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Review by Sunshine: Ruin Me

Title: Ruin Me

Author: Dangerously_Cold

Summary: 3/5

Okay, so, there are some good things happening here! I love the use of rhetorical question at the end, and the entire summary is fluent and engaging to follow. It introduces the protagonist, the conflict, the creepy notes, and the stakes as well – well done!

You do have space to stretch your summary out a bit longer and hook the readers more by exploring this serial killer. Perhaps you could mention the previous murders, or perhaps you can mention how she found that first creepy note/message.

My biggest issue with your summary, though, was the tense. It kept flicking back and forth from past tense to present tense, and often, you did this within a single sentence. You need to ensure you're sticking to one tense. I recommend present tense, so the reader feels as if they are about to read something that is yet to happen. Let's look at some examples of incorrect tense:

"When Blake Cruz finally comes back to the town she calls 'home', she immediately notices that something was amiss."

In that sentence along, you switch tenses. Let's break it down:

"When Blake Cruz finally comes back..." [comes = present tense]

"... something was amiss." [was = past tense]

I would go back and polish your entire summary to ensure that you are sticking to one tense. 

Grammar: 2/5

While your story was quite easy to read and follow, I definitely think that you should go back and polish your grammar and punctuation. I've broken down all the issues I have found in this review.

First of all, all proper nouns need to be capitalised. This includes names, and even if sacred names are being sworn in vain, they need to be capitalised (for example, God). Also, speaking of inappropriate capitalisation, I found errors when it came to capitalising words such as 'Mum' and 'Dad'. It's a tricky rule to follow – you're only supposed to capitalise 'Mum' or 'Dad' if they are being used as the name of the person. When you use mum/dad in general meaning and as a common noun, you do not capitalise it. For example, you wrote:

"No wonder dad was in an affair with this woman."

This is inaccurate. In this instance, 'Dad' is used as a proper noun – it is used instead of a name. It should be:

"No wonder Dad was in an affair with this woman."

Another way to make this accurate is by changing the 'dad' to make it a common noun. So, another accurate example is:

"No wonder my dad was in an affair with this woman."

There were also a few minor errors throughout the story. Here are a few that I found:

"Everything became quite all of a sudden..."

I think you meant 'quiet' instead of 'quite'. Another one:

"She took a huge breathe while nodding."

It should be 'breath', not 'breathe' (breathe is the verb).

Onto bigger issues, the dialogue and the dialogue tags were not used appropriately. Whenever you have a dialogue tag to support the dialogue, it should be in the same paragraph as the dialogue itself. For example, you wrote: