My Honest Book Reviews [CLOSED]

The Enchanted

Cover: 5/10

Genre: Paranormal/Mystery

Rating: ???

Chapters Read: 1

Summary:

When Adriana moves to a small new town, she is looking forward to some peace and quiet. However, she observes strange things the very same day she arrives. Puzzled and terrified, she thinks it is mostly her imagination.

When she meets the mysterious and cold Ethan, she is intrigued by his less than friendly demeanor. On the other hand, Caleb is friendly enough, but can he be trusted?

She finally manages to settle down and but then events take a dark turn as the town is hit by a number of serial killings. Everyone is not as they seem to be, and she isn't sure who to trust.

Secrets are everywhere and even Adriana has one she must guard with her life. Can she find who is behind the killings before it is too late? 

As the line between what is real and what is not blurs, will she be able to escape and save her life?

The main problem with this summary is that it says too much right off the bat. This creates an unnecessarily confusing image of the premise, when the summary would have much of the same effect, if not better, if certain details were omitted (mainly paragraph 2 and 5). The information relayed in paragraph 4 already implies what 5 is trying to say, so the latter is really just repetition. Paragraph 2 also seems secondary to the overarching plot, so I would advise against leaving it in. I would even go as far as to say the second sentence in the third paragraph mirrors the second sentence of the second paragraph. 

When writing a summary, the author's priority should be to divulge only the most important plot points. Essentially, the details the reader would have to know from the start to get a clear impression of what the book is about. Always ask yourself: would including this specific tidbit of information in the summary significantly alter the reader's impression of the book? If the reader perfectly understands what the book is about without that detail, then leave it out. 

After trimming the summary, it would look something like this:

When Adriana moves to a small new town, she is looking forward to some peace and quiet. However, she observes strange things the very same day she arrives. Puzzled and terrified, she thinks it is mostly her imagination. She finally manages to settle down and but then events take a dark turn as the town is hit by a number of serial killings. Everyone is not as they seem to be, and she isn't sure who to trust.

Secrets are everywhere and even Adriana has one she must guard with her life. Can she find who is behind the killings before it is too late?

Which I think is monumentally better.

Thoughts:

So, immediately, I actually got good vibes from the writing. There aren't any spelling errors so far or any fluctuating in the tense. I thought the opening scene was quite engaging. I like that the author began the book with a strange occurrence, which seems to be a good indicator of what the town (and the rest of the book) will be like. It establishes a set of expectations for the reader and lets them know what they're in for. 

However, I would have appreciated more description of the drive to the town and the town itself. If the setting is central to the plot, then it's always a good idea to paint a vivid picture of what it looks like. In the first few paragraphs, this is sorely lacking. All I know about the town is that there's "big old houses" and "big leafy trees" around the town. Also, while we're on that, it would serve the author well if they used better descriptors (eg. change big for towering and old for derelict). At times, it felt as though Adriana's observations were quite barebones and incomplete (I would even go so far as to say they were simple). The best examples I can point to are paragraphs 7 and 8. After Adriana drives back to the rabbit and finds that it's gone, she simply drives away. There is no mention of how odd it is that a seemingly dead animal has disappeared from where it last was. The author fails to include an appropriate reaction to this, which makes me feel detached from Adriana as a person. 

And the times when Adriana is reacting to weird events, the author's lack of description makes those events feel underplayed, like they're just common, everyday occurrences. Reactions to extreme events need to be proportionally extreme, or at least more extreme than normal. 

The first time Adriana and Caleb meet it's short and unremarkable. They don't get past basic introductions and nothing interesting happens between them. It's such a short scene that I wondered what the point of it was, even. If the author thought that Caleb was important enough to include him in the summary, then you would think that they would pack in more detail into his first encounter with Adriana. 

At this point, I don't have much faith in the execution of this story. With everything I mentioned before, it comes as no surprise that the entire first chapter fails to capture my attention beyond initial interest. There's a cliffhanger at the end that I wasn't interested in resolving, so I just stopped there. If the chapter were even just a little more polished and illustrative, I would have felt the impact of not just the cliffhanger, but of the first scene on the road (and maybe even the meeting with Caleb). I would have been more invested in following Adriana as she discovered what these things meant and what they led to in the next chapters.

Also, towards the middle, I noticed some grammar mistakes. First of all, the author sometimes included an unnecessary space before ending a sentence (and sometimes in other places as well). They would also end dialogue with periods, after which an action or dialogue tag would follow (eg. "'Oh.' I replied, my mind racing."). These should be replaced with commas instead. The beginning of some sentences weren't capitalized and some words mid-sentence were randomly capitalized. The dialogue also should have had a space between each line.

Overall Rating:

5/10

Note to @pretty_poison_

The largest problem I've noticed with your writing is that it's very bland. It lacks enough detail to make it real and substantive, which in turn will negatively affect the entertainment value. You also need to fix some minor, rudimentary grammar mistakes. You should definitely invest in an editor. It would give your story some much-needed polishing. 

Next Story:

Exchanged Love