"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe." - Gustave Flaubert
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It's a beautiful cover! Loved it immediately when I saw it. The silhouette figure of a male and female holding each other gives off that romantic vibe. Whereas your name written at the top part of the cover is barely visible. Making the text bolder would make it easier to see and read. I also love the question placed on the lower right side. The cover alone would be enticing enough to make your readers eager to delve into your story.
Title: 9/10
The title goes well with the cover though shortening it would make it better. Instead of Lost Love = Misery Growing, I would say just making it 'Lost Love' still goes perfectly well with it. You don't necessarily need to add '= Misery Growing'. You can emphasise that more in the blurb.
Blurb/Description: 10/10
You did a great job with the blurb! You gave the key points needed to make your readers eager to dive into your book. The blurb already implies that there would be a kind of misery in the life of Ethan which I would say is enough reason to exclude '= Misery Growing' from the title.
Creativity and originality: 9/10
I love the idea of the story and also the fact that you're telling the story from the male lead's point of view though I expected to see the female leads pov as well since it started with, 'Ethan's POV.' Adding that in every chapter would seem unnecessary since neither Sophia nor Julia's pov would be mentioned.
Plot and Flow: 10/20
I loved how the story unfolded at the start that is until the flashbacks. I won't suggest bringing in a flashback just a few paragraphs into the story because that would be disconnecting your readers away from the story. I get the point of the flashbacks but it became too frequent in the first six chapters that it slowed down the pacing.
There's no harm in adding a flashback but at least make it come naturally and not so often in a single chapter. You can link the things in the present and the past to the narrative rather than using a flashback most of the time. You should capture your readers' attention in the first few chapters and not have them rushing through the excess flashbacks.
Character Development: 10/20
I didn't really see much development in the characters and to be honest I disliked Sophia. I was rooting more for Julia. I couldn't see the reason why he loved her and that could be because the majority of the time it felt like I was being told what was happening instead of showing it to me which I would elaborate more on in the later part.
The characters felt flat as well. It's like you were so focused on the flashbacks that there wasn't enough narrative to flesh out the other characters. It was only until much later in the story that the character's personality became more apparent which shouldn't be.
The part where Ethan woke up and realised Sophia left him and moved all her belongings out seemed very unrealistic to me. It got me questioning how much of a deep sleeper Ethan was that he didn't wake up from Sophia moving all her stuff cause I remember in the earlier chapter where Ethan said most of the boxes were hers so how could she have moved it all out by herself and not have woken him up accidentally.
Writing style: 5/10
Your writing is great, I can't deny that but there's this wall you've put up that makes it difficult to immerse myself in your story. The wall you've put up is the inability of making your readers to see, feel, smell and taste anything when reading your book. My apologies if I'm coming off rude here, not my intention at all but I need to put this plainly for you to understand.
When you pick up a book, you want to get lost in it (in a good way) right? But when you find yourself unable to put your imagination to work and create every scene you read then won't it be impossible for you to get lost in it and enjoy it? Majority of the parts I read, it felt like you were telling me every single thing and not showing it. I couldn't feel what the characters were feeling, it was more like just reading plain texts.
'I felt, I smiled, I noticed,' at some point, the 'I' got over the top which is a clear indicator that you're telling more than you're showing. Don't tell me how he felt, show me. Don't just tell me he's frustrated, show it either with his facial expression, his body language or other things you could use to show his frustration. It's not the majority of the time you have to show it but you should use it moderately at least.
Aside from that, the narrative as well felt distant, another wall you put up. It felt so formal that I had my doubts if it was actually contemporary romance I was reading.
Grammar, spellings, etc.: 5/10
There were a few incomplete words I noticed in the first chapter. In the first chapter, there was a place where instead of writing 'feelings' which I guessed was meant to be there, you wrote 'fee'. The words that followed it were, '... the resistance to my having fee.' I'm not sure if 'feelings' is the word you had in mind but that sentence didn't sound complete to me.
In the first paragraph of the fifth chapter, there's a sentence with two punctuation marks (.,) which doesn't seem to needed there. Also in that chapter, '... I can't no longer be..' It should be 'can'.
A few sentences after that, I noticed another error. 'I still have the letter up to do today of what she said.' I'm unable to provide a correct way of putting this because I'm kind of lost by what you were trying to say here. Though if I were to write this my way, it'd be, 'I still have the letter up till today.'
Overall: 67/100
Aside from all my critiques which I hope didn't come off rude (I'm sorry if it did) I enjoyed the book nonetheless. The anticipation at the end of each chapter got me hopping to the next to figure out what happened though I was a bit disappointed when I figured out why Sophia actually left Ethan and that made me dislike her more. I don't expect anyone to be perfect at it and I'm not perfect as well. We are all growing and learning every day so I hope you will take everything I mentioned into consideration! :)
These are all suggestions on my part by the way so please feel free to change only what feels right to you. Thank you for accepting me as your reviewer and I would love to see your story grow!
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