d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

Blindsided by courtney457 [Romance]

Blindsided is a romance story about a boy named Hope and a girl named Ellie who meet by chance and become part of each other's lives. Ellie has a father that she fears. Hope's mother still refuses to tell him why his father left. Neither of their lives are what they would like for them to be, but, now that they're together, maybe everything will change.

There are just four parts to this story so far, so it's difficult to say very much about what the book as a whole will be like, but I can comment on how well it functions as a beginning.

One thing that I noticed was that there is a lot of description. While in Hope's perspective, there are plenty of details about sounds, smells, and textures that both orient the reader and give the story a very interesting feel. Many authors are used to relying on visual descriptions, which means that having a first person narrator who is blind would almost certainly be a challenge for them, but I thought this author mostly handled it well.

I say mostly because I wasn't completely sure what to make of the few visual descriptions that do appear in the chapters written in Hope's perspective. There is never a mistake; nothing is ever described as if Hope had seen it when he obviously couldn't have. What I mean is that the first page of the first chapter mentions genetics, which makes me think that Hope was born blind. So when he imagines images for himself, like his mother's "ice blue eyes", it makes me wonder whether I misunderstood the part about genetics or whether the author is being unintentionally inconsistent. This could easily be resolved if Hope had previously been able to see and had since lost the ability to do so, especially if this is explained or hinted to early on.

Other little things that I enjoyed include the fact that I can really feel it when Hope's mother is babying him and some of the conversations between Hope and Ellie, especially in the third part. It feels really natural and fitting for teenagers while also having some really interesting and occasionally humorous aspects to it.

Given that the piece is so short, I can't really tell where the plot is heading yet, apart from the fact that the relationship between Hope and Ellie is developing. Given that, I wasn't sure what the point was for including certain sections that didn't seem relevant to that or to anything that I could imagine tying into an aspect of the plot that will be revealed later on. An example of this is the end of the first part. After Hope and Ellie first meet – an important plot point – we get a long section that takes us from Hope's walk home to him falling asleep, with nothing more important in between. If this really does nothing to serve either plot or character development, I would prefer to see this part cut off right after the important scene is finished. Cutting anything that's not essential will make the story more focused and draw more readers in, which is the main task for a beginning.

This seems to be a solid start, but I did think that a few things could be done to improve it. I don't normally read romances, but I did think that these two characters would make a nice couple. So perhaps some of you readers will be intrigued enough to take a look and watch how the rest of it unfolds.

** Published in January 2015 **