 'MY' people have left me with just emptiness.

Fixed: But all my people had left me with just emptiness. (I suggest you italicise 'my' rather than quote it and capitalise it.)

There are awkward sentences, as well, two that caught my eyes.

Original: Better go with them, then turn into rouge wandering in wilderness. (I'm not sure what this statement means, so I have no idea how to fix it.)

Original: I stood up with little bit of strength in me...

I believe you meant: I stood up with THE little bit of strength in me...

Or better still: I stood up with the little strength left in me...

PUNCTUATION: You have an issue with punctuating dialogues. All the direct speech (dialogue) in this chapter isn't punctuated, except the first one, and I guess that's because it's a question not a statement. I'll give examples:

"There is nothing much left here, we are going to our territory... You, too, should come along" He said with sad tone and moved away.

Fixed: "There is nothing much left here. We are going to our territory... You, too, should come along," he said with a sad tone and moved away. (I ended the dialogue with a comma, changed the capital 'H' to lower case, added a word you omitted before 'sad'.)

The last dialogue also has the same problem. Please, see PARTING SHOTS section for more info on how to punctuate dialogues (ah, this makes me feel like a network service provider).

CHAPTER ONE: 2/8.3

Okay, how do I say this without hurting your feelings? Your first chapter reads more like a textbook than an actual novel. See, I really love books that begin with the 'My name is so so...' thingy. For some reasons I can't explain, they make me happy. And when I saw something like that in the middle of your first chapter, I liked it. Then I started not to like it when you dropped all those info about werewolves and Jia's pack and Jia's family on us. You could have found a more subtle way to tell us all that, maybe scatter it throughout the book, we won't mind. But to have that much info at a go, especially info that doesn't seem that unique (as almost every werewolf whatever share similar background with your story) is just a no no.

Now, to the opening scene. While it is different, thankfully, from the usual first scenes we get on Wattpad, it's not all that... captivating. I mean, I like the birthday thingy and how you fitted in some info around it, but you could have executed it better. In fact, I think if you'd started the first chapter like: My name is Jia and I'm a werewolf. I think this would have been a bang. And from there, you could start working in the birthday thing and all that.

Your first chapter needs to be revamped, totally. And whichever way you choose to go about it, I strongly suggest you keep at least fifty percent of the werewolf history and family history thingy from it and dive straight into the story.

There are good things about the chapter, though. The relationship between Ara and Jia for one. It's cute, maybe a bit sappy, but overall, nice.

GRAMMAR: There are little to no grammatical errors in this chapter. Congrats! I don't spy any awkward sentence. However, you capitalised the A in adult in the third paragraph. And why is mate capitalised?

TENSES: Again, as in the prologue, you switched tenses in this chapter. Because majority of this chapter is written in present tense, I'll assume that's the tense you're writing in. So I'll vote examples below of the places where you switched:

Original: 'Happy birthday girl' said a voice inside me.

Fixed: 'Happy birthday, girl,' says a voice inside me.

Original: Happy Birthday to us, Ara,' I replied.

Fixed: 'Happy birthday to us, Ara,' I replied.

Please, go through this chapter thoroughly for other mistakes like the ones cited above, and do try to fix them.

PUNCTUATION: Since only one of your dialogues is punctuated, and that too, improperly, I'll launch into a mini lecture on punctuating dialogues here.

Now, all direct speeches must end with a period, a comma, a question mark, an exclamation mark, an ellipsis, an em dash, and so on and so forth. Basically, all ƊIALOGUES end with a punctuation mark, and the punctuation mark usually depends on what comes after the direct speech. Is it an action tag, where you have something like 'Are you ok, Warrior?' The big man peered into my eyes. (The big man peered into my eyes is an action tag because it describes an action that comes after the dialogue. It can also come before. Or in the middle of a dialogue.) Before, after, or middle, an action tag will cause a direct speech to end in a period, because the tag is not a part of the speech.

So, you have:

"You, too, should come along." He pulled me up.

He pulled me up. "You, too, should come along."

"You, too..." He pulled me up. "Should come along."

For a dialogue to end with a comma, then it has to be followed by a dialogue tag. He said, she screamed, etc. So, you have:

"You, too, should come along," he said, pulling me up.

"You, too," he said, "should come along."

He said, "You, too, should come along."

You'll notice that the last two examples end with a period. That's because the dialogue tag came between and before the dialogues.

There's also the comma splice issue. A comma splice occurs when you use a comma alone to separate two independent clauses. Independent clauses are basically sentences that make sense on their own. I'll admit that some of the examples I'll cite here may or may not fall under comma splice, depending on one's perspective. But better safe than sorry, right? Right.

