Genre: Teen Fiction
Chapters: Prologue, Chapters 1-2
NBR winning critique!
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PROLOGUE
I. ELOCUTION
a. Major Grammar Corrections
~ "Harlot and whore are hardly..." - You might consider putting each name she's called in their own quotations, just for the sake of the extra clarity.
~ "She was a kind, but distant, woman before." - The comma placement makes this read awkwardly. Try "She was a kind but distant woman, before."
b. Major Style Corrections
~ You might consider putting her mother's voice in quotations as well as the italics, just to stylistically separate those sections from her own thoughts.
~ "Rather than allowing her criticism of me to destroy me..." - This is a total nitpick, but it might flow better if you remove "of me" after "criticism", just to remove the repetition of "me".
II. PLOT
1) Primary Points
- Meri considers suicide
- Meri remembers her mother's first abuse
- Meri remembers her mom's "good side"
- Meri stops considering suicide
2) Logos: Consistency, Logicality, Understandability, and Realism
~ Let's start with this section: "Seven years later, I still think it's my fault. I did something to make her snap. I've been trying ever since to make her happy." There are a few other places in the chapter that convey this same sort of message: she believes she is at fault for her mother's behavior. This concept is just fine. However, the way the narrator speaks of it is contradictory. Here's how.
Before I get into that, though, I might note that she seems to have at least a few symptoms in common with BPS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_person_syndrome
Highlighted: "the abused thinks that the violence is their fault". I have no clue yet if the mother-daughter relationship goes through the same cycles as BPS (though it certainly sounds like it), but at least some amount of it is the same.
Now, for how that ties in. "I claim to believe that this thing is true" does not sound as convincing as "I know that this is true". Each has their uses and proper placement, but in a case of BPS (or even just a case of abuse) such as this, there would likely not be much of a doubt in her mind as to the fact that it is her fault. She is speaking as if she understands that her belief is irrational ("I STILL think", etc.). Now, if she were looking BACK at an old mentality she used to have (AKA, narrating from the future), all this would be fixed, assuming she has, in this future, come out of her inaccurate beliefs. However, you write this in present tense, so this can't be the case. Really, the point of this is that she seems to acknowledge, as a narrator, to the reader that her beliefs are just that: beliefs, partially invalidating the fact they would be cemented into her identity as is common with the guilt that plagues abuse victims. The best fixes for this would be to either write the prologue in past tense or, more simply, to fix these places to make her statements more definitive, and less like she is acknowledging that there could be any other truth (that she could be wrong in thinking she is at fault).
~ This is the nitpick to top all nitpicks, but you're so nearly flawless I have to put something here, even if it's small. XD In the sentence "She snapped seven years ago, and nothing..." I think it is unnecessary to put "seven" in there. Unless there is something especially significant to her about how it was seven years ago, just saying it was years ago seems like a more realistic thought process. Plus, you mention it again in the next paragraph, which means it really couldn't hurt to take this one out. I know you probably put it in there to remind the reader that she's seventeen, but I kind of have a slight pet peeve about exposition being forced in dialogue, though maybe too much so. This is probably just me.
