Carmel Reviews {CLOSED}

𝟏𝟓》𝐁𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐆𝐀𝐘 𝐈𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 - 𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍

"Being Gay is Hard" by SamEl145

Reviewed by: itscoffeenbooks

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Title: The title is pretty original. It gives the reader a good idea of what the story is about and is a great foreshadowing statement!

Cover: I think the cover suits the story very well! The two stickers seem to nicely fit with the background and the text looks lovely against the dimly lit background. To be very honest, it seems like it's glowing :)

Blurb: To be frank, the blurb is extremely straight (no pun intended lol). It's super direct and instead of engaging with the reader, it's more like it's stating facts. One thing you can do to make the blurb smoother is to write the second part as a story. Since blurbs are a sneak peek into the plot of the book, they need to be way more engaging to actually bring the reader to read the book. Because your plot is amazing, it makes up for the fact that the blurb isn't like a story. This could also be because there are a lot of short sentences. Personally, I would cut that down, joining some and removing others. For example, for the sentence: "He was still insecure to open up with his peers. He lacked self-love. Self-acceptance.", you could do: "He was still insecure to open up with his peers, lacking self-love and struggling with self-acceptance." This makes the sentence move smoothly and the reader doesn't have to register as many punctuation symbols. Adding these adjectives and verbs also makes the sentence more descriptive, so you're showing more, telling less :)

Also, in the first sentence of the second part of the blurb, it said "Her friend" when I think you meant "His friend," just pointing that out :)

Opening Chapter: Before I give any advice, do you have a bat, his dad needs a whack on the head with a metal one. But aside from that, I almost punched my screen, which is a good job done on your side. You clearly were able to make me feel defensive for the main character and that's exactly what you want to accomplish. Although you described the situation wonderfully, there is a little work that can be done in your language. I felt like there weren't many descriptive words (the end scene when he comes out is phenomenally described, but I'm talking about the rest :); and because of this, the story seemed to be going a little too fast. Adjectives make the reader think twice to adjust their inner reality of what's going on in the book; if you have noo adjectives, their imagination will be tailored to a very bland world... hence, we need those adjectives in there lol. I also realized that the opening chapter also has the same issue as the blurb; too many short sentences. I would say, you can combine a lot of them using conjunctions like and, or, etc. :)

Plot: To be honest, I don't really read LGBTQ+ focused books, but holy cow, I absolutely loved your plot. It was super engaging and fun to follow along; the characters have a lot of depth in them and their struggles are real. Throughout the book, I felt like I was in their story too. Great job!!

Characters: The characters are deep and consistent; there weren't any sudden personality changes and if there were, they were always hinted (like Andy's father lol).

Grammar/Punctuation/Vocabulary/Spelling: Your grammar, vocab, and spelling are spot on! Punctuation is really good too but I think I should mention; too many short sentences lol. It gets better as you go further into the book, but the beginning chapters are a little too much haha.

Originality: It's super original. I haven't seen that plot anywhere (though I don't read many LGBTQ+ books so I don't think I'm qualified to say; but this is from my best knowledge :)

Overall impression: I think you've structured this story beautifully. It's marvelously crafted and I could tell you put time and effort into it. It's very well planned and doesn't fail to keep you on your toes! Keep up the phenomenal work!!

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We hoped this review helped and let us know if there are any issues! Thank you for choosing us to review your book and we hope you have an amazing day!!

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