Rebel Town Reviews [OPEN]

Sinners (Chapters 1-5) - @BlueberriesFromTay

Sinners (Chapters 1-5) by BlueberriesFromTay

Reviewed by AmyMarieZ

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Overview: Sinners is a dark mystery/thriller about a small town full of mystery and deceit. Each character in the story represents on of the Seven Deadly Sins, and each has a part to play as the hidden darkness within the town slowly reveals itself.

Only a year after they mysterious death of high school student Mara, suspicion surrounding the truth of her death remain up in the air. The reader slowly gets sucked into the story, discovering the darkness that lurks within the town of Aveira.

Structure: Sinners is written in the third limited point of view, switching between characters each chapter. For obvious reasons, I assume the story will follow seven different characters, although I only saw four different POVs in the five chapters I read. While splitting the POV between so many characters is somewhat risky because it becomes hard to define characters as unique, I think it was an excellent choice for this story. It only makes sense that a story with the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins would follow seven separate characters!

The narrative voice of each of the chapters is strong and defined. They each feel set apart based on the style of narration, so they do not blur into one another. As a reader, I can easily differentiate between the viewpoints, so I do not lose any of the characters in the story.

Another thing I think works well for this story is the fact that the author has returned to the same view point (Quinn) rather than cycling through every single POV one right after another. This allows the reader to be introduced to each character gradually and naturally, making for a much more memorable and well-developed cast.

Grammar: Overall, the grammar in this story was very well done. There were hardly any typos, and a lot of thought has been put into making the story a polished piece.

One recurring thing I noticed that wasn't necessarily a mistake so much as it was a bit odd was paragraph breaks within dialog. While it is fine to include a paragraph break within dialog (so long as it is punctuated correctly) the number of paragraph breaks within dialog in this story was a bit much. They became somewhat confusing when they occurred during very small bits of dialog (only three or four sentences). Because the paragraph breaks were unexpected, at times I became confused about who was speaking.

My suggestion would be to keep dialog from one speaker within one paragraph, unless it goes on for a long time (for example a character telling a story through dialog or explaining something that would be difficult to follow without a paragraph break.) Rather than using a paragraph break to indicate a pause in the character's speech, another option could be closing the dialog, including a character action or description, and then continuing the dialog in the same paragraph.

Pace: Sinners is a well-paced story. Individual scenes are balanced between dialog, description, and character actions, allowing them to flow at a real-time speed that is easy for the reader to visualize. The only scenes where I thought the pace was slightly fast were the following two transitions:

The first transition was in chapter one when Quinn left class and then noted that the buses would have already left. The major thing that happened between her leaving the class and the busses leaving was her walking down the hall. I thought developing that action to show how slowly she was meandering or adding an additional action would make time frame a bit smoother.