Helping to Unite Differences OPEN

Review His girl

We apologize for the delay, we've been quite swamped trying to get everything back up and running!

Review: His Girl (･ω<)☆
(^-^*)/(^-^*)/(^-^*)/ Wow it's been a while since I've done one of these! So let's get to it!
Admin doing the review? Former admin mjfillet
Title: His Girl
Author: chelsy_lea

Cover: It's not bad :3 I like the font, the photoshop was done very well, and the color scheme was very nice, it's an enjoyable cover.
Description: This needs some work. You are writing this summary from third person, so there should be no "I" in there. This would only apply if you intended to narrate the summary instead of explaining it, and that is not what you were going for I don't think. You have a book quote at both the top and the bottom, and I would get rid of the bottom one because it is out of place.
You use a name reference 'Adonis', and I don't know who this person is, and i don't think many will, so I would take that reference out. If you want to show Jake's personality, describe him briefly instead of displaying an example. You also changed from Jacob to Jake and I was confused because I thought it was about two separate people. Stick with one name, or explain his nickname.
Overall, the summary gives a cliche feeling, and from the summary it seems a lot like the 1990's movie called 'She's All That'. To avoid a cliche feeling, i suggest trying to point out how the story is different. You have Victoria's wants in there (not wanting to be noticed and wants a normal life) but you don't really have a personality in there. We'll talk more about personalities after a few other things.

Plot: I only read the first three chapters + the prologue so I can’t judge for the whole thing. I’ll be a little detailed, because I like to give detail to give suggestions about a certain part instead of the overall thing which I’ll state at the end.
In the prologue, there were two things I’d like to point out and suggest fixing a little. The first is when the daughter covers the mother’s eyes. You have the daughter state multiple lines of dialogue before the mother panics. In reality, the mother would panic right away. If you want to keep that dialogue in there, I suggest you have the daughter trying to speak over the panics of the mother, because anyone would panic right away. I think the daughter would regret it more if the crash happened right then, instead of later on because it’s more of the mother’s fault after when the mother looks are her through the rearview mirror than it is Victoria’s fault. The other thing I didn’t understand...at the end you had Victoria shove the shard deeper into her throat? She would suffer from scarring if she even survived that, and might have some speech issues depending on where on her throat the glass shard was. And why would she willingly shove it deeper? A little girl probably wouldn’t inflict more pain upon herself; she’d want it to stop.

The rest of the little things from the other three chapters I’ll blend together. I don’t understand what happened to her friend. It wasn’t really clarified that she was sick. Also, a teacher would not be able to force a student to tutor someone else. The teacher could blackmail Jake by saying she’d flunk him if he didn’t take tutoring, but the teacher can’t force Veronica to tutor someone else. A suggestion to change this is that Jake nags Veronica to tutor him until she give in, but you can have your story be however you’d like it. Also, in the janitor’s closet, you never mentioned the other dude that was talking with Jake, and you never mentioned that it was Jake in the first place. Be sure that when you are bringing characters into the scene that you address them so that readers know. Speaking of addresses, how is Victoria supposed to know where Jake lives if she’s supposed to go over to his house at 7 for tutoring? You never mentioned that he gave her an address of any kind.

Grammar: The grammar is good, and there are only a few errors I can remember. You need some more action + dialogue tags, because sometimes I was unsure as to who was speaking. It is true, that you don’t need to have ‘he said’ ‘she said’ listed everytime someone said something, but make sure it is there when you introduce speaking, or if there is a long conversation add some action tags to go with the dialogue so the reader can picture what is happening as the characters are speaking.
Characters: I’ll go over each of the characters to give an eval of each…
Victoria: There isn’t a strong main character here. You want readers to connect with her, feel her feelings, understand her thought process, and attach to her. I suggest putting more thought process in there so that we can understand her personality. You have her mostly speak dialogue, so you can get a little of her personality there, but try to show more of her. Show remorse at her mother’s death when her brother brings it up in the car. Show shyness through her actions in school (flushed face, keeping her head down, hunched over at her desk). I really like how you had her fiddle with her hands in the janitor’s closet, that was a good way to show her shyness through an action :3

Lucas/Luke: I don’t know what this guy looks like. Since he’s mentioned quite a bit I would throw some appearances in there, (e.g. “As I walked into the kitchen my breath hitched. Though I always knew it was my brother in the kitchen this early in the morning, he resembled father so much. The tall and thin athlete build, the olive skin, dark brown waves...the only difference is the light in his hazel eyes when he smiled; and dad had neither of those.”) That’s just an example of how you not only introduce a character with physical traits, but you get a bit of the personality (he smiles unlike the father) and it flows with the scene (she did a double take yet again as she entered the kitchen that morning). He seems really loving of his sister, and seemed to have taken the father role since her father doesn’t seem to be around much and is off with other women.

Ciara: I understand she’s there as a bully role, but explain why. Is it jealousy that Victoria has multiple classes with Jake? Is it because of a past incident? Or is she simply mean and Victoria doesn’t have a clue? When did the bullying start? Was it this school year or has it been for numerous years? When girls bully, they are usually very sly about it and don’t insult people in their face unless they have a group to back them up. When girls bully they like to say things behind the victim’s back and play pranks. Guys are the ones who are more face to face with bullying.
Jacob/Jake: I am having a hard time grasping his character. At first he’s defending Victoria from Ciara’s bullying. This means he either has a secret interest in Victoria, or he’s a nice guy and wants his girlfriend to ease up and cool it. From the hallway and overheard conversation Victoria heard from the janitor’s closet, he genuinely likes his girlfriend Ciara. And it’s more than for her looks if he’s willing to put up with her rotten side. If he genuinely likes Ciara he’s not going to have feelings or care about defending Victoria. That means it’s the second option; he’s an easy going guy that doesn’t like conflict. Similar to that of a jock. Cocky, arrogant, and easy going. So the dude likes Ciara and has no interest in Victoria. In fact, he takes enjoyment in patronizing her and picking on her. It explains why he’s mean to her at times and enjoys being close with her to pick on her. But you make it seem like he likes her in some areas, which conflicts with his genuine interest in Ciara. In fact, you make him suddenly kiss Victoria out of nowhere. I can see this as a reason to push Victoria's buttons (because he probably knows that’s her first kiss) but I don’t think he would take it that far just for a prank if he’s still in a relationship.

Note to add: In general I felt there wasn’t enough character depth (emotions, feelings, descriptions) and the story moved too fast without a clear plot. Keep in mind though this is only from the three chapters I’ve read, and I am not reviewing the book as a whole. I wish you the best on your work, I can see it already has a lot of reviews, and hopefully some of these tips can help you along the way ^_^