Rebel Town Reviews [OPEN]

Save Me - @riearissa

Save Me (Chapters 1 - 5) by riearissa

Reviewed by ESHurricane

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Overview

This story is a heartbreakingly raw glimpse at the lives of two young post-secondary students who have it incredibly rough. It's brutal at times, and sweet at times, and much of the time a punch in the gut. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Cover/Title

The title is perfect for the subject matter, as both of these people definitely need saving. I love the it's all in lowercase, it gives it a lost kind of feeling, as if they don't care enough about themselves to ask for help with a capital S.

I love the cover, the ocean washing up on the shore. The blue tinting is very melancholy, which fits the feel of the book, and the theme of a never ending tide adds to that. Due to not being able to actually zoom in and see full resolution of the cover, I was unable to read the poem in the water, but I really like the placement and design of the words on the cover.

Summary/Description

I like the first paragraph of the summary, it hooked me in and definitely made me want to read more. I think the two paragraphs following that describe Shui and Nabi are just too much for me. I like a bit more mystery with my protags, so this could just be personal preference, but I felt like it was too much information. I liked the flow and setup of the first paragraph, and I feel like the rest is better told within the text itself. Especially about Shui's living situation, I feel like that would be a BOMB reveal in the book and make Nabi finding out about it much more intense if I didn't already know he wasn't rich.

Hook

"Sunday nights are better than Fridays" is a very clever hook. I love it as an opening line because it's jarring. What college kid would enjoy Sunday nights better than Friday nights? Everyone wants to party on the weekend. Nobody likes that last sleep before they have to get up on Monday. This line is an incredibly relatable thing. And that's what makes it so interesting.

It sucked me in right away, because I wanted to know what was going on in this guy's life that he liked Sunday nights and hated Fridays. And by the time I got the answer to that question, many more were raised and I was already invested in the character. Thumbs up for an effective and creative hook!

Grammar/Structure

The author put in one of the notes that English is not her first language, so I'm going to touch on a few things here. I definitely recommend hooking up with a regular beta reader to go over the chapters and help with some of the grammar before posting. Google docs is great because multiple people can edit the same documents in real time, so everyone can learn together! It's also honestly a great practice even for native English speakers to have an extra set of eyes on the work after it's finished, because it's very difficult to edit something that we're so close to. I don't know what I would do without my betas and my Rebels.

Tense: The story is told in past tense, but I found some skews here or there into present. For example, instead of She stared at the raindrops that are dripping on her petite palm, we would want to say She stared at the raindrops that were dripping on her petite palm. There aren't a ton of instances of this, but I recommend keeping a close eye out for it when editing.

Plurals: There were a few instances where something was pluralized when it shouldn't be, or vice versa. For example, She sure gives me the creepy vibes would read a bit better as She sure gives me a creepy vibe. These are few and far between and totally due to the fact that English is a ridiculous language. Vibe is a hard one because of context, but there were some others as well where a word could have used an 's' at the end or didn't need it. Another example is But she still craves for ice cream, nonetheless should read But she still craved ice cream, nonetheless. This snipes both a tense skew and a pluralization.