In My Opinion

The Silent Voice by EtherealMoon2kx

Full title: THE SILENT VOICE by EtherealMoon2kx
Source: Review Shop by TheBlossomCommunity_
Genre: Dark romance
Mature: Y (blood, depression, emotional abuse, murder, physical abuse, strong swearing, suicidal ideation, torture, violence)
Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 31/40
Digging deeper: 30/100
Final thoughts: Complete
Special note: Chapter 18 was the last available chapter as of the completion of this review.

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

*****

First impressions total: 31/40

Title: 9/10
Good title, and it matches the blurb and cover, adding to the impression of a woman suffering in silence. My only nit-picky thing about the title is that it's in all caps. I'd swap it out to match what you did with the cover, so only the first letters of each word are uppercase.

Blurb/synopsis: 6/10
I would save all the questions for the end of the blurb. They're a great way to hook a potential reader by prompting them to seek answers in the story—after the main section of the blurb has introduced the characters and plot. They're not as good at starting off a blurb as straight statements, and if you use too many questions, that dulls the hook. So, I'd move the third paragraph up to the top of the blurb, and I think you can incorporate some of the questions into that statement/paragraph really well to sharpen the initial hook and pave the way for the last questions. There are also some verb tense issues here, fluctuating from future to present to past tense. This is overall in present tense, I think, and future tense is fine for the questions, but the past tense feels messy.

So, I'm going to start with the third paragraph. First thing, punctuation. You shouldn't have any spaces before punctuation (except for opening quotation marks for dialogue, but that doesn't apply here), so no space before the second comma. Also, dependent clauses (or small bits of info that describe a noun but can't stand on their own as a complete sentence) should be offset by commas on both sides. So, there should be a comma after "aunt." You also don't need "being." And this is in past tense, but I'm also going to try to merge it with some questions, just to make this a fuller, more informative paragraph that gives potential readers more info so they start asking questions on their own. That will probably negate some of the editing suggestions here, but they apply in many situations, so I thought it would be good to include them for future reference.

There are a lot of ways to flip and reorder words and sentences, so I'd encourage you to play with this yourself, but this is what I came up with. It merges the first four paragraphs into one, so the blurb ends with just two questions:

"Athena Everhart is the victim of a scheme by her grandmother and aunt, who force her to become the fake wife of Mikhail Cassius, the CEO of Infernotech and an elite mafia bigshot. She is terrified of him, knowing he's a bloodthirsty tyrant who will kill anyone who displeases him, but he is madly in love with her."

Then, for the questions, I'd recommend changing "How would" to "Can." That changes the meaning in a way that makes the reader even more curious. Instead of saying he will do these things and prompting the reader to wonder how he'll do them, now you're saying he wants to do these things, prompting the reader to wonder if that's possible, and if so, how he'll do them.

Cover: 10/10
This is a gorgeous cover. I love the white and off-white theme and the very simple design. A woman in a wedding dress, standing with her back turned to the camera, beautiful flowers, the title and your name in stylized font that isn't too fancy—perfect. It all works together to create a serene beauty, and her posture leaves the image open to interpretation, allowing room for the possibility that, although she may look great, she may not be too happy about this wedding.