Bookends | Closed

04 | Anna Cornell

Hello and welcome back! Today's chapter will be focused on Anna Cornell by @wavyhazy on Wattpad. I would also like to note that from here on out I am adding extra parts to the review: Blurb and Cover.

Anna Cornell is a Science Fiction novel written in the first person point of view. It follows the story of Anna Cornell, a presumed dead woman that comes back to life years later, having not aged at all.

Blurb:

There's potential here, but you're going about it wrong. Do you want to up the suspense? You got to cut out some sentences and rearrange the order of your paragraphs. This'll make your blurb more intriguing. Here's what I thought would work better:

"In 1920, Anna Cornell was kidnapped and presumed dead at the age of eighteen.

Wrong.

Following years of lonely suffering, Anna finds herself in an unfamiliar town and time period. There's a catch, though. She hasn't aged a day since the tragedy. She's a teenager again.

And now that she's out in the open, she's the target of a manhunt hosted by the same people that imprisoned her in the 20s. She'll have to learn to trust the modern strangers around her if she wants to survive– if she wants to keep her second chance at life."

Or something of the sort. Do you see what I mean about upping the tension, though? I want to see the stakes. I want to be drawn in.

Cover:

Simple, but in a good way. It's eye-catching, but not so much so that it takes away from the story. I like it!

What I Liked:

Mafalda. She's a sweet French lady portrayed well through her scones and hot drinks. I see you've employed a fairy godmother archetype already here by including Mafalda and all the information she's given Anna. It doesn't seem overdone, which is good.

Also, nice job with the plot. I haven't seen something like this since The Age of Adeline. It's interesting.

What I Didn't Like:

I have a few things to say, so bear with me.

Let's start with your prologue. Who's the narrator? What POV is it written in? How do they know so much about Anna? Why are they never mentioned again? I had too many questions and it made it very hard to continue with the story. The prologue served no purpose but to act as an info-dump that summarized the blurb with more words. In my opinion, you don't need it.

Also, I'm just going to insert a few nitpicky things here. Don't middle-justify your paragraphs. It looks unprofessional and overly aesthetic for a novel. Maybe if you wrote poetry, that style of paragraph structure would work.

Your dialogue grammar could use some work as well. For example, if you're saying "'blah blah blah,' she said." then it has to be formatted as such. There has to be a comma before the quotations ends, followed by a lowercase she.

Now, the first chapter. There's way too much going on. We start with an introduction to Anna done by Anna herself, which I felt was very cliche. It's a lot of telling and not showing. Want to tell me what Anna looks like? What she's like, personality wise? Don't have her TELL me. Bring it up through the writing. When she's talking to Michael, have him point those parts of her character out.

Speaking of, I liked Michael, but not the way he was introduced. Their dialogue wasn't natural and I found what they were talking about boring, if I'm being honest. Why don't they talk about Anna's personality and how the people of her town hate the Cornell's? You can add that information through the dialogue, rather than by the inner monologue that follows later.

That same chapter, you describe the kidnapping, the motive, and Mafalda. Apparently Anna broke her leg (it was bleeding?), was pushed into a black van, and struggled against her kidnapper, who said they were going to the Plains and then switched it to New York just about a paragraph later. And I have a question: the driver was rather rude to her, but he was fine with Henry's wife serving her food and telling her the plan? That doesn't make sense. It's too easy for your character. Make it difficult! Once again, huge info-dump. Instead of Mafalda telling her everything about being a lab rat, why doesn't Anna experience it? It'll be more interesting that way. Remember, SHOW don't TELL.

I hope this was helpful. You have a lot to work on, but the good thing is that you have a decent plot to fall back on. All we need to fix is the execution!

Favorite Quote:

"Can a woman recover from lethal machine gun wounds? Anna Cornell knew she would."

Rating:

★ ★

Note to The Author:

Thank you for submitting your story! It was a pleasure to read and I hope you felt this review was helpful. It is 845 words long.

Anyway, that's it for today. See you next time!