In My Opinion

She Told Me by procrastiauthor3000

Source: Review request
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Mature: N (blood, bullying, death, guns, illicit drug use, loss of a loved one, strong profanity, murder, sexual innuendo, prescription drug abuse, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Complete
First impressions: 30/40
Digging deeper: 78/100
Final thoughts: Complete

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First impressions: 30/40

Title: 7/10

This is a nice, ambiguous title that could work for many genres, piquing the reader's interest. Who is she? What did she tell me? Only problem here is the capitalization. You should capitalize every word in this title. That makes it appear more professional.

Blurb/synopsis: 6/10

There's a lot of shock value here, but it's kind of buried in this one paragraph. I think tweaking punctuation, splitting sentences in places, splitting paragraphs in others, will all help to amp up the shock and hook the reader better.

So, first sentence. He "didn't think this town would be any different." That's intriguing. Clearly, he moved to the town that acts as the book's setting recently, and there's a very specific reason he left, one that the potential reader wants to know. That's something to emphasize, and you probably can do that with some adjustments to the next part of the sentence - hearing voices. That's a nice, shocking way to grab a potential reader's attention. You want that to stand out. Commas are soft pauses, so I think a hyphen is the way to go here. That's an abrupt stop that immediately highlights whatever comes next. So, cut out "that is," and the commas before and after it, of course, and put a hyphen there. Instant emphasis.

Next sentence. "It's unnerving." To most people, that would be an understatement, so this tells us something about Lucas' personality and background. You don't even need the next bit about this not being "the worst thing to happen to him." That just adds clutter, and we can already tell that hearing voices isn't the most shocking thing in the world to him. This is a subtle but important point to emphasize. I'd actually drop it into its own paragraph and tweak it just slightly to keep it detached from Lucas: "That's unnerving."
- Side note: There's also a touch of dry humor here that I did not know would match your writing perfectly when I first came up with this idea, so... That worked out nicely. XD

And then we get to something that actually bothers him - bodies dropping. That's sort of a big deal. I'd cut the entire section from "but" to "him," and start a new sentence (and paragraph) with the next "But." You don't need to say "Lucas" again, here or later, because we already know you're talking about him, so just saying "he" is sufficient.

Then we get to "unspilled secrets." That's kind of a weird phrase. I think "With secrets to hide" works better here, and that's all I'd change about that next sentence.