Golden Arrow Reviews

Review#32: The Night's Luna

Reviewer: _RoseThorn_

Story: “The Night’s Luna” by candice_jenn
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✿ Cover ✿

Right away, I can tell that this story will have something to do with werewolves based on the cover. It's fairly simple, but I like the black and blue theme which gives off a mysterious vibe. The font for the title is easy to read and the white colour allows it to stand out really well against the dark background. However, I found that the location of the author’s name looked a bit out of place. You may want to consider making it a little larger and changing the font to the same one used for the title so that the cover can appear more unified.

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✿ Summary ✿

The summary is pretty interesting and I liked how you included the descriptions of Damon and Katherine in it. I’m intrigued to find out what will happen when the two of them cross paths. You don't need to capitalize ”king” or ”queen” in this context though, because you aren't referring to a specific king or queen. You usually only capitalize titles like these when speaking about a person directly (for example, ”King Damon”). Apart from that, there are quite a few grammatical errors throughout the summary, such as missing punctuation and misplaced commas. These mistakes should be easy to fix and I believe it would go a long way in terms of drawing in more readers. Fixing up the summary is probably a good idea since some readers tend to avoid stories if they see errors in the description. Some of the sentences sound a bit awkward as well, so I would recommend reading them aloud to yourself when you are editing. As silly as it sounds, it can actually help a ton when it comes to ensuring all the sentences make sense and have a clean flow.

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✿ Grammar, Spelling and Vocabulary ✿

For starters, I picked up quite the variety of errors throughout what I read. I am aware that the book is unedited, but I figured it would be helpful to point out some of the issues so that you know what to look for when you do edit. There are sentences in which words or commas are missing. You also switched from past to present tense or vice-versa a few times, sometimes within a single sentence. It's important to pick a tense and use it consistently so that you do not confuse any readers. Added to this, there are a few run-on sentences. I would suggest breaking these run-ons into several smaller sentences so everything is more clear but still gets the same message across. There are also a number of small accidental errors, which I’m sure are a result of the story being unedited. A lot of them are grammatical or technical mistakes that you could most likely catch with some revision. I wanted to point out the part where you were speaking about the twins. You referred to them as “twin no 1 or no 2”. This should actually be ”twin number one or twin number two”, as it looks unprofessional to write shortened forms like ”no 1” in books. I also saw another inconsistency where you spelled Shirley’s name as ”Shierly” a couple of times. This could throw readers off because they may not get what her actual name is since there are two variations used.

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✿ Characters ✿

Damon seems really mysterious and I'm intrigued by it. I love how he and Darren contrast each other so well. Damon definitely seems like the more sensible one out of the two. Katherine, on the other hand, is a really interesting character. She has a great way of blending into normal human life, but her occasional remarks about humans remind readers that she is actually a vampire. She is a strong and spunky female lead who I found pretty likable right from the start. I like the friendship she has with Shirley. Shirley is really relatable, which makes sense considering how she is a human and most of the other characters are not. Some of her dialogue is pretty funny and she seems like a great person to be around, explaining why Katherine took a liking to her. Kien is another example of a strong female character. Readers can instantly understand her, thanks to how fearless and bold she comes across as right from the moment she is introduced. An issue I found was the way you explained the physical traits of each character by listing features like their heights and hair colours through the point of view of another character. Realistically, a person would not describe another person so specifically all at once right at first glance. Instead, you should drop hints about what your characters look like over the course of the story (for example ”she tucked away a strand of her blonde hair”) so that it is more believable. You also don't want to dump information about your main character by making them tell the reader about themselves. Instead of saying something like ”My last name is Ainsel and I'm a vampire queen”, share these details over the course of the story and allow the readers to piece it all together. You want your characters to sound like real people and have similar thought processes. This is especially crucial for the first-person narrative.

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✿ Plot ✿

I like your idea of having a vampire and werewolf find out that they are destined to be together. Usually, stories keep werewolves and vampires confined to their own species, so this concept is new and unique. From what I read, the plot is pretty interesting and is laid out quite well. There are a few issues with pacing, as there are parts where you skip to a different time very abruptly. This can be solved by putting in some sort of page divider to indicate that an amount of time has passed within a chapter. With revision, this story has the potential to improve a lot and the plot can be made so much more refined and intriguing.

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✿ Other Notes ✿

As I was reading, I spotted something that confused me a little. The school that Katherine is attending is called California High School and in the first chapter, you explained a little about it. The issue I saw with this was how you stated that it was located in the city of California, however, California is actually a state. I'm not sure if the story takes place in an alternate universe in which California is actually a city, but if not, you probably want to change that part to something like ”the state of California” or simply have the school be in a city within California.