Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Alpha

Title: Alpha

Author: paa_rping

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: 4/5

I have to say, your summary is nothing short of gripping. By the end, I nearly forgot to write about it because I was so desperate to open up the book – which is a fantastic sign, because it means it's served its purpose very well. I like the way you succinctly introduce your three main characters, you instantly launch into the conflict, and your stakes are hammered home towards the end. The final line especially is very powerful and captivating.

A few small notes, however.

You only introduced three characters at the start, but then you name-drop five characters – two who haven't been introduced yet – when you talk about navigating the final years of high school. I suggest writing down the three you introduced only, so it's not too jarring and jump for the reader. If you're going to name drop characters in a summary, you need to make sure it is purposeful and has some brief background for the reader to grasp onto.

Additionally, watch out for a few technical things:

...murder of an all-star student, everything around is forever changed.

When you say 'around', you should follow with a around them. I would actually suggest removing the around so it's more impactful:

...murder of an all-star student, everything is forever changed.

The problem is, no one was supposed to witness his death and the blackmail adept, mind control capable organisation, ALPHA, responsible for the murder will do anything to protect themselves.

That's one hefty sentence that could use some revising:

The problem is no one was supposed to witness his death, and ALPHA, the blackmail adept and mind-control capable organisation that is responsible for the murder, will do anything to protect themselves.

Grammar: 3/5

Overall, the first few chapters of your story were quite polished, by the further we progressed, the more minor errors I started picking up along the way. I thought we would go through some of these errors in a bit of detail.

First of all, dialogue and punctuation. When dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'they exclaimed – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question, and an exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"I won't tell anyone what you tell me." I said.

It should be:

"I won't tell anyone what you tell me," I said.

However, if we have an action beat instead of a dialogue tag:

"Touché," she nodded.

It should be:

"Touché." She nodded.

Next, let's talk about tenses. You're mostly in past tense, but there are moments where you jump into present tense within a single paragraph. For example: