In My Opinion

Zoe, the Witch of Innocence by High_Priestess_Elena

Full title: The Five Cursed Witches: Volume 1 - Zoe, the Witch of Innocence by High_Priestess_Elena
Source: Blossom Awards 2024
Category: Fantasy
Mature: Y (smut, suicidal thoughts, (magical) torture/violence/abuse, death)
Status: Complete
Round 1: 35/40, did not progress to round 2

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

*****

Round 1 total: 35/40

Title: 10/10
I like the title, but I wish there was a way to have a subtitle on Wattpad, so you could separate "Zoe, the Witch of Innocence" from the rest of the title. The title is too long to fit on the screen this way. That's not your fault, so I'm still giving this a 10. It catches my attention, and the part I can't read is visible on the cover, so it's fine.

Blurb/synopsis: 8/10
So, the first thing I notice about the blurb is the repetitive sentence structure in the first paragraph. The first three sentences are all "part 1, part 2," and it gets a little boring. Don't be afraid to play around with sentence structure. Switching it up a little will help you catch and hold the reader's attention. The last two sentences need a little work, anyway, so working on them may lead you to fix the entire paragraph. For literal fixes, the third and fourth sentences have phrasing issues and a missing comma: "It's a curse she would do anything to get rid of, but her coven considers it to be their best weapon. They have asked her, from time to time, to kill potential threats to the coven, and it is time for her to do it again." But, as I said, it would be really helpful for you to play around with varying sentence structure.

Comma placement is your main issue in the second paragraph. Using an editing tool that supports your English usage would help you fix that pretty easily, and it may help you when you're playing around with sentence structure, too. But, this is interesting, and it gets me curious, and I 100% support the content warning, so, good start. I want to read on.

Cover: 9/10
I'm giving this a 9 because "The Five Cursed Witches: Volume 1" isn't on the cover. It would take some rearranging to fit it all on there, but it's important, so I think it should be included somehow. But, otherwise, the colors, image, font, everything goes together really nicely.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 8/10
The author's note gets me curious about this story, and all the following ones, so that's good. It does have a few misspellings ("tiredlessly" should be "tirelessly," "intrugied" should be "intrigued"), and some phrasing/wording issues. For example, the first sentence of the third paragraph could be a smoother read: "Each of the different volumes will focus on a new set of characters (the last one being an exception)." There are also a few verb/noun disagreements, like in the third sentence of that paragraph, it should be "there is information" instead of "there are information." Just little things that having someone proofread behind you or using an editing tool would catch.

I skipped the "Accolades" because I don't want my judging to be influenced by the opinions of others, but kudos!

I've come across another story recently that does this sort of one-line intro to different sections of the story, and I kind of like it. My only thing, and maybe I'll find out differently in the story, is that this line feels like a verse from a song or a poem? If that's the case, splitting it up into three lines might look better. But I'm not a poet, and it's up to you:

"The witch surrounded by death

that shuns all the rest

shall be awoken by innocence"

Moving on, I like the prologue. The light-hearted, almost childlike glee of the faerie, who is absolutely more powerful than the witch and in total control of the situation, comes across loud and clear. I do think you could play around with sentence structure here again, although in this specific section, I think you should combine sentences instead of splitting them up. Some of the shorter sentences almost feel like incomplete sentences, although they aren't. For example, the first paragraph could be something like this: "Rheseis giggled at the expression of the woman in front of her: wide eyed with a slightly open mouth, her hands trembling where they rested on the notebook on her desk." I also removed extra "slights" and "slightlys" because there were three instances in this paragraph, which gets repetitive and boring, so you want to be careful about that with your adverbs and adjectives. There are also little phrasing/tense issues again, as I've noted before, but this definitely catches my interest, which is exactly what you want it to do.

(Also, a little aside, I'm picturing Rheseis as Tinker Bell right now.)

Something I haven't noted before now, but really gets on my OCD nerves, is capitalization in chapter titles. I am a person who thinks each word of the chapter title should be capitalized, with the exception of words that aren't usually (a, an, the, prepositions). But you're not the only person I've seen who doesn't do that, so I'll chalk it up to personal preference, but I will say that whichever way you choose should remain consistent. So, if you're only capitalizing the first letter of the first word, then this should be "The faerie's curse." I only mention that because I noticed that you vary how you capitalize other chapters, and I wasn't sure you realized you'd done it. Just doing the same thing throughout would remove that distraction from someone like me. Also, I think a colon should go after "Chapter 1" and before "The Faerie's Curse" (or "The faerie's curse," whichever you decide to go with).

But, getting into the actual chapter, this is amazing. I can see you've definitely taken more time with it than you did anything previous, and it just flows. There are a few little word/phrasing things here or there, but not as many as before, and your dialogue is excellent. A lot of people really struggle with dialogue, but you don't. Your descriptions are fantastic, and you immediately bring the reader into Zoe's mind and heart so we feel her sadness before we even really know her. Everything just draws us in further, until we know what the last sentence of the chapter will be, what the outcome for that happy family in the picture will be, but it's still heartbreaking when we actually read that last sentence. Great job. I love this, and it makes me want to read on.