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Review #47 | The Shooting Star

Title: The Shooting Star
Author: Radiaamaya

Summary: 2/5

I like the general gist you have happening here – it's very clear that this story has some intense backstory, and it's a journey of self-discovery and healing. Great job, because that can sometimes be very hard to communicate to readers in such a succinct manner!

One of the main issues I am having with your summary is the lack of commas making it very difficult to follow. There are a lot of run-on sentences throughout the whole summary—this can be automatically quite disengaging for potential readers, so I would suggest a quick brush-up on this!

Also, I feel that your summary is a bit too vague in terms of conflict and stakes. You mention secrets and ugly truths – great, I love the drama. The issue here is that every blurb you will ever read will mention secrets and ugly truths, so what separates yours from theirs? Give us a bit more context or even just a little more of a taste of what these truths may allude to. And what are the stakes? Why should her choice matter that much – enough to get a new reader invested?

Grammar: 1.5/5

Okay! I want to start by saying that grammar and punctuation are really freaking hard—there are all these very elaborate rules and conditions. So please don't mind the fact that I may spend a lot of time here. The language is just so complex, and I want to make sure I am not glossing over anything here. At the end of the day, as tedious as grammar and punctuation are, they are really important – once you know them, though, you'll be able to master them for every book!

Pretty bluntly, I strongly recommend that you have a look at your punctuation. There were some issues with punctuation surrounding dialogue, and we had lots of run-on sentences. I really don't like promoting my own work because it is awkward, but I actually have written guides on a lot of things that may help you – if you are interested, I can tag you in all the chapters I think may be relevant based on what I write here.

I took out some examples from the very start and the very end of your story to use to demonstrate some of the things going wrong.

"Kylie" Kylie whipped her face in the direction of her father, her brows knitted together in confusion. Let's face it her father and she doesn't get along much. Scratch that they never get along.

Okay, a few things here. We need punctuation before the closing inverted commas with the dialogue, for one. Second of all, we are missing some commas. And lastly, some phrasing is just very awkward. I would personally change it all up to look like:

"Kylie."

Kylie whipped her face in the direction of her father, her brows knitted together in confusion. Let's face it – she and her father don't get along much. Scratch that – they never get along.

Another example:

She hadn't heard him wrong, did she?

Over here, we have a random change in tense. Whatever tense you choose, you need to keep it consistent. Had and did are quite different! It should be either:

She hadn't heard him wrong, had she?

Or:

She didn't hear him wrong, did she?

Next up:

"You called?" Kylie asked dumbly despite hearing him clearly. "Sit in here", her father patted the space on the coach beside him. Instead, he chooses to sit on the single couch on the far end.

If you have multiple characters speaking, the new character's dialogue should start in a new sentence. Also he patted [past tense] the couch, but he chooses [present tense] to sit somewhere else – notice your changing tenses? I advise you to have a look and do some brushing up on them. I would suggest something more like: