Ohana Reviews

Review ❀ Cursed with Power

Reviewer: @mmjayoh

Book: Cursed with Power

Author: @awesometales

Title and Cover: The title is intriguing–makes me interested to understand what is meant by that. Also, the cover image is sick. It looks very professional and I love the font color coordinating with the image. My only slight concern is that it reads more like a fantasy novel at first glance.

Blurb: I love the excerpt you've chosen to include. It's captivating and helps establish the premise. And I also like the blurb following; it seems to sum up the gist of your story quite efficiently.

My only comment is, at first, it reads as one giant paragraph. To many, it may look overwhelming at first look, so I would suggest maybe breaking some parts down to create many paragraphs. This can be more digestible to potential readers and make it easier to skim!

Plot Overview: I love the premise of this story. There is so much potential here! Chapter one was wonderfully written, in my opinion. And the cliffhanger was a nice touch–it's clear you have a knack to keep people interested in reading on, as many of your chapters ended with a cliffhanger.

For the next few chapters, my main complaint is there feels like a lot of telling going on, as opposed to showing. I would recommend searching up some videos on telling vs showing in writing–it's really helped me out in my own writing as well! But a quick run down, telling is when you just walk us through what's happening: she woke up and went to the store; showing is describing what's happening: she sprang up from her bed, rubbing her tired eyes, etc.

I felt that in much of the later chapters [2-5], I was reading a lot of filler to set up the premise and I was waiting for the story to really start. Which is unfortunate, because there were so many moments mentioned that could have been made really exciting and dynamic.

Some ideas: in chapter two, it felt too easy for Ellys to find out about the disease. She said she needed to find out, waltzed into the bathroom, and it just fell into her lap. Maybe make this more of a challenge, an ongoing search as the situation develops around her. Maybe she heard a piece of information at the mall–maybe an adult saw her and went bonkers, yelling she shouldn't be there! And then she went to the old man's house to find out more–also an opportunity for us to read an actual conversation here, with dialogue between the two of them.

Pacing: Going back to what I mentioned in the section above, so far it has felt like the story hasn't quite begun. I understand she's navigating this new world, trying to understand what's going on–but then it felt like she discovered the truth pretty soon. It wasn't until about chapter five that a new problem became evident (trying not to state spoilers), and so now the action may be taking off.

So, what I'm saying is, the pacing feels a bit slow. I think by implementing more showing, like mentioned already, this could help flesh out some of those earlier scenes to make everything feel more exciting and engaging, instead of an overload of filler.

Style and Flow: You're a very talented writer, I buzzed right through your story. Everything was communicated quite clearly. And you described things nicely. No real complaints here!

Characters: Your main character, Ellys, is a very young girl in a super complex situation. I think it would be nice to make it more apparent just how young she is. Think of things that are unique to eleven year olds, the way they may speak–words that would be out of their vocabulary. Perhaps, a more simplified outlook on the world. This would help make your story unique–and make those later chapters when she's starting to have dark thoughts that much more effective.

Additionally, I wanted to mention her parents. I didn't feel I had a very good understanding of them, or her relationship with them before the big modification section. And because of this, it felt confusing to me when it occurred.

To Ellys, it was immediately apparent something was off, but for me, I didn't know who they were to begin with, so it didn't hit as hard when the mother started speaking so harshly. To me, her parents felt distant and their relationship strained in earlier chapters. I think it would be beneficial to establish a clearer relationship, through dialogue and actual events, so that we could see that stark contrast to who her parents were before and who they were after they came back.

Grammar/Spelling: I didn't notice many issues here. Only some minor issues with your dialogue. For instance, when you write dialogue, you should create a new paragraph every time a new person begins to speak [I noticed this in chapter one between Ellys and Chloe].

Additionally, when adding a dialogue tag (I said, she yelled, etc), after dialogue, you should connect them with a comma ["Miss Brown is probably just shocked," I said to myself.]

However, if there is already punctuation after the dialogue, the tag should be lowercase ["Oh my!" my mother exclaimed.]

Final thoughts: Overall, I think this story has serious potential. The concept is unique and engaging–and I love the idea of it all coming from a young girl's perspective. I think the only problem you're running into here is structural–but once you flesh out some of those earlier scenes, I think your writing would really begin to shine. I'd definitely be interested in seeing how this story plays out. Great work!