Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Winning Over His Heart

Title: Winning Over His Heart

Author: SunshineBandito

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: 5/5

A really intriguing summary! I think you've encapsulated the mood of your genre and story really well – it's clearly a romance, and the conflict is immediately emphasised by showing how each characters are about to go against what is considered their 'norm'. It almost reads like a movie trailer, in that it's light-hearted, easy to follow, and straight to the point. Well done! I know it's hard to talk about stakes in a summary like this, especially for a romance, but I think you've done a pretty good job at gripping the reader anyways.

Grammar: 3/5

Overall, your grammar could use a bit of polishing, but otherwise, it was very easy and fluent to read. Here are some examples, however, of errors I found:

He couldn't understand why Laney seemed to hold her breathe at his lack of response.

Breathe is the verb, breath is the noun. Therefore, it should be:

He couldn't understand why Laney seemed to hold her breath at his lack of response.

Also, real quick, sometimes you say Mckenna. Sometimes you say McKenna. Whatever you say, it needs to be consistent. You also have a few other typos, such as:

He hadn't had a full minute of silence sine meeting her.

It should be 'since.'

Next, let's talk about 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:

"Well, you are a sight for sore eyes, mon petit Chou." Cory said smiling.

It should be:

"Well, you are a sight for sore eyes, mon petit Chou," Cory said smiling.

Also, while we're on dialogue, let's talk about dialogue and paragraphing. When you have multiple characters speaking, each one should have a new paragraph for their dialogue. For example:

"I'm gluten free, vegan and vegetarian." Mr Scott said handing back the menu. "Take this away." Laney pushed the menu back in his hand leaning in a little. "I don't gloat often but I did kinda modernise the place a little." Flipping the menu over, Laney pointed to a page that took up half the space. "We have cauliflower steaks with butternut squash risotto and French bread as an appetiser. My personal favourite is the Greek plate."

It should be, with all rules applied:

"I'm gluten free, vegan and vegetarian," Mr Scott said, handing back the menu. "Take this away."

Laney pushed the menu back in his hand leaning in a little. "I don't gloat often, but I did kinda modernise the place a little." Flipping the menu over, Laney pointed to a page that took up half the space. "We have cauliflower steaks with butternut squash risotto and French bread as an appetiser. My personal favourite is the Greek plate."

Also, when a character is speaking and you're breaking it up over multiple paragraphs, you don't need the closing inverted commas until the very end, but each paragraph needs to start with an opening inverted comma. For example, you wrote: