Elephant Reviews [CFCU]

FRIGHT SCHOOL BOOK 1

By: kacquah

First Impressions (ex. Cover, blurb, title)

-Title: The title and the blurb don't seem to match the book right away, it seems like this story is more about the scouting period before the students enroll in the school. The expectations of the reader are that of reading about students in school, but this is before that. Perhaps a subtitle would be more accurate, like "Fright School Book 1: The Candidates"

-Cover: The cover features great artwork, but maybe the title in a cool font would really engage readers.

-Blurb: The blurb is fine.

Mechanics (ex. Grammar, sentence structure, etc.)

-There's a couple grammar issues here and there but nothing too distracting.

- In Chapter 3 Part B, Allan narrates, "Hub was a huge mummy even though we were both 14," but in Chapter 3 Part C, Allan tells Hub, "I'm sixteen Hub, I'm over it..." This makes it unclear whether Allan is 14 years old or 16 years old.

Plot:

- For the pacing, it feels like it takes too long for everything to happen. Perhaps try to find unnecessary sentences that can be taken out to get the readers to the action faster.

- In the first episode, there are ten parts are about Allan Meroe and family. Then there's only five chapters about the vampire and then two about Rose. Then in the next episode, it continues with Rose for a couple of chapters, and then a chapter about Frank. It's hard to keep up with the inconsistent number of chapters for each character, spanning across episodes, and with seemingly random new characters showing up. Perhaps creating a pattern will help the readers keep track of the characters. For example, A couple chapters about Allan Meroe, then Vincent, then Rose then Frank, then Victoria. And then come back to Allan for a couple of chapters, then Vincent, then Rose, and so on.

There are quite a few interesting events that go on in this story, and quite a bit of detailed world building. Maybe with a couple tweaks in some of the pacing, this story can reach great heights. Good luck on your writing journey!