Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Kirsty: Startling Starlight

Title: Startling Starlight

Author: AnvilGottlieb

Reviewer: CursedHobbit

Summary: 4/5

Although the summary did not specifically highlight any one individual story, I think it does a good job at drawing readers in. It is very mysterious and foreboding. I do think the summary can match the themes/tones of the first and third stories, but the second story didn't seem very dark or mysterious like the summary implies.

There is also a huge gap in the third paragraph, between this sentence: "Memories which often leaves us startled to the extreme." The gap doesn't make sense with the sentence. It could be that I am reading this on the website instead of mobile.

Grammar: 4/5

Anticipation

Your overall spelling and grammar is fairly good; there are only a few minor errors/typos that I could find. Here are a few that might help you with editing:

Sentence 1 in Paragraph 2 of Anticipation: "Though I was getting really late since we had to leave our house." I didn't understand the use of "I"; maybe it would be a better fit to use it, instead.

Sentence 1 in Paragraph 6 of Anticipation: "Nevertheles[s], my mother had bled to death..." you were only missing an "s" at the end of the first word.

Memories

Overall grammar and punctuation was decent; although here are a couple of pointers for improvement.

Sentence 2 in paragraph 3 of Memories: "And I, had a habit to accompany him in his adventurous exploits." You do not need the comma after "And I".

Sentence 3 in paragraph 4 of Memories: "Perhaps I should been daydreaming less often." Try rewriting this as "Perhaps I should have been..." or "Perhaps I should daydream..."

"Why do you even believe, the wishes work, huh?" You do not need the first comma. Be careful with where you place commas so as not to separate the sentence unnecessarily.

"We were not used to bringing [up] the 'fatherly' terms since..."

Character Building: 4/5

Being that this book is a collection of short stories, the characters did not have a ton of depth to them general. However, I do think you did a good job introducing them to each story, even though readers do not know much about them.

I think the best story of the three for character building was Memories. With the incorporation of the flashbacks and real-time, it told a beautiful, but sad, story of two lovers that will grip readers' hearts.

Writing Style: 3/5

Anticipation

There are some sentence structure tips I would like to provide: In Anticipation, in the fifth paragraph, it says "I recognized my true value only when, when I heard him talking to Mr. Miller...." The double use of "when" is redundant; instead, you could rephrase the sentence like this: "I recognized my true value only when I heard him talking to Mr. Miller...". In the seventh paragraph, it says "Probably, he did so to show that he loved me despite whatever happened." Instead, you could rearrange that sentence to say: "He did so probably to show that he loved me despite whatever happened," OR "He probably did so to show that he loved me despite whatever happened." Some sentences seemed to have a predicate without a subject. This could definitely be attributed to your writing style, but I just wanted to point that out in case readers have a hard time understanding those partial sentences, such as "Didn't get any time to practice more" in paragraph 1 of Anticipation.

Your descriptions and visuals were fantastic. You used an appropriate amount of descriptive words when explaining something, and I definitely felt like I picture that scenes.

There were some pieces of your stories that were in contradictory to the others linguistically. In most of the stories, you used modern language; however, there were some sentences, for example: "Anything happened young girl?" and "Maybe I can help ye out?" [Anticipation] Make sure that the language that you use is consistent in the story. You could rewrite those sentences to "Did something happen, young girl?" and "Maybe I can help you out?" You could also choose to make all of your language more 18th century appropriate, if you would prefer that era.

Bird Feeder

Your writing tenses were a bit at odds in this story. Most of the time, you used past tense, much like Anticipation. However, some sentences were written in present tense, such as: "Pausing for suspense, being the dramatic excellence..." and "Oh mom[,] never change".

Memories

There is also a past-tense/present tense situation in this story, most taking place once the time changes at the "***" section.

Plot + Originality: 4/5

Anticipation

The end to Anticipation was so dramatic and scary! I really think you did a great job with the aspects of mystery, suspense, and horror for that story. Plot questions I have are: Why did Dani's dad wait until she got the newspaper to kill her? Earlier in the story, he told the lawyer that there had been "a long story" associated with why he didn't just kill Dani at the same time as her mother. The two things just didn't add up to me. I'm also still not 100% sure of the setting/time for this story. Is it a 21st century modern story? 18th century? Other? The language makes guessing a bit tough for readers.

Bird Feeder

This story's tone and genre was completely opposite of the first story. I really like that you incorporated such different stories in the same book together.

Memories

I really liked the genuine plot for this story. It felt like someone's true story that they would tell. I love that you used a wishing well as a theme. I do wish I knew more about why Mike died, but I understand that you most likely intentionally left that information out of the story.

OVERALL SCORE: 19/25

The newspaper photo used in Anticipation was great, I think it really added to the story. However, the newspaper is dated in 2018, which could confuse readers if your story's setting is the 18th or 19th centuries.

Overall, you did a great job with your descriptive writing. I was impressed at the vocabulary you used to describe each story. I can tell you have put hard work into editing these short stories. I do believe that with some slight updates (i.e. making tenses consistent, small typos fixed, etc) this book will be perfect. Be careful with your use of commas and be intentional when leaving words out of a sentence, such as "I".

I look forward to seeing what you do with this book!