Open Shop: Reviews, Editing, Research

Shut Up and Dance

Author: Sam_le_fou.

Genre: Mystery/Thriller.

Chapters Reviewed: Fifteen.

Overall Score: 91/100.

Cover, Title, and Blurb:

-- Cover: I like the background. It's blended well and it promises introspection on the human mind... I think by now, we all know I go for that kind of thing. The cover could use a touch more contrast at the top so that it's not just grey, but again, background: solid. The text is what's going to get you. Your subtitle and your name are too similar to the background in color and too small to be legible, and your title kind of obscures the man. Of the two issues, the former is the bigger problem, although your title's lack of... oomph, for lack of a better word, might lose you some prospective readers.

-- Updated Cover (seen May 25th, 2018): Have to say... I don't like this one as much as the first. The background's too vague and doesn't give me that same expectation that the first one does. Additionally, the title is in that red, smeared-blood kind of font, which makes it look like it's going to be closer to horror than what it is. 

-- Updated Cover (seen June 3rd, 2018): Again, I've the same issue with this one as the last. If I were to judge solely on cover, I'd guess that this is a horror story. It's a nicely-done cover, but it just doesn't seem to fit the story I've read so far.

-- Title: First thing it reminds me of is the Black Mirror episode, so that's a plus. On a more serious note, though, it's ambiguous but not in a bad way. "Shut up and dance" as a phrase calls to mind a sense of helplessness. I don't know if this is a common thing or just something I heard somewhere, but "light a fire under them and watch them dance"-- creates this feeling of victim and perpetrator, yeah? Someone's holding the strings and you're the puppet. Reading the blurb, the title (under this kind of interpretation) seems to fit with that.

-- Blurb: Recently talked about the same issue in another review... all right. So I'd probably pick up this story just because I like psych stuff, but if this blurb was adapted to another topic-- let's say romance-- I would move along. It's about the details. What do I get from this blurb? CEO, loss, trippy drug. But what are the stakes with this story? Is our CEO destroying the relationships in his/her life? Is he/she losing the very self in a wash of memories that they just can't let go of? Most blurbs set up a problem. This one has a premise and a hint of a problem, but what's vicious about this rabbit hole? What's going to draw me in?

Score: 2.5/5.

Grammar:

Dashes. If you're using Microsoft Word, use (Ctrl + Alt + the - on the number pad) to get the em dash and then put a space between that dash and the word that comes after. If you can't do the em dash, use two hyphens (--), and still use the space (soft, whispering manner-- the type).

Couple commas that need to be added or removed here and there. For example, your first chapter: "And by my wits[,] I mean yours." | "The squat jellybowl of a man..." I think commas are your main issue with grammar (Subito is suffering in particular), so a quick go-over or an editor would get those pretty easily.

For the most part, the grammar's just fine-- it's just those few issues (the commas in particular) that are dragging you down a bit.

Score: 13/15.

Plot and Overall Entertainment:

All righty, starting at Chapter 1 and moving through, as is logical. For the sake of time (because I'm lazy in that weird way where I'll write 2,000 word reviews but don't want to type out the full title of a chapter), I'll refer to them as the last word in the title. So here we go: