Nettie's Little Emporium Review Shop - CLOSED

Magical Me (and other wars)

Magical Me (and a few other wars)

AmrutaBelambe

What it's about: Julie West is the last Psych born in 200 years. Although magic is common, people fear her irregular powers. Even Julie doesn't know the full limits of her powers. After she manifests, many people are desperate to have her work for them. A mystery boy climbs through her bedroom window and says her life is in danger. After several incidents, Julie wonders if she can piece together her messed up life.

Cover/Blurb - 2/5

The cover and blurb aren't good. I wish I could say that any other way, but there's no fumbling around it. I like the simplicity of the cover, but it doesn't say fantasy to me. The fonts are decent, but the title doesn't make much sense. I'm not sure how 'Magical Me' links with 'and a few other wars'. It sounds like Magical Me is the name of a war that happened.

The blurb confused me a lot. When I was reading over it to condense it down to write the 'what it's about' section, I had a hard time. The plot so far feels like three stories that aren't connected.

First, you start off with how magic is normal, except for hers. It's unpredictable and not researched so people fear what her true powers could hold. Makes sense, it's interesting, I'd want to read on to see what her abilities are.

Secondly, you talk about how a boy comes through her window, gives her a Kleenex (?) and tells her that her life is in danger.

Third, there's an attempted kidnapping? And problems at school? I couldn't quite make out what was happening at that last bit. (Reading the book I see that it wasn't just an attempted kidnapping, but it actually works. It doesn't read like that in the blurb.)

There's also the oddly placed 'The Guild' in the middle. I know you're trying to list the people who want her, but it reads choppy and doesn't cohesively go together. Especially when you break up the list by describing the Shade giving her a Kleenex.

I'd suggest changing it by taking out any extraneous information (such as 'on one of her worst days yet, and (after offering her a Kleenex)' - this really isn't needed in your blurb). EX. 'A pair of kidnappers that aren't very good at their job. No matter how much she tries to laugh it off to herself- she can tell her life's falling apart, even at school.' This could be rewritten to be more cohesive - 'If having to deal with school wasn't hard enough; The Guild, a shadow boy, and kidnappers are fighting to have her on their team.'

I feel like you have a good underlying story there that could be so amazing, but it's lost in awkward sentences.

Grammar - 3/5

Punctuation issues throughout, some misplaced dialogue tags, and capitalization problems too. I found that you overused '...' in places it really didn't need to be used. EX. 'But this...was torture'; 'shade of blue rolled like stormy seas and twisted as...she suddenly'; 'if she ever saw Hoodie Boy again...it wouldn't matter'. None of those trailing dots were needed. (Please) take those out, it waters down your sentences, which would have more impact without them.

If you don't use these sites already, I would highly recommend Grammarly and Hemingway Editor. These are two (free) invaluable sites that help with grammar and sentence structures.

Plot - 3/5

During the five chapters, nothing plotwise seemed to happen until she got kidnapped. I get that you needed to introduce her powers and have people find out about them, but the basketball scene and most of the anteater portion felt like filler parts.