Book Reviews ||CLOSED||

To Steal A Weeping Widow

As mentioned earlier, this book has been reviewed based on the following criteria:

♠Title
♠Cover
♠Blurb
♠Grammar
♠Point of view execution
♠Story pacing
♠Writing style
♠Punctuation
♠ Character introduction

It also contains comments and ways the writer can better their work. If the review makes you want to read the book, go right ahead.

Title: To Steal A Weeping Widow

Genre: Mystery Romance

Writer: BritishGravity

Review

Title: I don't have much to say about the title. It's pretty unique and is really fitting for the book. If I were awarding scores I'd give it a ten out ten.

Cover: I feel the cover captures the essence of the story. It's fitting and quite creative but it's not exactly eye-catching. Based on the reviews of the rest of my team, the cover is just a bit above average. It's suitable though, for the kind of story you're writing. A suggestion would be to use the rose as a background before adding the text rather than having it obstruct the title of the story. 

Blurb: The blurb is one of the main reasons I accepted to review the book. I would commend the excerpt too (although it isn't part of the blurb) for being able to hook me. The first part of the main blurb itself is okay. The sentence elicits some form of curiosity if the 'weeping widow' is to be taken literally and that in itself serves as a kind of hook.

The ending is a pretty strong hook, it leaves no doubt in my mind that this is a book I'd want to read. The only problem I have with the blurb is that you didn't properly introduce the main characters of your story. While you did in fact introduce them, we weren't given a name which practically killed the whole point and made it quite confusing. It's just like when you're introducing a stranger to someone in real life, the first thing you'd mention is the name of the person.

The pronouns used could have been replaced with the character's names since we're pretty much just meeting them for the first time. 'He' or 'she' could be any one of the characters and though common sense would eventually tell which characters you intended, it's not quite the best strategy to use in a blurb.

When I sent the blurb to the rest of my team, most of them said it was confusing and I'd attribute that to the improper introduction of the main characters. I'd suggest you add their names in place of the pronouns.

Apart from that, the blurb was quite okay to me. Another thing I'd like to add is something someone in my team mentioned. It's about the hook at the end. The hanging question is just about who stole the painting and honestly, that's not very intriguing. There could be more. A forbidden relationship can add more suspense and eagerness for readers than finding out who stole a piece of art but seeing as that's the main conflict of the story, I don't know what else to say.

Grammar: Again, if I were to be awarding marks this would be a sure ten or maybe a nine but the grammar was pretty perfect. You maintained your tenses, I didn't spot any grammatical errors; the syntax, sentence structure—everything was in order.

Punctuation: It was hard to spot errors in your punctuation and the paragraphing was pretty much okay so I'd give you that.

POV execution: I'd say you executed the first person POV quite perfectly though it did read like third person in some parts (even though it makes sense since Eleanor's the third person narrator for other characters' actions). Just keep in mind that she has limited knowledge since she isn't an omniscient narrator and even though her account of other's actions is third person, it has to be limited.

Writing style: I liked the writing style. It was one of the things that kept me reading the story although it became a bit too flowery at a point.

Story pacing: My opinion is based on the five chapters I read. I feel the book is a bit too slowly paced. I specifically made the review just five chapters because that's enough to get someone gripped. Normally I have just enough patience to read till the fifth chapter of a book and if it's still not giving, I drop it. It's kind of like a standard, you're meant to get your readers hooked in the first five chapters.

You have an excuse for a dull first chapter, maybe even till the third chapter but once it's the fifth chapter and it doesn't feel like anything much is happening, you're likely to loose a reader. From what I've seen in the blurb and the first five chapters, I know the book has a lot of potential but then there's no real conflict to keep your readers going.

Apart from the theft, nothing else has really happened to make things exponentially worse than they already are. I actually expected to see Eleanor being accused of the theft in those first five chapters.

The heartbreak and all she'd go through when no one believes her, not even her own best friend. Then the eagerness that comes from experiencing the budding romance between her and Simon would keep me reading.

But you ended the fifth chapter with just giving a whiff of whatever is to come. The lack of conflict in those five chapters kinda dulled my interest in the book and the only conflict you actually introduced wasn't strong enough to keep me going.

The constant revisiting of the theft and mentioning how much it weighed down Eleanor, how much loss it would cause and how terrible the situation was made the whole thing feel quite redundant and tiring.

I think you really need to work on your pacing.

Character introduction: I'll talk about your characters in general here. Firstly I LOVED the way you introduced your characters. It's not easy to pull it off so smoothly. I also liked the way your main character occasionally related things to art. I think that aspect really helped in her character development. In all, I think you did a really good job with your characters.

Honestly, the story is really nice and it's something I'd definitely love to read when I'm free. All you need to do is to pay attention to the pacing.