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Layla - DaretoDreaminShadow

Title: Layla
Chapters read: 8/8
Score: 7/10

INTRODUCTION:
Layla depicts the titular character's journey as she tackles a prestigious academy and her booming success in the music industry, and navigating through her enigmatic past that she just wants to get away from. It's a gorgeous display of the effects of fame and how pressuring it is to maintain normalcy after it, all while functioning on a deep and mysterious background.

What I LIKED about your book.
Layla's a very interesting character. She first comes off as this personality, a result of the fame she received from being an acclaimed singer. She rapidly evolved from this point, showing that she's much more timid and shy than this personality of hers. Later into the chapters, snippets into her past life is revealed as she meets familiar faces from her past. What made Layla very interesting to me is how you revealed these meticulous details about her past through snippets and subtle hints, creating a persona that is more than the singer/student that she is now. In fact, the mentions of the 'training facility', Jayke and Jordan, further instills more intrigue to her already mysterious character.

The story also contains a very authentic portrayal of fame pressure. Early on in the chapters, we get a whiff from Layla's thoughts on how much she fears her manager and how her life "is not hers to control anymore." She further collapses in the stage from exhaustion after a performance for an interview, and receives no sympathy, but further lectures on where she went wrong on the performance. Her actions and thoughts regarding such were written with terrifying accuracy while in lieu with her actual persona, acting upon it just because of her fear of her very-controlling and mentally-abusive manager.

Moving on into the plot itself, to say that it has twists is an understatement. Because of the book's short length and incomplete status, the plot devices that you've set up is still not fully explored. But I'm really looking forward into the moment where all of these twisting pathways explode.

The plot itself is very unique in my opinion, though I cannot say for such because of the books's length.

What I DIDN'T LIKE about your book:
One thing that I clearly didn't like is the lack of transitions. The book itself is confusing itself at some points and the lack of time transitions just further accentuates the damage. I've noticed different scenarios where there is a rapid change in time, but is not indicated which could cause the scene to appear straight up flat and perplexing.

The story's pacing is a bit rough too, I think I can blame this for the lack of transitions. The story's direction is still not well-developed until chapter 8. It's almost pointing at something, given that she's unearthing her past partially from her experiences from the school. Anything that is relevant to the present does not help on building the story's direction, which I would've expected greatly.

CONCLUSION:
The story is very entertaining, and also very confusing at some points.

I'm really curious at how you're gonna play your plot out though, and the book is probably gonna stay in my library.

But a very interesting plot indeed! You got my attention from the very first chapter and maintained it until the end!