Gardenia: A Review Shop

✿﹒{Katie} Finding My Way Home﹒％

❀﹒Client: EstherYang08

❀﹒Title: Finding My Way Home

❀﹒Reviewer: katiegoesmew

❀﹒Review: 123/140

First impressions: 35/40

Title: 10/10
I've read several books recently with a theme of finding a place or a sense of belonging recently, and it can make for a really compelling, engaging storyline. So, yes. Love it.

Story description: 9/10
This is a really good blurb. It's grammatically clean; it introduces the three main characters, providing background and motivation for each; it ends every section with a thought-provoking question that drives the hook deeper into a potential reader; and it's the perfect balance of giving away enough information to pique interest while holding back the rest to heighten intrigue. I only have two suggestions/questions here. First, I think you can cut "While" from the beginning of the second sentence in the first paragraph, and second, do you mean "extract revenge" or "exact revenge" in the second paragraph? I would expect "exact," but "extract" works, too. I just wanted to point that out in case that was a mistake.

Cover: 8/10
Okay, first, I love the imagery. I like the reds, golds, and blacks of the background paired with those predatory eyes. The images of the boys feel a little out of place against that background, but I actually think the placement of the title is the cause of that. I'd recommend moving it up to the top of the cover and bumping the font size up a lot. Right now, it's the smallest text on the cover, and it's the last thing to draw my eye. It should be the first or second thing to draw my eye (with the imagery taking second or first). You could also play with different font styles and colors. I'm wondering how a yellow or gold would look. As far as your name, I think that font is fine. The typeface, size, color, and placement all seem appropriate. So, really, it's just the title that needs some work, I think.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 8/10
Prologue: Okay, well, this is an action-packed prologue. I love it! Dropping the reader right in the middle of a hectic chase is a great way to grab their attention from the start, and your artful weaving of descriptive detail and information within the action keeps the reader informed without dragging down the pace. The way you slowly divulge the backstory by showing instead of telling is just wonderful. You force the reader to make the connections, which increases their engagement with the story and increases your story's memorability long after they finish the book.

Overall, this is grammatically clean, with your most consistent error involving capitalization when dialogue leads into a dialogue tag. You do it right when the dialogue would normally end in a period, replacing that with a comma and leaving the first letter of the first word of the dialogue tag in lowercase, but you actually need to do that when the dialogue leads into a dialogue tag and ends in an exclamation mark or question mark, too. You don't change the punctuation mark, but just lowercase the first word of the dialogue tag. It's a bit annoying, because spell/grammar checkers may mark that incorrect and say you need to capitalize it, but this is when you can stick your tongue out at the computer and say you're smarter than it is. 😉

I'm not a person who's a big fan of all uppercase letters or double punctuation (?!) to emphasize shouting or screaming, because too much of that can get hard on the eyes, but that's a stylistic choice. I think saying the "crowd burst into a roar" and "he roared" illustrates it enough without all uppercase or double punctuation, but if you want more, you could also add more descriptors into the dialogue tag. Maybe "the crowd broke into a deafening roar," or "he roared in a mixture of disbelief and anger." Adding more verbal descriptors like that can really develop your characters and make the scene come to life.
Also, just a note about "as." It feels weird to me if there are multiple instances of a phrase starting with "as" in the same sentence. For example, the first sentence is this: "A silhouette crashed through the thicket as branches grabbed at the clothing of the shadow as it desperately tried to flee." To me, the sentence almost gets this sing-song rhythm because of the repeated words, so I usually try to reword to get down to one "as." There are a lot of ways you can do this, but one way would be to change "as it desperately tried" to "desperately trying."