| | Indefinite Hiatus | |
I hope to return to this project someday, but it isn't feasible with my current health issues and life circumstances. I have to cut things from my workload so I can breathe. However, I still intend to complete my current li...
Source: Review request Genre: Romance Subgenre: Chicklit Mature: Y (infidelity, mention of suicide, non-explicit sexual content, strong profanity) LGBTQIAP+: N Status: Ongoing First impressions: 38/40 Digging deeper: 95/100 Final thoughts: Incomplete (inactive since 08/03/2024)
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First impressions total: 38/40
Title: 10/10 Great title. It conjures up images of deep emotion, pain, and healing, so it could work for a romance or a general fiction story, depending on how that healing occurs.
Story description: 10/10 Do you know how rare it is for me to give a perfect score in this category? No SPAG errors, perfect balance of info and mystery, great hook—you've got it all down pat. You've set the stage for Cassy's healing and rediscovery in Italy with food and romance. I'm in! The only suggestion I could make here is potentially cutting Pete Murphy's name from the first sentence, so Cassy's name goes first, since it sounds like Pete won't feature too much in the story after his indiscretion.
Cover: 10/10 This is a gorgeous cover. Having the Tuscan imagery within the couple's silhouette is such a neat idea, and the shades of sunrise or sunset work well with the idea of mending a heart—ending a chapter (sunset) and beginning a new one (sunrise). The font and placement of the title is perfect, and your name fits so neatly and perfectly in the space between the faces.
First chapter (and everything that came before it): 8/10 Hi Loves: Hi! This is pretty informal, which is fine for an author's note, but I just wanted to point out a few things in case they become an issue later in the story. There are a couple of missing apostrophes in contractions, a capitalized word midway through a sentence, and you should hyphenate "self-discovery."
Character aesthetics: Ooh, pretty. Maybe I should attempt character aesthetics, eventually. ...nah. I'll just hire somebody to do them, if I decide to try that out. 😉
Chapter 1: This is a good first chapter. It really shows Cassy's good mood and builds up her hope and happiness, along with this underlying sense of foreboding that something is about to go wrong, so the revelation about Pete and her boss is not necessarily unexpected, but it still hits the reader hard. You also show her shock and rising rage really well, as well as her gradual cooling down while she walks and reflects on the situation. And then the surprise and humor of someone basically attacking her because they think she's about to jump to her death—really, really well done. All the feels, from the highs of happiness to the lows of betrayal to the surprise of the unknown.
As far as editing suggestions, you slip into the present tense rarely, so just keep an eye out for that. Keeping everything in the past tense for consistency is important. In the first sentence of the story, there's a missing period in that dialogue, and later, there's a semicolon with an extra space in front of it. You also have a tendency to overuse commas, which I recognize, because I do it, too.
