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Toxic Love

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Toxic Love
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Author :: YoIamnicepaprika_7

Reviewer :: hongsanii

First Impression :: 8/20

» Cover :: 4/10

If we’re talking about the most basic aspects of a cover, Toxic Love has got it all — a picture, a title, and an author’s name. But, if we’re seeing this from an implicit point of view, the cover doesn’t carry much. For starters, I thought the story mainly revolves around Jimin despite saying that there are three different stories, and this is because of your cover showing only Jimin. It would have made so much more impact if you used a picture with all of the maknae-line in it. Next is your cover being a little too… empty. If you think about it, the cover is basically just a cropped photo shoot picture with some fonts on it which makes it generic. Try to add some unique elements to your cover that will make it stand out. I’m not quite fond of the fonts either because they’re too small. It is fitting for the contemporary theme of your book, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t go well with the picture used, not to mention, the color doesn’t match the theme of the cover, either. Overall, I’d suggest you use a completely different cover rather than going with this.

» Title :: ⅖

I wouldn’t say it’s a very unique or catchy title. Frankly, I couldn’t really see the toxicity in the story until the last chapter when it’s introduced through Taehyung, so I’m going to assume there’s more where that came from and the title is fitting to the storyline. But, after reading your blurb, it’s more like you’re asking your readers to find out whether love is toxic or not, so in that sense, the title doesn’t seem very relevant to the storyline after all. Nonetheless, the title is so common that it might push people away without even reading the blurb.

» Blurb :: ⅖

In all honesty, the blurb raises more unnecessary questions than giving me an insight into what to look for when reading the book. I’m all about vagueness in a blurb (because that way you’re not even aware of what’s about to hit you and I just love it) but your blurb is a little too vague. I don’t really like the fact that you made love seem like something that has to be investigated by outsiders to see if it’s valid or not because, no matter the type (except for toxic ones), all forms of love are valid. So really, it shows a sort of a misconception with the way you worded it. Another thing is mentioning readers in your blurb; mentioning readers as you did feels a little unprofessional, so avoid doing that. But even if it was all worded properly, the blurb tells me next to nothing about what to expect from this book. If I was a reader and not a critique, I actually wouldn’t have given this a second glance solely for the blurb.

When writing a description, keep in mind that there are four major parts to a traditional Wattpad blurb: a quote from the book, the briefest introductions of characters that you can put together (not all the characters, though, just the main characters, and in our situation, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook), the conflict, and the stakes. 

Beginning of a new start :: 7/10

First of all, I am in love with the layout of the opening chapter. It looks so aesthetic with how everything is presented! It’s definitely ought to pull in the readers. There’s also a prologue (which I really appreciate) where you show how the characters meet. There are a few grammatical errors here and there, some questionable word choices and sentence structures, and lack of variation in the tags, but overall, I think it’s a good start. It’s giving us brief scenes of how the characters meet, and the way you have put it down is unique. I don’t see a lot of Wattpad authors that go for a book with three different storylines in it.