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The Brown-eyed Soul [Alba]

Book: The Brown-eyed Soul
Author: sabiduriaaa
Reviewer: oraclesighter
Chapters read: 33

The title and cover are incredibly attractive. Cover, most importantly, is very aesthetically pleasing. You can tell that effort has been put into it. It also goes well with the title, “The Brown-eyed Soul,” as we’ve got the image of a brown-eyed woman in the background. Overall, great first impressions.

The plot is filled with emotions and twists. We embark on a wild roller coaster which is getting to see Yashita and Avyan’s relationship unravel throughout the story and how they evolve from mere friends to lovers, eventually becoming a love triangle with Kabir.

However, in the prologue we start off with Yashita having a dream. It wasn’t obvious enough that the character woke up from a dream.

The dialogue-to-action ratio is too unbalanced. You’ve got too much dialogue but too little action. Incorporate action beats where characters do things as they talk, or before/after speaking.

The way we instantly just switch from dream dialogue to real life dialogue is too sudden and not smooth enough.

Example of improvement:

“No, please…!”

I blinked and suddenly found myself in a different room, hands clammy, and damp with cold sweat.

“Hey! Are you okay? Are you listening to me?” A deep voice snapped me back into reality and I turned to the figure (opportunity for describing how he looked like) kneeling beside me. “Hello, ma’am?”

This is just a simple example of how you can make it more obvious that she’s just woken up from a dream, incorporating the use of actions and not just dialogue. This makes your writing much more engaging and improves readability vastly.

And when it comes to the first chapter, it should always be able to stand by itself without the support of the prologue. If you don’t read the prologue, you won’t understand anything that goes on in the first chapter in this story.

That’s not how it should be.

Mind you that there are numerous readers that always skip prologues, since they work as a kind of deliverer of backstory and how specific events led to the present moment more than anything. The first chapter should never depend on a prologue to stand firm, it just serves as a tool to add depth and background to it.

Now, I’m not telling you to rewrite the whole introduction. But I would suggest you incorporate a simple and short summary of what happened in the prologue at the beginning of the first chapter.
That way, you can still understand what’s happening without having to read the prologue.

And no, I’m not defending readers who choose to skip the prologues. Rather it’s a basic rule in writing any book. The first chapter should always have enough information to hook the reader in without the need of anyone having to read a prologue to understand it.

If you still have doubts over this, I’d recommend you to read some articles on the matter or watch YouTube videos informing about prologues and whether you should include one or not. There’s lots of useful advice out there.

Throughout the story, the povs shift quite often. I do like seeing pov switching when it comes to characters, to see their opinions and inner thoughts and not just be limited to one character throughout the whole story.

However, I will strongly advise you to choose ONE pov when it comes to narration of first person or third person. You can make exceptions for this rule, for example at the start of the chapters, but make it obvious why you’re starting off with first person and then choosing to write the rest of the story in third person. Or vice versa.