Brooke's Book Review - Temp. Closed :(

A Broken Vow Review

Author: @EstherYang08

Reviewer: @fudgk00kie3 (Lee Minji) Please give them lot's of love because they went out of their way to help me with reviews :)

Title & Cover: I actually really like this title and cover! It's nice and simple and the cover's graphics are really nice. It gave me a Game Of Thrones type of feeling. I feel like as of right now in your point of the story it does and at the same time doesn't match the story I was expecting. I believe it matches the prologue of course but just not the rest of the chapters right now. With you only being into chapter 2 of publishing your book, it would take more time to get into the reason the title is that and not something else. (While I completely feel you there, I'm getting there myself!) Other than that, it's definitely a good start to drawing the reader in!

Score: 9/10

Grammar & Spacing: I feel like this category was good so far within your story. But it can still use a bit of work of course. I found most of my criticism would be the way things are worded, the descriptions I feel could be said better. I find this a bit complicated myself when writing to make it sound smooth as much as I can. A technique you can adapt into making those things smoother could be not using nouns in certain sentences and stating the action, including pronouns sometimes.

Like: "He glanced around his room. His wooden bed was pushed against the window(.) In front of him was a desk with its surface slanting down slightly and on top of it a feather was sticking down out of a glass bottle filled with black ink."

Personally I would write this as "He glanced around his (descriptive word like "empty") room, with a wooden (framed) bed pushed against the window. In front of him was a desk with its surface slanting down slightly, on top of it a feather stuck out from a glass bottle filled with black ink."

These are small things but I think it would help a lot with certain grammar issues and flow! Also I'll add that the spacing is good but some chapters have inconsistency which didn't bother me much!

Score: 7/10

Plot & Characterization: The plot so far has me very intrigued! It rattled my brain a bit in the prologue. I think I would've liked more information on where the figure had gone to and when this happened. But I'm pretty sure it was meant to be mysterious so I can't say much there just yet. I'm also curious about the main character, Frederick. He seems to be an interesting personality to his family, I think in future publications I would like to understand more about him being a disappointment to his father. There's some small concerns I had with how some of the information about the characters is given. As I mentioned before, the flow makes it a bit difficult to grasp the information. For example, the first chapter I believe couldn't given more detail about the kind of Duke and father he is. At least in the eyes of Fredrick, what kind of person is his father?

Also believe there are some character descriptions missing, like what Frederick looks like, his age, height, weight or body size. From experience I forget things like that myself which is why I include a character description chapter or try to mention it somewhere within the chapter. But if i did miss it please correct me! <3

Overall I am enjoying the plot here, I can't wait to learn more about where this story is going!

Score: 28/35

Worldbuilding: Worldbuilding was lacking a bit for me. There are descriptions of certain scenery but I believe there could be more. Such as Frederick's bedroom, the castle, the intro area, etc. Again it's a hard thing to include but when going back I would suggest you read from a reader's perspective instead of the author's perspective. Reason being, when reading from a writer's perspective you are already able to imagine what the scenery and characters look like so you'd only end up getting a lot of conversation out. Another thing I would suggest is to use some sensory world building, so smells, noises, things you'd be able to see in detail, what's close to the character that they can touch. Similar to the description of what was next to Frederick!

In all, its still needs work but you've gotten a great start!

Score: 20/30

Overall score: 64/100

Don't let the score stop you from writing this story! Its super good and I would definitely continue reading. I'm super curious on where this plot goes, I hope some of my tips will help you in the future.

Keep going at it & Happy Writing! <3