Rosete | REVIEW SHOP [CLOSED]

《Maria》The Legacy of Bluebloods

Reviewer: marshaa1306
Written by: HowerHowe

Alright, this review is super long overdue, and I’m really sorry about that. But, here it is. Prepare yourself, because I’m pretty blunt in this one.

Title/Cover - 9/10
The cover looks interesting and I like how it has an ominous feel to it. The dark blue and black with the white gives the feeling that something is just a tiny bit off, and maybe your story holds some dark secrets.
The title is decent. It doesn’t add or subtract much from the overall first impression of the book. The one critique I would give is that it’s a bit generic, as I feel like a lot of books could have this same title. I will say, though, that the title has a good connection to the story.

Blurb - 7/10
The blurb you’ve written is alright, but I don’t like how it’s so cryptic. Now, don’t get me wrong, there has to be some things in a blurb that are left up to the reader’s imagination, but just about everything in your blurb is vague. You don’t say the characters’ names and you don’t introduce the setting at all.
Also, your blurb doesn’t really pack a punch. It didn’t spark any interest for me, and I think it’s partly because of its vague nature. The blurb is just a bunch of statements strung together. I suggest adding some sort of thought-provoking question to give your blurb some intrigue.

First few chapters/Exposition - 8/10
I really enjoyed reading your prologue, as it gave a great backstory to the kingdom and set up the plotline nicely. I like how it also started your book off with a bang.
Although I liked your prologue, I found your first chapter kind of confusing. After reading it, I’m not really sure who’s related to who and who the couples are. It was written in a way that was unclear. So, perhaps it would be a good idea to go back and read over your character introductions and such. Make sure to clarify relations early on, as to not cause confusion in the future.
Also, there are a ton of characters that you introduce in the first chapter alone. It’s difficult to keep them all straight. I highly advise giving them descriptions or some sort of characteristics that set them apart from each other.

Plot - 18/20
The concept of your plot isn’t bad at all. It always makes for an interesting story when a person has royal blood and they don’t know it. There are two things that I’d like to discuss here, though: Your chapter length and the somewhat confusing plotline.
First of all, your chapters are freakishly long, especially looking at it from a Wattpad perspective. According to Wattpad statistics, the best length for a chapter is when the reader can complete it in 6-10 minutes. Your first chapter is 38 minutes long and your second chapter is 42 minutes long. So, that’s over an hour of reading just to finish two chapters. This made it very hard for me to get into your book. The chapters seemed to go on forever, especially since nothing really happened in the first chapter. You have to be careful of super long chapters like this, because if you bore your reader too early on, they may not stick around to read much of your book.

Now to talk about the plotline. I think your prologue has the most concise plotline of any of the chapters I read. At least, it was the most easily followed. After that, things got confusing. In the first chapter, it’s all about Sam, her family, and the problems she’s facing with being courted. In the second chapter, I barely knew what was going on. I was tired and bored of reading since your first chapter was so long. So, I guess this kind of goes back to the chapter length again. On the plot side of things, though, I’d love it if you could condense the events a bit to 1) make them more concise and 2) give the story a sense of flow and movement. Otherwise, right now the plot is pretty stagnant and hard to read.

Pace - 8/10
The pacing is decent, and it has good variation. There are some instances in your story, however, that seem very long and drawn out. This may be due to the long chapters, so be aware of that if you decide to rewrite your story again.

Grammar, Punctuation, Syntax & Diction - 7/10
There are a few things that I noticed here that I’d like to point out. Here’s an example of what you wrote: “Hush now! Or she’ll hear you.” the leader of the army said quietly, disguised his fear in a firm tone.
Now, there are two things wrong with this sentence. 1) You ended the quotation with a period. That’s something that you really just can’t do when writing dialogue. 2) You wrote the ending clause in the wrong tense. This should be written in the present tense instead of the past tense. I know it doesn’t really make any sense, and I know English isn’t your first language, so don’t worry. Tenses are tricky.
So, when all is said and done, the above sentence should be written as: “Hush now! Or she’ll hear you,” the leader of the army said quietly, disguising his fear in a firm tone.
I also noticed that there were a lot of unprecedented sentence fragments in your writing. Fragments are acceptable at certain times, but not in some of the places that you have them. I advise reading through your writing and checking for fragments, because my guess is that you just weren’t thinking about it when you were writing (no offense meant - I zone out when writing all the time, too).

Characters - 13/15
Sam: She’s definitely different from your stereotypical housewife, that’s for sure. I like how she would rather go and ride a horse than stay inside and do chores. I suspect that her differences will help her out later in the story. My critique here is that I’d love a character description. I don’t know what she looks like, and it was hard to visualize her.
Matt: I can’t get much of a read on Matt. He seems to just be a normal dude, with nothing especially unique about him. I suggest giving him some sort of special characteristics or quirks that make him interesting and more human, if you get my meaning.

Overall Enjoyment - 11/15
Honestly, this story was not my favorite. It was tough to follow and get into, the massive amount of characters was confusing, and the long chapters really didn’t help you out at all. That being said, this story has the potential to be great. I think with some revisions, perhaps some help from an editor, and a healthy amount of determination (which I’m sure you have), you can make this story shine.

Total Score: 81/100