Open Shop: Reviews, Editing, Research

Defying Expectations

Author: jusasarcasticsleeper.

Genre: Humor.

Chapters Reviewed: Fifteen.

Overall Score: 55/100.

Cover, Title, and Blurb:

-- Cover: I probably wouldn't pick up the book based on the cover, because while it isn't bad, it just doesn't really stand out. The font sort of blends with the background, so I'd use a heavier drop shadow at the very least, and the text not being centered kind of bothers me a bit... but it might just be a me thing. Sometimes there are really small things that just bug me, even though everyone else is completely fine with it.

-- Title: I assume it refers to Ashley and Ethan. It's an interesting title, and while it may fit Ethan, I'm not entirely sure it fits Ashley (see more on that in the Character section). And as I said in my Chapter One notes, aspects like Mandy's characterization kind of act against that title... all in all, the title would fit with certain elements of characterization revised, but as is, I think it only truly fits Ethan.

-- Blurb: Couple grammatical errors in there, mostly to do with commas. Beyond that... it's serviceable, but it wouldn't draw me personally. That's not a criticism of you; I just don't really read general fiction all that often, so unless something just really hits me, I'm probably not going to pick it up. The last couple I remember reading are To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, but the former was for school; only the latter came from an interesting description. I feel that if you do want to get more people, then just a bit less vagueness would help. We've got bad-boy-good-girl established, but what beyond it?

Score: 2.5/5.

Grammar:

-- Tenses: The work switches between present tense and past sometimes, as I pointed out in the first chapter; luckily, it's a simple matter to fix.

-- Run-Ons: These appear pretty frequently; for example, in Chapter Four, the sentence "I frown, can you actually tell no one particularly cares about my whereabouts, unless they have something to gain from me?" is a run-on. There are a couple ways to fix these:

          Period. "I frown. Can you actually tell [that] no one..."

          Comma and conjunction. This one wouldn't really work here, but it would for other sentences. So take the one I just wrote. As a run-on, it'd be "This one wouldn't really work here, it would for other sentences." So adding in "but" (the conjunction) fixes that.

          Semicolon. "I frown; can you actually tell [that] no one...". Probably also not the best in this case, but useful for other sentences.

          Em dash or colon. "I frown-- can you actually tell [that] no one...". The colon would look a little awkward here, but it's an option in other cases.

          Subordinating conjunction. This also wouldn't work with this sentence, but here's an example. As your run-on: "School is over, it's time to leave." And with the subordinating conjunction: "Since school is over, it's time to leave."

-- Lack of/Misplaced Commas: There are places in sentences that don't need commas, or places where there should be commas and there aren't any. For an example of the former, it's most often seen with dialogue, since there are often commas where there should be periods. And for one of the latter, at the beginning of Chapter Five: "When I say cumbersome[,] I mean...".