The Carnation Review Shop

Not a friend by @picklejuice100

Book Title: Not a Friend
Author: @picklejuice100
Reviewer: @CrackedBrain

💛Title💛 (3.5/5)- Your title is simple yet fair and I can understand why you chose it for your book as it matches with your storyline. However, only fitting with the story isn't enough for a title to be called perfect. A title should be interesting and eye-catching to attract the readers and, a simple title such as this can degrade the excitement among the audiences, causing the readers to ignore an easy phrase like this even before they can relate it with the book.

💛Cover💛(3.5/5) - There is no doubt that the cover is attractive too. However, I deducted one and a half points from your score since I could still find flaws in your cover, including the wrong author's name. Maybe it's not my place to say this and it's your choice what you want to write on your book's cover or not but, according to me, writing the wrong author's name isn't a good thing to opt for in the book cover. If the username is 'picklejuice100' then it would be better if you don't eliminate the digits from the cover too, if not that, then you can even use your nickname 'pragyasha' instead.

Next thing, the visibility of fonts and the blending of colors are two of the main elements in a cover. Your cover follows the former without any doubt, however, I can't say the same for the latter since I realized that the name of the designer of the cover isn't clear enough for the readers to notice.

💛Blurb💛 (6/10) - Okay, before explaining why I gave it such a low score as six, I want you to observe the difference between these two blurbs:

'Allie Von prides herself on being a loner. Socializing with her classmates is not only unnecessary, but it is weird and tiring.
So when she's forced to attend their school's summer trip, to 'make a friend' or 'to socialize' she tries to prove to herself that friendships are fickle and pointless.
But Kyle Raymond, a sweet, sunny classmate, comes in the way and makes her question her own belief.'

And,

'Allie Von,a fifteen years old teenager, prides herself on being a loner. Socializing with her classmates isn't only unnecessary but is also weird and tiring.

So when she's forced to attend their school's trip with an excuse of 'to make a friend' or 'to socialize', she isn't glad about the news, and meeting a total nosy person on the trip only adds up to her misery.

How is she going to react to an unwanted company after staying away from one most of her life in a place crowded by her undesired classmates?'

Yes, I know the second blurb is a little longer than the original one and I appreciate your efforts to keep it as short as you can. However, even though your blurb is short in length, it gives the maximum information in comparison to the second one.

You can see both the blurbs have both positive and negative points in them; while one gives a lot of information than needed yet is shorter, the second one is longer yet offers the curiosity among the readers to know what the story is about.

Your blurb already doesn't only mention the name of the male protagonist, it also answers the main question of the story—will he be able to win her friendship or not?

Once you have already answered the question in the blurb itself, you haven't left any space for the readers to look out for the answer from the storyline, thus diminishing their eagerness from the plot at the starting itself.

Try to not reveal much about your story but only give a glimpse of everything with as few words as possible.

💛Plot/Flow💛 (12/20) - If I distribute the marks between the plot and flow separately then it's six for the plot and six for the flow.