Project Athena | Reviews

SHS (Nadia)

Author: _Baby_A_A_

Reviewer: SardonicBeauty

Genre: Romance

SHS or Seducer Hacker Stealer is a Romance book with touches of action, revolving around three girls, Josephine Zoey, Halsa Anns and Shaelynn Nelson. The story introduces us to the girls quickly, and what their roles are. It was interesting to see how they worked and what their dynamic was. The characters are very good at what they do.

I will first start with the cover of the book. The portrayal of three girls is nice, but the cover is too colourful, making it hard to distinguish what the main element of focus on the cover is. For your book, it's the girls. I'd suggest finding 3 pictures of the same colour gradient. For example, you can refer to the movie 'Charlie's Angels' for inspiration. The three girls are the main focus of the cover, not anything else. When you are writing the title of the book, use any two colours that complement the background. For SHS, use one colour, and for the rest another colour. Your name should be in either of those colours, as well.

Second, I want to comment on the title of the book. SHS is not a bad name, but pairing it with the Seducer, Hacker and Stealer, it's a bit mouthful and not a title that would indulge people further into reading the book. I understand the main theme of the book is the girls and what they do, but when you are writing a title it should be cohesive, interesting and attention-grabbing. I'd advise you to look into some other names, maybe a name they call themselves that is not SHS but one or two words.

Third, the blurb of the story. There are quite a few grammatical errors that hinder the flow of the story. For example, the line 'all of these times' should be 'all these times'. There is a punctuation missing after 'enigmatic'. The line 'So, what will happen when one of the members from the trio falls for this man?' is a little wordy, you can easily change it to, 'What happens when one of them falls for him?'. These are just little changes that will help in a smoother flow of the blurb.

Now, coming to the technical parts of the story.

I will start by talking about the transitions between the POVs. There are no clear indications before a POV is changed from one person to another. In one paragraph it is from, say, Josephine's POV and suddenly it's Halsa's POV. The change is very sudden, and it leads to confusion about what is going on. Or rather, from whose point of view, something is happening.

When there are multiple characters in a story and if you want to show that, you'll need to be very clear. For example, in the second chapter, we see things happening from Josephine's POV and suddenly everything is happening to Halsa and then it is shown from her POV. That raises questions which are unanswered in the scene. Where are the others? What happened to Josephine? Why did the POVs shift?

You need to make the scene clearer and be easy to imagine.

Next, select one tense and stick to it. Throughout the chapters, in one paragraph, you have used the past tense, but in the next paragraph, it's in the present tense. It makes up for a very conflicting atmosphere for the plot and, of course, for the readers. In some paragraphs, you have used both past and present tense. For example, "Brax stared at the back of the blonde as she kept running farther...," two lines after this, "He can easily find her whereabouts if he wants..."

Due to this, there is no consistency in the narration of the story, which leads to a disruption of flow. Any story is built on a few key elements: grammar, punctuation, point of view, and style. The inconsistency among all of this makes the story jarring to read.

Coming to Plot, and while the start was somewhat okay, the second chapter does not make any sense. And I'll make it clear why.

One, the kiss between Brax and Halsa is downright sexual harassment. There is no other way to explain that. Why you found the need to add it is lost on me. If you want to show Brax's attraction towards Halsa, which does not make sense either, you could have explained it by showing Brax leaning towards Halsa. His body language, dilated eyes, etc.

Two, why did Halsa find the need to protect the girls when clearly they are better equipped for that than her? Again, it feels like a forced show of bravado just so that the kiss scene can happen between her and Brax.

Three, when all of this is going on, why are Josephine and Shaelynn just standing there doing nothing? Apparently, all three of them are best friends, but they don't come to Halsa's rescue when Brax is kissing her without any consent. On top of that Shaelynn finds it very important to disclose personal information about Halsa after the kiss. And yes, the kiss was too soon.

The plot does not get better from here, either. It's just a forced effort to create bad boys who you try to portray as charming, but their actions just make them seem bad.

The dialogues are fine from a technical point of view. In accordance with the plot and the characters delivering them, it is not the most enjoyable thing.

The story lacks a lot in the description department. After a sentence or a dialogue is delivered, the readers want to see how it affects to people to whom it's delivered. It's not necessary everywhere, but you need to add it in some places. Even in the scenes where there is no dialogue, the description is very minimal. The only thing I like about Chapter 5 is the way the character's emotions or facial expressions are shown. So, that's something you can read and try to incorporate in your other chapters.

Lastly, character development and there is none. All three girls need to have a lot more gravity to them, and the same applies to their love interests. These characters have no depth to them whatsoever, and no quality to make them seem likable. You need to do a heavy edit, in the first chapters, because those are the areas that work as the gripping point for the readers. If the content is not engaging, then it's hard to keep reading the upcoming chapters.

I will give this story 1.5 stars out of 5. This book has potential. I really liked the first chapter, and the idea of it, so I know with some heavy editing and changes, this book will be really good.

Good luck!