In My Opinion

Zoe, the Witch of Innocence by High_Priestess_Elena

Full title: The Five Cursed Witches: Volume 1 - Zoe, the Witch of Innocence by High_Priestess_Elena
Source (1): Blossom Awards 2024 by TheBlossomCommunity_
Category: Fantasy
Mature: Y (death, magical torture/violence/abuse, smut, suicidal thoughts)
Status: Complete
Round 1: 35/40, did not progress to round 2

Source (2): Zelicaon Awards by -Chrysalis_Realm
Category: Fantasy
Special note (judging): I had 3 books from this category, and the other judges (nkvenus7878 and dead_poet_7) had 6 and 5 books, respectively.
Result: 96/100 (2nd place)

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

*****

Round 1 total: 35/40

Title: 10/10
I like the title, but I wish there was a way to have a subtitle on Wattpad, so you could separate "Zoe, the Witch of Innocence" from the rest of the title. The title is too long to fit on the screen this way. That's not your fault, so I'm still giving this a 10. It catches my attention, and the part I can't read is visible on the cover, so it's fine.

Blurb/synopsis: 8/10
So, the first thing I notice about the blurb is the repetitive sentence structure in the first paragraph. The first three sentences are all "part 1, part 2," and it gets a little boring. Don't be afraid to play around with sentence structure. Switching it up a little will help you catch and hold the reader's attention. The last two sentences need a little work, anyway, so working on them may lead you to fix the entire paragraph. For literal fixes, the third and fourth sentences have phrasing issues and a missing comma: "It's a curse she would do anything to get rid of, but her coven considers it to be their best weapon. They have asked her, from time to time, to kill potential threats to the coven, and it is time for her to do it again." But, as I said, it would be really helpful for you to play around with varying sentence structure.

Comma placement is your main issue in the second paragraph. Using an editing tool that supports your English usage would help you fix that pretty easily, and it may help you when you're playing around with sentence structure, too. But, this is interesting, and it gets me curious, and I 100% support the content warning, so, good start. I want to read on.

Cover: 9/10
I'm giving this a 9 because "The Five Cursed Witches: Volume 1" isn't on the cover. It would take some rearranging to fit it all on there, but it's important, so I think it should be included somehow. But, otherwise, the colors, image, font, everything goes together really nicely.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 8/10
The author's note gets me curious about this story, and all the following ones, so that's good. It does have a few misspellings ("tiredlessly" should be "tirelessly," "intrugied" should be "intrigued"), and some phrasing/wording issues. For example, the first sentence of the third paragraph could be a smoother read: "Each of the different volumes will focus on a new set of characters (the last one being an exception)." There are also a few verb/noun disagreements, like in the third sentence of that paragraph, it should be "there is information" instead of "there are information." Just little things that having someone proofread behind you or using an editing tool would catch.

I skipped the "Accolades" because I don't want my judging to be influenced by the opinions of others, but kudos!

I've come across another story recently that does this sort of one-line intro to different sections of the story, and I kind of like it. My only thing, and maybe I'll find out differently in the story, is that this line feels like a verse from a song or a poem? If that's the case, splitting it up into three lines might look better. But I'm not a poet, and it's up to you: