MSy's REVIEWS & WRITING GUIDES

14: "Quinn Meets Cadwell" (by carlysangels)

Greetings! @carlysangels_

How's it comin' along, Ms Trish?

I see that you've put your story on hold. But since I don't like breaking promises, I gave your book a read and now I'm about to give it an honest review.

I apologize in advance if this critique isn't what you've expected or if it is not as helpful to you but, I will try my best to give you feedback to help you improve as a writer.

*First point of focus: the COVER

It's attractive and the font can be read at first glance. Nice design!

*Next point of focus: the BLURB

It was short and rather intriguing, but the thought behind it didn't quite catch my interest as a reader. Some parts sounded a bit off in my head when I reread them. Perhaps you could revise the blurb to some extent, just to pique the interest of potential readers of your story.

(Note: The ellipses I will use from here onwards just signify a part of your work that I just didn't have time to type fully into this review)

Some of my suggested edits on the blurb are as follows:

*

Opposites attract. So they say.

Having something in common brings people together. So they say. (punctuation revisions)

Life is full of surprises.

And it makes one wonder about the...

*

-Personally, I'm no good at writing blurbs or attention-grabbing summaries, so I won't keep going on about it. lol

One more thing, I noticed that this story is written in first person narrative, and although I'm not a proficient first person POV writer, I will try to the best of my abilities to provide constructive feedback on several aspects of your writing.

*Next point of focus: the 1st chapter

It was an interesting read! Lots of imagery, descriptive phrases, and you put efforts into character development. The pacing also made me want to click on to the next chapter to find out what happens next to the main character, which is Hunter, if I'm not mistaken. ;) I think the father seems stricter than most. Good thing his mom was worried for him after his dad kicked him out.

There were some issues I spotted while reading through the first chapters . I will be listing them down categorically below.

*Narration and Sentence Construction:

There were a few run-ons and comma splices in the first chapters. Give the paragraphs a thorough read to get rid of this issue.

Example:

-

My eyes flickered to Andrew's, and could hardly hide the surprise in my voice. (incorrect structure)

**Adding an 'I'  after the conjunction "and" before the second clause would make the sentence more correct.

"My eyes flickered to Andrew's, and I could hardly hide the surprise in my voice."

-

If this were in the movies, dramatic music would've been playing in the background by now, hinting that the long-awaited empty cab was about to arrive. (better sentence structure)

He's probably right; we are from the same school, anyways. (comma splice)

While running like my life depended on it, I crossed my fingers, badly hoping the teacher had not called out my name yet. (rephrasing and comma splices) I even hoped the teacher had not reached the tutorial room yet. (tense switches)