Reverie Reviews

review #40.S3: Some Days Are Like That

Some Days Are Like That

Author: Yellow_nelo
Reviewer: LadyInLostYearn

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SYNOPSIS

When you find out your fiancé and boyfriend of one and half years has two families and a side chick four months to your wedding, you'll be devastated, crushed.

You'll call your best and only friend for comfort only to find out her number no longer exists, you'll go to her house, and then you'll find out she had relocated a week ago with her husband and son, you'll lose your sanity, but you'll have to maintain your cool because you're now 25 and supposed to be mature.

You'll survive and after two days of staying indoors and battling depression, you'll decide to go to your shop and sew a dress to take your mind off the dark abyss you've fallen into.

You'll take a shower, dress casually in a flay flower pattern gown and brown boots -you won't bother applying makeup-and just as you're about to leave your house, you'll get a call from your mom telling you that your shop got burnt down to ashes, you'll cut the call, and instead of crying, you'll laugh all while trashing your room, you'll only stop when you break your mirror.

Then and there, you'll decide to do what anyone in your situation would do.

Commit suicide.

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Disclaimer: While I was reading your book with my best effort to stay unbiased, I might not catch your intended style for your characters, storyline, or purposes. By the end of the day, you control its narrative. I was just passing through, exploring around, and giving a deduction.

Overall review:

The eye-catching cover is very fitting with the blurb (not sure why the moon is there). The blurb is a whiplash left and right. Not in a bad way because it intrigued me, and it has clarity while not giving everything away. The story time is short and the chapters are just five, so I was curious about how you're going to tell it.

This is the first time I read a Christian-focused story. I was going in blind since the blurb didn't indicate anything about it, but the tags did mention it. The plot was simple as a short story should be, though I was expecting it differently. Because from the blurb, wild things happened and yet, you didn't show them. Not even through flashbacks. Instead, there was a dinner date from seven years ago, a bar, and Chike met Amara twice. It seems like you want to entice the readers with the blurb while the story isn't showing all that. Change your blurb because potential readers might feel they've been lied to.

The pacing was okay since it's, again, a short story. The mood was fine too, I could feel the calmness in the bar and the chaos during the dinner date. The character development for Amara was too fast. While Chike explained his logic and belief to Amara, a non-believer or God doubter wouldn't be quick to accept a stranger's words in just one night. One might argue God could make it happen, could change someone's heart in a snap, but paired that up with the coincidence of Chike saving Amara again, bad things happened to her non-stop, and she really wanted to off herself, all in a short time, made it look unrealistic. Her progress in the epilogue was more to being told than shown as well.

There were points that I disagreed with, like the topic of Oprah. I'm not going to state my opinions on them since this review isn't talking about your personal belief. And it's your book. However, make sure you tackle sexual trauma and religious trauma while remaining sensitive to the readers' feelings. Those aren't easy topics, and to me, they are not supposed to be in a short story. These issues should be explored more through a longer book, so the readers—who have these traumas—wouldn't feel their issues are a passing moment to the public. This is speaking from a believer, although I'm not Christian.

Grammar-wise, I encountered this same issue with the previous story I wrote a review for. The inconsistency. Certain sentences were okay, others were not good. Examples: '"I'm surprised you don't know." I say taking a sip from the wine I later ordered...' Put a comma in for dialogue tags. 'The last thing I want is to be pushed down a flight of stairs because of a wig that doesn't even cost much.' This sentence was okay. '"Even isiewu?." He asks, isi ewu is spiced goat head.' This sentence was not okay because you put a period after a question mark and the goat one was supposed to be a separate sentence since it wasn't relevant to the speaker.

Almost all paragraphs have excessive commas. Find which sentences to end and which are not. Read more English books outside Wattpad and use Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or both (don't fully depend on those tools) to help you.