Book Reviews

SAGauthor: Nothing to Lose

Nothing to Lose is an ongoing spicy romance novel that follows main character Hareem after a brutal divorce, and her male counterpart Felix who, after some devastating family news, is now reluctantly searching for a wife. This story contains some dark/controversial topics, such as abuse, alcoholism, and religion. However, SAGauthor does a great job of incorporating these themes into their story tastefully, and I would advise you not to let these somewhat taboo topics scare you away from giving their story a read.

Positives: Overall, I enjoyed this story even though romance isn't really my preferred genre! I felt the main character was well crafted and just relatable enough where you can really feel engaged in the plot line without feeling like she's boring. Additionally, SAGauthor has a fantastic attention to detail that can really pull you into their story. I also felt that the plot was unique, captivating, and really tied well into the character's personalities.

General areas of improvement: Throughout the story, I consistently found myself wishing for a stronger sense of setting. I wanted to know more about Hareem and Felix's environments. Eventually, we do learn that the story takes place in Chicago US, however, I think adding that detail earlier along would also be helpful.

The timeline was a bit confusing at times, specifically how there's a prologue, then the story goes back six months, then it jumps ahead again two years? This, coupled with the fact that we never actually read about Hareem's interview with Felix, makes me feel like the prologue isn't necessary at all. I would either completely get rid of it and just start with Hareem and Harris' break up, or add a bit (maybe in Felix's perspective?) about meeting Hareem and hiring her. Without any additional context, the scene where Hareem runs into her boss is abrupt. I didn't even know that was supposed to be Felix at first, and after I realized who he was I felt like I had been robbed of a great character-defining moment for the main male lead.

Proofreading (grammar/spelling/etc): Occasionally you switch between past and present tense which can be a bit jarring. For example, the first line in chapter one, "couldn't" should be changed to "can't".

Overall there were very few spelling/grammatical errors, nothing that plugging your story into Grammarly wouldn't fix. I would, however, pay attention to your sentence structure. I mention this later under "author's voice" however it should also be noted here. At times I felt certain sentences were just unnecessarily wordy, and came out as garbled and melodramatic even if they were grammatically correct.

For example, this sentence in chapter five, "Time freezes right in its course as his velvety and heavy voice pierces through the eerie silence that offered me solace moments ago and sits heavily atop my heart crushing it with its weighty authority."

Woah. That's wayyy too much information for one sentence. Most people are going to have to reread sentences like this several times. It kind of feels like you used any dramatic buzzword you could think of and shoved it into one thought. I would try to simplify and shorten some of these sentences.

Dialogue: I didn't take any issue with the dialogue in your story, and felt you did a great job of including it when necessary. There weren't any irrelevant conversation, and everything anyone said felt natural and in character. Occasionally you misused dialogue tags or formatted some dialogue incorrectly.

The formatting can be fixed by taking note of what happens directly after dialogue is said. If you're describing how they said something, for example she yelled, you'd end the previous sentence with a comma. If it's an action, for example she walked away, you'd end the previous sentence with a period (or exclamation point, whichever is more fitting).

Dialogue tags are tricky, because you don't want to always just use said, but also certain things can't be translated into speaking. Like sighing. You don't speak through a sigh. What I like to use for dialogue tags is instead of writing "you're so annoying," she sighed deeply, I'd write "you're so annoying," she said with a deep sigh.