Aphrodite Reviews

twenty | stuck with storm

Book: Stuck with Storm

Author: freakiestsoul

Genre: romance/YA/teen fic

BLURB

I loved how the blurb, title, and plot all interlinked with each other. I think it was a very clever and brilliant addition to the book. However, I do think the blurb could be made more interesting with some rewording. Perhaps experiment with a wider vocabulary palette (no this does not mean start using a thesaurus for everything lmao).

LANGUAGE

Overall, I think the language was very good. However, here are a few little edits I would make

Original: 'In the place.'

Edited: 'In the area.'

Also,

Original: 'I quickly drifted into a quick slumber.'

Edited: 'I quickly drifted into a slumber,' or 'I drifted into a quick slumber.'

Having similar words in proximity can sound pretty odd, and so I recommend you take one of these out. Lastly;

Original: 'that she swore by her life it would work'

Edited: 'that she swore by her life would work.'

Personally, I do think many sentences can be rephrased. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with your current sentences, but i know they can be improved. I am only saying this because I really believe this book can be a great success!

One last thing (although there are other errors I won't go into detail about,)

'I don't wanna pride but why...'

'I don't wanna pry but why...'

'Pride' is used in the wrong context here, and I believe the word you were looking for is 'pry.'

GRAMMAR

Original: 'I looked down at my sweatpants feeling the material close to my knee wet, completely glued to my skin, I turned to face my brother, who was excited to leave the car.

Edited: 'I looked down at my sweatpants, finding a damp spot on the material close to my knee. It was completely glued to my skin. I turned to face my brother, who was excited to leave the car.

or

Edited: 'I looked down at my sweatpants, feeling the fabric close to my knee. It was wet and now completely glued to my skin. I turned to face my brother, who was excited to leave the car.'

These are just some ideas to fix the original and aren't necessarily the best substitute. The original was questionable in terms of punctuation, and I felt the structure, on the whole, didn't really work. There was one more error I noticed.

Original: 'Did you drool on me, you idiot? I ask'

Edited: 'Did you drool on me, you idiot? I asked.'

The reason I made the change to tensing is that the rest of the novel is written in the past tense, and so this change to the present was a little confusing. There was also another example of this:

Original: 'I kick him hard under the table.'

Edited:'I kicked him hard under the table.'

I also noticed that commas were your weak spot and so I do recommend an editor to fix it up. Comma misuse wasn't that apparent, but the only reason I am recommending an editor is that a fresh set of eyes will always spot mistakes that we sometimes fail to notice. Tensing was also occasionally misused. However, I'm just going to show an example of comma misuse:

Original: 'My hair, doesn't look, good dude, how could you like to me lie that?'

Edited: 'My hair doesn't look good dude. How could you lie to me like that?'

DIALOGUE

I loved dialogue so much! I think it was written so well and was definitely a strong suit for your book. However, I do have one little note,

Original: 'he said while chuckling'

Perhaps you could shorten this to

Edited:'he chuckled'

by doing this, you are decreasing the use of 'said.'

WRITING STYLE

You don't understand how much I loved this. You started by giving ethereal, I dare say, descriptions. However, to the reader's surprise, you add humour to it. As much as I love descriptions and a wide variety of vocabulary, I think your writing style was very unique and has that special something that I always look for in a novel.

CHARACTERS

Character portrayal was very good, and I could see that despite the constant moving, which can often cause trouble in a relationship, they were still a stable family. However, I felt the character descriptions in Chapter 1 were slotted in a little randomly. I didn't think it was necessary. However, if you did want to mention it, either introduce this (separately) in different scenes of the book or find a better location. I did love how character relationships progressed, especially Storm and Alaina's.

ENJOYEMENT

This is the ultimate objective of a book, and I really feel you achieved this! I was so eager to read further chapters as I needed to know what would happen. I was so excited to see how the plot would play out.

CHAPTER NAMES

So I'm not sure if this was intentional, but you named one chapter 'fiveteen,' when it should be 'fifteen.'

OVERALL

This book was truly brilliant and I will eagerly be awaiting more chapters! The only thing I have to fault you on is your grammar and language. The good thing about this though, is that this problem can easily be fixed with an editor! Aside from that, the story was so enjoyable and I really think it has the potential to go further and featured here on Wattpad.

▹So I know my reviews generally have quite a bit of 'criticism,' but that's just because I prefer stating things the writer could work on rather than just praising them. I truly want to help writers and I feel this is the best way to do so. I could find your book stunning, but I don't think you'd get a lot out of me telling you that without tips to improve accompanying it.