Rebel Town Reviews [OPEN]

One Mistake Ten Lies (Chapters 5-11) - @Prntai

One Mistake Ten Lies (Chapters 5-11) by Prntai

Reviewed by ESHurricane

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Overview

One Mistake. Ten Lies. is a BTS fanfiction revolving around Prin, whose father owes a debt to Taehyung's father. They settle a portion of it by selling Prin into marriage to Taehyung. Hijinks ensue, and romance flares, and it's a fun little jaunt for fans of the BTS boys to dive into.

Cover/Title

The cover is great, it's saucy and sexy and well laid out. It definitely has the feel of a romance novel and I like the focus on gazes. The title is catching but I have yet to figure out the relevance to the story. I'm not sure if the mistake is them getting married? In any case, I like the mystery of it, and as the story unfolds I'm sure the title will become more relevant.

Summary/Description

The description is strictly one sentence, "Don't try to act like a wife." Part of me digs that, as I feel like it gives an air of mystery to the story. It raises a lot of questions, like why someone would have to 'act' like someone else's wife?

Another part of me, however, thinks that maybe a more detailed description would be prudent. Though BTS fans know what they're getting into with a female character surrounded by sexy Korean dudes, the unique flavour of the story could shine through a lot with a proper description. Perhaps just a little summary of the pain plot, setting up Prin being sold to Taehyung.

Grammar/Structure

There are a few grammatical things that stuck out to me while reading, and one of them is punctuation in the dialogue. A rule to remember: when a dialogue is tagged with speaking, then the speech needs to end with a comma and flow in to the narrative. For example:

"Shut up idiot," he repeated in a funny way.

So there's a comma after 'idiot' and the 'he' is lowercase because it's a dialogue tag. 'Repeated' indicates speaking.

If the tag is describing something not related to speaking, then it's called an action beat, and needs to be separated from the speech. For example:

"Yeah. I'll wait for him." I tried a smile.

Because the smiling doesn't denote speech, the tag is separated from the dialogue with a period. I'd suggest the author watch punctuation throughout the story, as I noticed quite a few missing periods throughout the narrative as well.

There were a few minor issues with syntax, and I would suggest the author hook up with a beta reader to help work out those kinks. It's hard to snipe that stuff in one's own work when self-editing, and I feel like the author could really benefit from someone to go over the structure of the story with a fine-toothed comb.

The tense was consistently in past, which is great, and the spelling was also very good. There were line breaks and paragraph breaks where they were supposed to be.

Characters

Prin, short for Princess, is definitely a fitting name for her. While she is in essence the run-of-the-mill poor girl that has been married off to a rich guy, she's definitely prim and proper and honestly a bit of a brat. But this gives her character depth; it's refreshing to see a protagonist that's not totally perfect. She is naive and gets swept around by the whims of her new husband and his friends.

Taehyung is... an asshole. From the get go when he first sizes Prin up before marrying her, he already doesn't like her style and is more focused on her cleavage. I didn't like him from the get go, let alone by the time I got to the penultimate chapter when he showed his true colours by cheating on her.

Jungkook comes off at first to me like an entitled ass, treating Prin like a burden, but then starts to redeem himself a bit when he comes back to pick her up when Taehyung abandons her at the party. Even though he was standoffish with her, he couldn't leave her out in the cold by herself, which made me rethink what I'd originally thought about him.

Narrative

The narrative is told in multiple first person POV, which was a bit jarring at first especially because I'd expected second person. In the title it says the fanfiction is a reader pairing, and those usually read in second POV (you did this, you said that). Instead, it flips between Prin and Taehyung's POV. It's interesting to see some things from Taehyung's POV, but I dont know if it's wholly necessary. I think maybe the whole book would be a lot more powerful just from Prin's POV, as she's the protagonist anyway. Not knowing what's going on in his head would make the story a little more real for me from her perspective.

I honestly found the narrative a little bit lacking in the description department, a lot more heavy in dialogue, which is fine but the scenes could have a bit more depth with a bit more description.

Although I will say once I got to chapter eleven, the aftermath of Prin finding Taehyung cheating on her, that was a turning point for me. I was only supposed to read until chapter ten but I wanted to see what she would do after she caught her husband with another woman, and that chapter really hit me. There was a poetic style to the narrative, very disjointed feelings that just punched me right in the feels.

I feel like in that chapter the author really found her voice, and delved deep into really connecting me to Prin on an emotional level. I am very interested to see how the story progresses going forward, because I think that this type of narrative is definitely a good direction for the story to take.

Plot/Pacing

The plot felt a bit directionless to me at first, but then picked up momentum for me at the party. When Taehyung ditched Prin onto Jungkook, I got the impression that Jungkook was going to be the main love interest, or perhaps have a love triangle between the three of them with Taehyung being the bad husband and Jungkook being the supportive friend.

Closing Comments

All in all, I think this story has a lot of potential to be great. The plot is interesting, it's just a matter of taking the reader there with it. As I said, I think the author could really benefit from a good beta reader that will snipe any grammatical errors and maybe help with adding in description where it is lacking. And also help guide the author into finding her voice (like in chapter eleven!) and really expressing herself in her own unique way. If the entire story had that poetic narrative flow I think it could really shine and stand apart from other stories of this type.