Quest Reviews (CLOSED FOR CATCH UP)

Questint's review

Username: UNBROKENSMILE

Book title: In control

Genre: LGBTQ+ General Fiction

Number of chapters reviewed: 25

Status: Completed.

BOOK COVER:

I fell in love with your cover right away. I don't think there could be a more fitting one. The typography, the spatial awareness, colours, themes, everything was so perfect. My only suggestion is that I can't really see the author's name on top.

While I usually don't like taglines on books, can I just say how absolutely perfect yours is? The play on words was genius. And so fitting. Great job with that, it's so damn clever.

BLURB:

Your blurb is the perfect length. It's so intriguing and the way you ended it... Damn! I would have clicked on the book right away had I come across it by accident. Beautifully done!

PLOT:

Premise:

The moment I read your blurb, I knew this was something different. I have never come across something so interesting and original in this genre in a very long time. Your premise of them meeting through the remote was just perfection. It drew me in right away.

Pacing:

The pacing was fine. I didn't find much problems with that.

Relevance:

This isn't a criteria that I usually include for books but your left me a little confused. What I mean by that is, your story isn't really relevant to your genre. I mean, it's clearly a romance, I'm not sure why you have categorized it as general fiction. I don't think it suits it particularly well.

Originality of plot:

The main plot is a bit clichè but I like the spin you put on it by introducing the element of the remote. That was so inspired.

WRITING STYLE: (CREATIVE)

Dialogues:

One of the first things that struck me about your writing was that your dialogues were really good. But even though you are good at crafting them, your writing style tends to be very much dialogue heavy. This is the general impression I got, but chapter 17 was a bit extreme. Jake and caiden are just going back and forth and there's no real break. Usually you do try to break them up with actions or descriptions, but on the whole it's really just a whole lot of dialogue especially in the second half of the book.

Descriptions:

I found the descriptions a bit lacking. As I mentioned before it's either a whole bunch of dialogues or a lot of narration. But when the two intervene, even then in some places It's just off some how. I'll give you some examples:

1. In chapter 16, in one place you include a description to break up the dialogue which goes "Caiden took a few sips of water to hydrate himself before he continued"

The problem I found with this is, the phrase "hydrate himself" seems like such a weird way to describe it in this particular context. It sounds almost clinical somehow.

I've usually heard it decribed like "to moisten his parched mouth" or something. To hydrate himself is a pretty scientific approach to take.

2. Same thing with a later description during the kidnap thing, you describe tears as "droplets of salined water."