Dreamland Review Archive

Frenemies By Choice (CY)

Chapter 2 Edits:

Another amazing beginning to a chapter, but the first paragraph immediately has issues. I'm not going to waste time writing the entire thing here, but just keep in mind everything I've said about wordiness and redundancy up until now.

Edited: I used to have a speech disorder when I was five, and the kids in my kindergarten class would laugh at me for stumbling on words. It was hard relating to them when they were learning new words, excited to use them and express themselves. I was different.

You also had a couple tense errors which I also corrected in the above, some by rewording.

Original: No one wanted to be friends with the kid who couldn't put a complete sentence together until the new boy joined our class.

With the lack of separation in the above sentence, it's hard to make out what it truly means. It kind of sounds like Keenan arriving was the reason she could put sentences together, when I believe you mean that no one wanted to be her friend except for Keenan. See what I mean? It's kind of confusing, so always make use of commas and separation to get the right point across. 

Edited: No one wanted to be friends with the kid who couldn't put a sentence together. Not until the new boy joined our class.

Original: The turning point of my attitude towards him and one of my favorite memories was when the kindergarten teacher gave us homework to talk about our best friends. 

In this example, you have a huge run-on sentence, or at least in my opinion it is. I think technically it's correct, but it's all over the place, and needs a lot more punctuation to (again) get the right point across.

Edited: The turning point in my attitude toward him—as well as one of my favorite memories—was when our teacher gave us an assignment to talk about our friends.

Also, having homework in the original sentence doesn't make much sense since they are presenting at school.

Original: Four years is enough excuse to hold onto nothing more than a sad memory.

Considering what context this is in, I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean. The best I get from this sentence is that her and Keenan's friendship ended 4 years ago? And now that it's a sad memory she should get rid of it. If that's at all right, it needs to be worded way differently.

Edited: Four years have gone by, there's no excuse for holding on to something that's little more than a sad memory.

*I realized I was nitpicking a lot because I found quite a few more mistakes in the later chapters than the first, so I only mentioned the more important ones. Just remember when you make edits to proofread the entire thing, not just what I pointed out.

Quick note on dialogue:

I left a comment on a few minor mistakes as well as one about your dialogue. I wanted to let you know that you did an amazing job on it, and I hardly noticed a single mistake. Dialogue is much better when you use action tags and dialogue tags, not just the latter. It makes for much more interesting dialogue, and I never was bored reading yours.

In-depth Review: 90/100

Chapter 1: I love how this story begins. Public school drama is always a real hook, and the deal with Keenan definitely makes me want to read more. What will we learn from this dark, brooding fellow who never usually hurts a fly? You further your readers' investment with Kate's social facade, and her secret dislike of the boy she's dating. The blonde girls are a bit cliché, but it's not often we see our MC as one of their friends.I would've like to see a little more elaboration at home, perhaps why Kate's mother was covered in chocolate wrappers 🤣, and just more about her family in general. I'm sure more is coming, but it would be great to just know a little more from the start. Also, I love the typical nonchalant attitude of Kate when it comes to chores, but I think it's a little weird that Kate claims she can never remember to set out the frozen meat when her mother literally just told her to. Perhaps I'd have her do that task, and then mention something about Kate never remembering to do chores, so she might as well do it now. Just a suggestion! 😁 My favorite part was definitely the text-conversation, and it led perfectly to Kate's self confession about Keenan. Why is she so hung up over some boy she used to know? Guess we'll find out soon.

Chapter 2:

Oof! A lot happened in this chapter, but it all worked well. Your further development of Kate and Keenan is perfect, and the flashback part gives us all a little "Aww!" moment. I find it a little weird that Kate lives next door to Keenan yet somehow manages to avoid him, but I guess they've really just grown that far apart. One of your special focuses you asked me to look at was pacing, and though I think your story has an amazing overall pace, a lot hits us in this chapter. I love the sections of self reflection we see in this chapter, and the further development of Kate's character. I don't have any comments on things to fix, so, great job!

Chapter 3 & 4:

Chapter is taken entirely by Keenan having dinner with Kate's family, and though a lot of it's dialogue, you're still doing a great job at developing the story and the conflict between Kate and her old friend. Chapter 4 I feel needs a little work. There's still a lot introduced in every chapter, and it's moving really fast so there's not much time to process it. Kate's pregnant, Brian's cheating, and Kate's accepting the friendship of the Lins. A lot. And even before she finds out all of this, it's kind of hard to believe she puts up with Brian's crap when she has such a hard exterior to everyone else. Maybe she really is doing it all for high-school fame, but it seems Brian often goes too far. But anyways, I'm looking forward to the rest of this story!

Story Development: 95/100

The only places I think could be improved are mentioned above, but overall, this is a well-paced, but occasionally fast, enjoyable story! I think the plotline is off to a great start, but to be honest, I'm not seeing what this story is going to develop into. Of course it's not good to have a cliché story that everyone can predict, but it's okay to drop hints every now and then to the big picture, which is something I'm missing. Perhaps it'll be Kate and Keenan making up and becoming friends again, but I hope there's more to it than that. I see an amazing story of self discovery in the horizon, so keep up the good work!

Final Notes: 90/100

This is a great story, and I definitely see a whole lot of potential. It needs a bit of grammar work and plenty more proofreads, and hopefully with the above tips you can make some edits. Keep developing your plot and characters, because I think you've done great so far!

Thank you for choosing me as your reviewer! And let me know if you have any questions or if I made any mistakes (because I do 😅).

—Cyprus S.