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✿﹒{Katie} Ethereal Enigma: Awakening﹒％

❀﹒Client: Ink_Mirage

❀﹒Title: Ethereal Enigma: Awakening

❀﹒Reviewer: katiegoesmew

❀﹒Review: 89/140

First impressions: 30/40

Title: 10/10
Ooh, I love this title. It's very mysterious, and it definitely works with a fantasy story, too, since it conjures up thoughts of magic. Pun unintended, but I like it. 😉

Story description: 5/10
My first observation here is that the story excerpts break up the actual blurb, dulling its hook. I'm not a person who likes story excerpts in blurbs anyway, but normally, I'll see a single excerpt set apart in its own section. Here, you're doing a little blurb, then an excerpt, then a section diver, and repeat. But the blurb is how you sell the story to potential readers, not the excerpts. They want to know the who, what, when, where, why of the story, and you want to strike a balance of giving away enough to interest them while holding back enough to draw them into the story in search of the answers. So, I typed up your blurb without the excerpts so I could better see what you have to work with (here and elsewhere, I'm eliminating spaces between paragraphs and italicizing to keep examples distinct from my feedback):

This is the story of oblivion.
Explore the enigmatic journey of a girl who radiates cheerfulness and excellence outwardly, yet with each passing moment, she quietly withers within.
She's a diamond in the rough, but it's as if everyone's wielding hammers, ready to shatter her brilliance.
Will the haven she finds in magic eventually become another source of betrayal?
Could it instead lead her down a path of darkness and change her for the worse?
Will someone like her alter her course, or will that someone walk alongside her?
While everyone battles their own demons, what happens when someone embodies that demon itself?
Tune in to find out!

Okay. So this is good. You've introduced your main character, although you haven't named her, but that's okay. While the plot and setting aren't clear, there's a general sense that everything revolves around her and magic, possibly in a scenario where she's learning how to use it. Your grammar is pretty solid, and the use of questions at the end of the blurb is a good way to get the reader wondering, thus prompting them to start reading. However, having too many questions dulls the effect, and detailed questions about specific events that occur later in the course of the story aren't helpful, because the reader doesn't even know the basics yet.

So, I would cut the last two questions and the "Tune in to find out," because that sort of feels like something I'd hear in a TV commercial. It doesn't fit the overall tone of this blurb. There's a similar problem with "Explore," which also breaks the natural flow from the first line to the second. I'd put the first three sentences all in the same paragraph, and for the second sentence, you could just change the start to something like, "It's the enigmatic journey of..." Then, the following two questions can stay in their separate lines, triggering the reader to stop and think after each one.

And there you have it. An interesting blurb with some pull for a potential reader. Now, you could work on it to strengthen the hook, and I'd recommend checking out @justwriteit's chapter in their 8 Chapter Challenge on writing a story logline and pitch for help with that (https://www.wattpad.com/1357752761-8-chapter-challenge-story-logline-and-pitch).

Like I said, I would cut the story excerpts from the blurb completely, but I did want to go over a few things I saw in them that I'm guessing will show up later in the story. The first thing is double punctuation (?! and ??). Usually, I see people use these when they're trying to show someone is shouting or screaming or something like that, but it's better to describe that in the dialogue tags than it is to rely on extra punctuation. Adding more descriptive detail to dialogue tags is also great for character development, because you can describe tone, facial expressions, and body language, showing the reader who a person is instead of telling them who they are. So, a couple of examples, using your lines (out of context, of course, but just to show you):