Project Athena | Reviews

Darkness Together (Nadia)

Author: ___somerandomgirl___

Reviewer: SardonicBeauty

Genre: Romance

Darkness Together is a romance book that follows the journey of Naina and Aroon. Naina is a spirited girl who has lost her vision. As she ventures into Thailand, she meets Aroon who is battling with his demons, as well.

First, cover. The cover is impactful but it looks very bland. Try using a different font and add some more elements to the cover, or add a bit of contrast and colour. Make the Font bigger and move it downwards. On the top of the cover add your name.

Second, summary. It's short and to the point but I will point out things you can improve.

"Together, they find love and healing in Get ready for an adventure that will ignite your soul and leave you spellbound till the very end." There are a bunch of mistakes in this line.
One, "Together, they find love and healing" this sentence is incomplete. You can edit it to something like, "Together they find love and healing. Get ready for an adventure that will ignite your soul and leave you spellbound"

"unexpected places, proving that sometimes, the greatest adventures lead straight to the heart."

For the words with which you are starting a sentence, always capitalize the first letter. The construction of the sentence is wrong, as well. When read together the sentence is incomplete and doesn't create a clear visualization of what you want to portray. Something like, "Unexpected places combined with thrilling adventures sometimes lead straight to the heart"

When you are combining a sentence, first think about what you want to convey then write the sentences accordingly.

Third, the overall writing style, punctuation and grammar. The sentences end abruptly and it feels more like a person just saying everything rather than storytelling. For example, the first line in the first chapter, is "The biggest...eyes". Normally, this sentence alone would be a very strong opening line, but since it's written in a very straightforward way, it doesn't feel catchy.

"The biggest irony of my life is, my name is Naina. Naina means 'eyes', the same ones that can stop seeing the light any day and at any time"

In a few sentences, you can combine half of the first paragraph and make it more compelling to read.

The punctuation needs a lot of work, you often just add extra spaces after adding a punctuation which hinders the readability of the story.

There is a continuous lack of clarity in the usage of tenses. In the first paragraph you have used present tense, then when it comes to the second paragraph you shift to past tense. In the first chapter, after the second paragraph, you don't put spaces to define when a paragraph is ending and another is starting.

Once again you forget to capitalize the first letter of the first word in the sentences.

The overall chapters are extremely short and the story progression feels a little bland. I truly think your story has a lot of potential, but you need to work on the chapters.

The characters are only saying everything that is happening, but when you are writing a story, to show people saying something you can try two things; inner monologue and dialogue. Otherwise, you need to write the story in a way that shows the things which are happening. For example, "I am sad", this is saying. "I looked around my room, the colours slowly fading away leaving nothing but darkness. My heart squeezed painfully, the realization of my situation sinking in" This is showing.

I am not pinpointing sentences from your book because your whole narrative has been like that, so you need to rewrite the chapters, and work on character progression but most importantly you need to figure out how you want to show this story to the readers.

Overall, this story has so much potential and if you decide to edit it, let me know. I would love to read it again. Try to rewrite the sentences, focus on giving paragraph spaces (make each paragraph four lines or five maximum), and focus on the tense you want to use. Also, be sure if you want to write in first or third-person POV. Be mindful of the spaces, and edit once you are done writing the chapter.

I'd rate this book a 1 out of 5 stars.

Good luck!