Aphrodite Reviews

sixteen | lets talk about murder ⬦

Book : Let's Talk About Murder | ONC 2021

Author: shhravanii

Genre: mystery

COVER

This was really intriguing and it definitely caught my eye. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of these types of covers. However, it did stand out, so it's doing its job!

BLURB

This was brilliant! I literally braced myself for an amazing book. However, there were a few minor errors:

Original: 'and in every four years,'

Edited: 'and every four years.'

The 'in,' is not necessary here, and sounds quite odd in the context it is placed.

Original: 'Five students with seemingly nothing in common get admitted into the academy only to be chosen for the Black Hole but before being completely...

Edited: 'Five students with seemingly nothing in common get admitted into the academy only to be chosen for the Black Hole but, before being completely...

The comma should be placed after 'but.'

GRAMMAR

Hardly any issues with this. However, here are a few:

Original: 'As soon as, the guards leave, you can--'

Edited: 'As soon as the guards leave, you can--'

Original: 'Maybe she is not as dumb as I thought she is.'

Edited: 'Maybe she is not as dumb as I thought she was.'

The tensing went from past to present, so I recommend trying to stay consistent with tensing and looking out for small errors like this one.

PROLOGUE

This was such an amazing way to start the book, and it immediately piqued my interest! It was just the right length too, and the ending was perfect. Prologues are included so readers gain excitement for the upcoming chapters, and I was definitely excited!

SCENES

I loved the scenes and was so excited for them! However, I felt occasionally some opportunities were missed. For example, you say they enter without being seen by security. Perhaps expand on this scene, showing how it plays out rather than recounting events. Although this would have been nice to see, what you have written still works, I just think doing little things like this can really make a book successful.

CHARACTERS

I'm usually not a fan of writing that delivers character traits through paragraphs of writing. However, I felt you managed to do this very successfully. Things looked very organised if that makes sense, and were accompanied or incorporated with or within scenes.

LANGUAGE CHOICES

There were a few instances where I would make slight changes to the language:

Original: 'froze at their spots.'

Edited: 'froze in their spots.'

Original: 'the writings on the wall.'

Edited: 'the writing on the wall.'

Generally, the plural form of 'writing,' is just 'writing,' and I feel it is more suitable in this context.

Original: 'An eerie silence filled in the room.

Edited: 'An eerie silence filled the room.'

Original: 'Leaned to her ears.'

Edited: 'Leaned to her ear.'

I'm getting pretty fussy lmao. However, you can't lean to both ears, as that would be physically impossible.

Also,

Original: 'Aphrodite has good eyes than I do.'

This doesn't really make much grammatical sense and I was a little lost reading it. Perhaps substitute this for something like:

Edited: 'Aphrodite has better eyes than me' or 'Aphrodite has better eyes than I do.'

A final thing I will point out is:

Original: 'In the meanwhile.'

Edited: 'Meanwhile.'

I think your writing would benefit from a little shortening, just to polish it up. I'm not going to point out every little mistake. However, I felt extra/unnecessary words were the main issue.

HUMOUR

I love the subtle hints of humour that were present. There is often a misconception that if a book is about murder, it generally has to be quite serious. I felt you had just the right balance, and this made the book so much more enjoyable.

DIALOGUE

There was one mistake I found here:

Original: "What's the worse that can happen, "Aphrodite cheered.

Edited: "What's the worse that can happen?" Aphrodite cheered.

It's a question and therefore needs a question mark, even if it is dialogue :)

NARRATOR

The narrating style was probably one of my favourite aspects of this book. It was so engaging and really made the book so enjoyable! Narrating can often be pretty rigid, so I was very pleased to see a creative twist on this! Creativity is always a HUGE plus in a story, and I really respect authors who are bold enough to do that x I also loved how the story was in the third person but, at the same time, it broadened up to multiple viewpoints.

OVERALL

This story is extremely enjoyable, from the plot to the writing style, everything is absolutely stunning. This book truly is amazing!

▷ So loads of you have requested, so I'm so sorry if ur review is taking a long time but there is A LOT lmao, and there is only one of me so be patient ig??