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《Blade》Boy x Cat

Review - Boy x Cat: Life As A Newly Awakened Wizard (WriterHeir1)
The first 5 chapters were reviewed

Reviewer - DeathBlade__

Title: 0/5
The title is too big. The size of it makes it less catchy and a lot of it seems unwanted. The ‘Boy x Cat’ can be omitted entirely in my opinion. When I read that first, I thought you were shipping a boy and a cat and that’s not what the book is about. Secondly, it isn’t something you need to mention. Even the second part of the title isn’t catchy. Maybe you could find a smaller title that doesn’t seem very jarring to look at when it comes to the first impression.

Cover: 0.5/5
The cover is very plain. There isn’t even a cat present in it, even though it’s present in the title. The font is very plain and it doesn’t even say the title right. It says ‘Discovered’ instead of ‘Awakened’. Also, the book has some magic-related things in it which is not visible on the cover. I’d suggest you reach out to a graphic designer and have them make you a cover that would fit this book’s characteristics.

Blurb: 0.5/5
The first line could have been better. Val Cullen had a weird cat, that just doesn’t sound very appealing to me. You could have said mysterious, strange, peculiar, or anything else really. There are also many grammatical errors in the blurb which makes it a lot less appealing. Instead of ‘every boy; you wrote ‘ever boy’. Not to mention that in the before last paragraph, I could not understand the last line. I would suggest you edit the blurb properly and try to make it more appealing by giving us meaningful bits of the plot along with a cliffhanger to really get the readers excited.

Writing Style: 4/10
In the first two chapters, I saw a lot of things that could be improved with the writing style. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th chapters showed a lot of improvement. Still, there is room to grow.

Prologue: The prologue is short and sweet but I felt it should have been a lot more impactful. One way I can say to improve that is by writing from the animal’s POV rather than a random narrator. It would help us understand their anger and everything they felt toward humans. Basically, I wish it was more show than tell.

Chapter 1: So you keep shifting scenes. For example, Val stares at Alex for a while and the next moment, he’s on his cycling with. It just seems very abrupt and random and I feel like there should have been more pacing in between. Maybe just add a few scenes where he sighs and walks towards his cycle, and then you can continue writing however you did before. One thing I will mention a lot is how your book is more tell than show. Instead of showing us what happens, you tend to tell which makes the scene less fun to read.

Chapter 2: Again, there were random scene shifts. Val was talking about buying a book for his birthday and the very next scene, he’s showing the book he got. It would have been nice to see him buy the book or in the very least, written something like ‘I went to the bookstore before coming to school…’ or something. Also you mentioned many things about the contents of the box, the spells, everything. But it could have been in more detail. You could have showed his feelings when he saw random spells and whether he thought it was weird. Also, for the transformation spell, you said that there were many ingredient but never specified which ones they were. It just made the plot seem less thought out in my opinion.

Chapter 3: I don’t have much to say except that the writing style is a bit dull. You could show more than tell because it just feels like a summarised version, if you know what I mean. I would highly suggest you to improve the writing style so that the readers can visualise if not all, most scenes.

Chapter 4: Same as chapter 3

Chapter 5: The scen where glass shattered was too abrupt. It just happened, there was no anticipation whatsoever. To compensate for that, you could have described how the glass shattered, the noise it made and Val and Symon’s adrenaline when it happened. The adrenaline could have been written more when they were running as well, because without that, it feels a little incomplete.

Grammar: 6/10
The grammar in the first three chapters were pretty great. The vocabulary was limited, that is, there weren’t a big variety of words used, but other than that, it was pretty great. It was after that when I started seeing many mistakes. Most of them I pointed out in the comments so I hope you go through them and get a gist of it.
Mainly, your mistakes are due to lack of commas. This makes the sentences feel very runny, which is not good.
Another thing is the tenses, you use the wrong form of tense in certain unstances, most of which I have already corrected.
One last thing is the typos. You miss many words in the middle, or sometimes a few letters as well. This is not very huge, but it does cause a hindrance when there are many typos. Just go through my comments and read your chapters again, I think you will be able to find them.

Plot: 5/10
My main concern would be that the plot feels very rushed and very slow at the same time. I say this because for the most part, it doesn’t seem like the plot is going anywhere and when something impactful happens, it’s brushed off very quickly. The thing that causes this is the writing style. If you could a little bit more effort into it, the pacing will seem a lot better.
Other than the pacing though, the plot is quite enjoyable. Symon was pretty funny, as a cat and a human. I like the main characters ( more on that later) they seem pretty chill. The idea too is a unique one. Personally, I haven’t read or seen anything like it so Ii can’t be too sure but it was new to me. I also like how there is an element of mystery since it’s clear Val’s parents know something, Symon said so himself.
Overall, I’d say the pacing makes the book a little less enjoyable, so do work on that.
Characters: 6/10
I feel like there’s not much I know about the characters. This could be due to the fact since I only read the first 5 chapters, but still. There isn’t much I know except that Symon is funny, him and Val have a strong bond and that he has two other friends who aren’t best friends. Still, I’ll give a brief review from what I understood so far.

Val: He’s not very sociable and he’s bisexual. There’s nothing to hate about him but I also don’t think I have enough information to like him.

Symon: He’s funny, he’s charming (as a cat and as a human), he craves attention, sort of teh opposite of Val. They have a cute bond but again, I don’t feel like I know enough. Still, there was nothing to hate.

Katie and Bridget: I don’t really know much about them, except that they are friends of Val. I know they aren’t the main characters but I would really like to know more about them and I wish they had more of a character. Hopefully in later chapters, though.

Alex and Audrey: I honestly didn’t understand why Alex doesn’t liek Val’s friend. It was kind of a jerk move to invite Val in front of them but then brush them off. I feel like there should have been more to the story because his cold shoulder towards them is kind of unwarranted for. Audrey, on the other hand, I don’t know much about her. She likes dancing, I guess and she might like Val. Both of them might like Val (I can’t be too sure) but that’s it.

What I’m trying to say by this is that I don’t really know any of them properly. While working on the writing style, if you work on their emotions, I might be able to feel what their feeling and that does a lot when you want to relate with a character.

Overall Enjoyment: 2.5/5
The plot does have an enjoyable premise. I think fixing the issue I pointed out will really solve it. One thing I will tell is that for most people, characters are very important when it comes to the book. If you work on them more, I can see people enjoying your book a lot more. Another thing is the grammar and writing style. A few errors don’t matter but when there are many, it becomes a little bit irritating. Not a problem though because a quick reread will fix it. Just work on everything and you will be good to go!
All the best!

Total: 24.5/60