It wasn’t bad, but it could’ve been better. The title’s size could’ve been bigger and capitalized in whole. Also, the golden line beneath the title wasn’t really necessary. If you wanted it, you could’ve decreased its width. The line isn’t a straight one either. All the texts in the cover should’ve been centralized too.
Title: 4.5/05
Yep, it went with theme of the book.
Synopsis: 03/10
First off, the synopsis doesn’t give me any sort of insight on the book— be it the characters or the plot. I got none of it. You switched between present and past tense in the dialogue. That is, in the first line, you use ‘are’ and the next line, you use ‘found’. See the difference? They’re of different tenses. There were errors in the punctuations too.
Overall, the synopsis lacked basic elements; not entrancing, neither was it intriguing. Doesn’t really speak much about the book either. I suggest you add a description of the book too, as in a theme. Not a summary. Like, I’m not sure whether you can consider this a blurb in the first place.
Execution: 03/10
The book was basically three fourth dialogues— and that made it boring. There were no descriptive scenes. The punctuations with a space preceding it were a nightmare. The writing style wasn’t really good either. You have a long way to go. I couldn’t catch on any of the emotions to tried to convey either. Everything was a blur.
Plot: 10/20
While the plot wasn’t something to ‘wow’ at, it wasn’t so bad either. I’ve come across plenty of books with a similar plot, but the calm and laid back concept of the book wasn’t bad. However, the execution of the plot could’ve been way better. At some points, the plot came off as fast-paced too.
Writing Style: 06/20
There were major errors in the sentence constructions. It was as if I were reading a book written by a ten year old who didn’t know proper English. At most points, the tone of the sentences couldn’t be conveyed through your writing, that is, the seriousness or light moods of the lines wasn’t conveyed properly.
Also, you really need to avoid using Korean terms in the book unless it’s for honorifics. Just because the person reading your book is a fan, it doesn’t really mean that they understand all those Korean terms. You don’t want to leave your readers confused, do you? Plus, it’s basically wrong to use Romanized words from other languages in a book written in English.
Coming to the writing style itself, I think it’s bland. The ideas weren’t conveyed the right way. It’s just straight-forward with no ‘way’ around words. As if I were reading lecture notes. Like I mentioned above, you do not describe enough.
Grammar & Vocabulary: 13/20
There were a lot of errors in the grammar and punctuations. Starting off with punctuations, you do not have to leave space between the last word of a sentence and the punctuation mark following it. It’s wrong. For instance, in the line “Ya !”, there shouldn’t be space between the word and the exclamation mark.
Then, ellipsis. The universal value of an ellipsis is 3; nothing more, nothing less. Using more or less periods than 3 cannot be considered as an ellipsis- and hence is grammatically incorrect. So that’s another error.
When you end a line in direct speech, make sure to use a comma rather than a full stop, especially when action tags are in use. Also, break sentences when you have to, rather than joining them with a comma. I found a lot of places where you joined two irrelevant sentences with a comma.
Moving on to the grammar; you interchanged between tenses. If you decide to write in past tense, you might as well stick to it. If interchange between past tense and present tense, it’s not only grammatically incorrect, but can also come off as confusing. For instance, let’s take these consecutive lines from the first chapter:
‘You said annoyedly and rushed your walk, trying to cover your head with your bag.’
‘It's 9.55 in the morning right now, and you have a history class at 10 with your killer professor.’
In the two lines above, the first one is in past tense (‘said’, ‘rushed’) and the second one is in present tense (‘It’s’, ‘right now’). See the difference? Also, it’s supposed to be ‘9:55’, not ‘9.55’.
Characters & Development: 06/10
I can’t really put a finger on their personalities, to be honest. They weresnt described enough. But they developed way too fast, that’s for sure.
Total: 49/100
Final Note: First off, please do not get offended by anything I mentioned above. Keep an open mind and accept them, and work towards improvising! I suggest you add in more details into the book rather than just dialogues and a couple of lines, especially when it comes to how the characters think, and the different scenarios. Good luck with the book. Hit me up if you have any queries or doubts regarding this review. ☺
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