This book is for the reviews of the stories submitted to via the now-obsolete Pink Alpaca Reads. Beware: honest opinions ahead.
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Suburban Vampire: A Tale of the Human Condition. With Vampires. by FranklinPosner
What I loved: This is an inventive approach to the well-known vampire in urban setting trope. It's a fun adventure, with a good dose of humor, action, and heart behind the words. It's also one of the most aware narrative voices I've ever read, which adds flavor to the story. The pacing is alright, with enough tidbits to keep the reader's attention towards the middle and finally to the end.
The plot is straightforward with clear villains and clear character motivations. The setting is built well with enough realism to convince the reader into going along the story's journey. The ending is handled well with enough hook for the next book, as it is building up to an interesting sequel.
Lastly, the skill regarding the prose and grammar is good and this is actually one of the most polished works I've ever come across Wattpad. Overall, it's a good story.
What didn't work: There are instances in the story where the lack of dialogue tags really confused me. Like, sure, there are only two people talking but at some point, especially after a whole barrage, the reader kind of loses track of who's talking. That's what happened when I was reading and I'll say I wasn't fond of that. xD And yeah, some scenes do get dialogue-heavy.
There are also points of melodrama where I kind of ended up rolling my eyes at. The dialogues certainly needed polishing to get rid of the awkward interaction between characters and at some points, the dialogue exposition in an attempt to introduce the worldbuilding.
Lastly, I feel like most of the characters apart from the MC are rough caricatures of personality traits without many dimensions to them. At the least, the main villain is developed and introduced well enough. But beyond that, I feel like the other characters could use more work and execution.
What to improve: Def those points above. Another not-so-big-deal nitpick is the switching of POV from the start of the story, where the narrative switches to the author's voice and the use of "I". However, towards the end, that POV kind of vanished, instead morphing into third-person omniscient. I would have liked to read the story from the author's voice from start to finish, holding up the consistency.
To improve on the dialogues, I suggest making your characters interact with their small-scale setting as they are talking. Break apart huge barrages of dialogue exposition into digestible bites, with appropriate pauses. Try to describe these people talking as normal humans would. It would seriously help your narrative a ton.
Lastly, there is a spattering of typos but no grammatical or punctuation errors. Nothing a good line edit wouldn't fix.
Final verdict: This is 8/10 on my scale. Overall, it's a good story. Will I continue to the next books? Maybe, if I am intrigued enough or if I have enough time. Otherwise, this is a pretty solid first book and an inviting start to a whole world of the paranormal. Keep writing. Keep telling amazing stories. We'll get there in no time. :)