Original: His mate is the Luna of the pack, she takes care of everyone

Fixed: His mate is Luna of the pack. She takes care of everyone.

DIALOGUES: Asides the obvious punctuation issue your dialogues have, I think they're pretty good. You manage to feed us a bit of info through them, so that's nice.

CHAPTER TWO: 3/8.3

While I would have really enjoyed this chapter, the explanations did not allow me. And I used explanation for a reason, because you didn't seem to be telling. You were more or less explaining. A new character is mentioned, and you interrupt the flow to tell us about them. From Mom, to Dad, to Megan, to the cake shop. While I appreciate you taking a few moments to introduce this characters to us, I don't appreciate the execution. Now, I really wish I had a more concrete advice to give you other than 'learn more about the difference between showing and telling, learn when to show and when to tell', but that's exactly the suggestion you need.

However, I loved how you describe Jia's dressing. Nice description there. I wish you could have tapped from the descriptive skill you used there and applied it to other sections, as well. Like the settings. Physical descriptions. Emotional descriptions.

The relationship between Jia and her parents is cool, too.

Another problem I have with this chapter is the time skips, and your lack of description did nothing to help that. In one sentence, Jia is hugging her best friend. And in the next, she's back on her bed after school. I'll advice you to slow down and try to flesh out your scenes more, and the interactions between your characters as well. And instead of having Jia tell us her dad is warm and open about his emotions, while not give us a short scene that shows that or let his warmth and openness show through his speech. Rather than summarise the whole deal about Megan, you could have walked us through it slowly.

Overall, this chapter is a big no no for me. It has the same problems as the last regarding grammar, punctuation, dialogues, and description.

CHARACTERDEVELOPMENT: 1/5

I don't know anything about Jia except that she's a werewolf, an Omega, eighteen. Her best friend is Michelle. She works at a cake shop. She has a nice family. I can't remember what she looks like (guess this is because you used the 'staring in the mirror' technique to describe her, and I skipped it). Despite all I know about her, I still don't know her at all. She's more or less lifeless to me, and that's not a good thing.

PLOT: 2/5

Your storyline isn't uncommon, in the werewolf genre or even in the fantasy genre at large. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, as a lot of people like cliche (me, included). It only becomes a problem when there isn't anything about your book that sets it aside from the others using this trope. In fact, if you'd nailed your descriptions, character development, writing style, that could have given you an edge.

PARTING SHOTS

DESCRIPTION IS A VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT OF WRITING. ITS STYLE DIFFERS FROM WRITER TO WRITER. BUT ALL IN ALL, IT HAS TO BE PRESENT SO AS TO HELP YOUR READERS VISUALISE YOUR SCENES AND CHARACTERS, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, CONNECT WITH YOUR STORY. IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH DESCRIPTION, TRY TO IMAGINE YOUR CHARACTERS ACTING OUT WHATEVER SCENE YOU'RE WRITING AND DESCRIBE ACCORDINGLY. WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOUR CHARACTERS CAN SEE, SMELL, TOUCH, HEAR, FEEL. READ IT OVER AND TRIM UNTIL YOU HAVE THE DETAILS THAT YOU THINK ARE IMPORTANT.

CHARACTERS ARE THE LIFE OF A STORY. YET, A THOUSAND CHARACTERS MAY FAIL TO GIVE LIFE TO A STORY, IF THEY ARE POORLY DEVELOPED. A WELL DEVELOPED CHARACTER USUALLY HAS A SOLID BACKGROUND/HISTORY, WELL DEFINED TRAITS OR QUIRKS, MOTIVATIONS, AMBITIONS, EMOTIONS AND SO ON.

YOUR NOVEL, AS IT IS NOW, MAY HAVE A PLETHORA OF PROBLEMS, BUT IT DOES HAVE POTENTIAL. ONCE YOU TAKE TIME TO CRITICALLY ANALYSE AND REVAMP IT, I BELIEVE YOU'LL TURN IT INTO A GEM. AN EXQUISITE ONE.

OVERALL ENJOYMENT: 2/5

I tried to enjoy this book, in fact, I looked forward to it, but the info dumping chased away my excitement and left me bored.

Your overall score  is 20/50.

Thank you for trusting me with your book. I hope you find one or two tips in this review to improve your story and your writing in general. If you have any questions or anything to say at all, please do not hesitate to comment and tag me as I wouldn't be notified of the comments otherwise.

Yours in writing,

RaainaAkoredeAranmolate.