Free Book Reviews - 2023

4 • Off to the Races

Book:
Off to the Races

Author:
@selasieat

Chapters read: 6

Title: First of all, I greatly respect you for putting those prepositions in lowercase. Secondly, your title insinuates some sort of action. Off to... This makes the title pop, as compared to how The Races would feel; stagnant; a preposition coupled with a boring word.

Cover: It has an old, vintage feel. The painted effect works well with the title. It's different from the top books on wattpad—many of which hold a common theme: minimal, sometimes vector, a calligraphic font... In short, I like the cover.

But here are a few drawbacks. The person in front brackets the title into a space. A small space. The title, set in that font and size, becomes inferior to the person. You tried to remedy that by putting a stroke around the font, but the focal point is still the girl. She draws the away. In split second occasion of a person glancing at your book cover in order to decide if they should read the blurb, the girl is what they see first. She overshadows the title.

Wow, this is getting deep, isn't it? She must have a personal vendetta against the title.

Anyways. They simple way to remedy this is to make the title bigger. I like the font, you understand, but to add more clarify, try changing it to a sans serif or open sans (try Bison or Bebas Neu).

Another issue is the subscript at the top. Apart of the Americana Series.

Do you mean 'Apart from the Americana Series'? As in this book is not part of that series?

Or 'A Part of the Americana Series'? As in yes, this book is a part of that series? In this case you could simply go with 'The Americana Series'.

(Ive typed part five times and it's begining to feel old fashioned.)

Whichever is the case, please clarify it. If it confused me, it probably will confuse others.

On the subject of the subtext, there's another line under the Americana thing which says: art inspired by the Grand Theft Auto.

No. Please. The cover is the author's time to shine, not make potential readers wonder what Grand Theft Auto is. I, for one, don't know.

Any art credits, cover credits, font credits, or picture credits go in the copyright or acknowledgements chapter, or even at the bottom of the blurb.

You should replace that spotlight with your author name (which is discreet to the point I had to look for it, then I had to squint. Cute nook beneath the title, though). Your author name should be big enough for readers to see clearly.

The final word on the subtext: it should be black or a dark color. White against a light sky is rather hard to see, don't you think?

Blurb: Short. To the point. I have some beef with that -ing verb, though. '...changing their life forever'. Considering the blurb is set in the present tense, (otherwise just the writer's deal with continuous present tense), you would do this instead: '...changes their life forever'. 

I also love that break down list of things bound to happen. This is a great way to go around introducing conflict or events instead of describing it. I first singled this phenomenon out from the blurb of the Wattpad book 'Oliver Ausman Lives Again' (by @CAITLIN). Probably the best blurb I've read, ever.