In My Opinion

She Told Me by procrastiauthor3000

Full title: 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)
Status: Complete
English usage: Indian
First impressions: 30/40
Digging deeper: 78/100
Final thoughts: Complete

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

*****

First impressions total: 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.

The last sentence does need a little work, though. I know from reading the first chapter the significance of "them," but I didn't know it at first, and this threw me. Setting it apart with quotation marks tells any potential readers that you chose that word on purpose. Then, period for an abrupt stop, capitalize "but," and drop that into its own paragraph for one last punch.

And that's what you have here, and that's what fine-tuning like this amps up. Punch and shock. This is an attention-grabbing blurb, telling potential readers to expect voices, secrets, and murders, all centered on an ambiguous character who's as mysterious as the rest of the book.

Cover: 10/10
I love this cover. It's simple. It's really, really simple, almost to the point of complexity, and sometimes, simple is best. The gray-scale is perfect. The lines of blocky text saying "LISTENTOMELISTENTOME" look to me like one of those moving walkways in an airport, and the man's walking alongside it, looking in that direction with his hands in his pockets in this disinterested manner, just like me glancing over at the people on the moving walkway. It makes me wonder. The title, SHE TOLD ME, in simple white blocky lettering, and then that text walkway - it all makes me wonder. How invested is he in listening to her? Is he ignoring her, and the walkway is part of a progression in her adamant attempts to get his attention? And the lighting. He's walking toward a light source, which is not parallel to the walkway, and the shadow the light casts behind him shows how he's turning his back on the words... Then, in quiet, smaller white lettering, your name above the title. Visible, but not distracting from the rest of it at all. Yeah, never mind, not simple at all, and I figured that would be the case when I started analyzing this cover.