Sunflower Reviews

Orlaith - The Catfish

Reviewer: Myst3ry007

Review: The Catfish

Client: Wordchantress

🌻

'The Catfish' intrigued me with its title. Though it was a little on the nose for the most part, the idea of a story like this thrilled me and I couldn't wait to dive in. However, the moment I did, things weren't as I expected.

Blurb:

I've read both blurbs that were available for the book, the first made it sound like the book had nothing to do with being catfished and the new one holds little to no excitement in it.

Its generic with its introduction of the MC with little to no insight into the plot. The vagueness given doesn't pose a question, causing the blurb to fall flat and leave you wondering if you should read further or not.

Simply the blurb doesn't insight any emotions or feeling of wanting to know more. So, it needs some work.

Grammar & Punctuation:

I commend the author on this part of their writing as it is quite immaculate. Every sentence is written well and the only issue I really have is with the random words that have been put in italics. This is meant to show that the character is emphasizing the word, however so many words have this that it distracts instead of adding to the scene as it should.

With addition to that, the emphasis makes little to no impact at all in certain contexts where it appears.

Paragraphing & Phrasing:

This is where I found the most problematic issues, and sadly they were so noticeable that it made the story feel as if it dragged on.

There is no consistency when it comes to paragraphing – each one is about 5-10 lines long which makes you pause the moment you open the book. Such long paragraphs are daunting and make you wonder if this is worth your time.

The spaces between paragraphs are also quite small so it looks like one page is actually just one large paragraph. Add onto the fact that speech and description in certain places aren't separated, it appears to be one mass of words.

Paragraphing is essential and sadly the author has missed the mark on this point, which makes for a slow and painful read.

When we look at phrasing – the story falls apart as well. When a character speaks there is no dialogue tag behind the speech, nothing that explains how the character is feeling or how they reacted to what someone else said or did.

This makes for quite a flat read where you as the reader need to figure out if the character is screaming or whispering as well as how they feel about something. Without dialogue tags, sadly you cannot connect with the characters and thus aren't drawn into the story.

In addition, the way the characters interact and speak aren't indicative towards how people usually would speak. No one ever says their friend / family members name so many times while speaking to them. This again draws you away from the story and makes it unrealistic and non-relatable.

Characterization:

Characterization is lacking in all dynamics as these characters appear one dimensional. It isn't exactly stipulated how old the MC is – all that is mentioned is that they are out of school and are looking for a job.

With the small amount of information given though you can safely assume that she is in her 20s. However, the actions and conversations of the MC aren't indicative of a 20-year-old. She comes across more like a teenager than an adult.

The characters lack in everything from description to voice to personality and it sadly just makes their conversations come across as whinny or empty.

There is barely any good description into the appearance of people except for the guy seen in a photo. The issue with that is that the description of the man also had issues where instead of him being sexy / attractive – the clothes and things he had on were described as attractive. This caused for major confusion and once again took you out of the story.

Plot:

The plot of this story – the actual prompt that this is based on sounded so amazing. It made you giddy to jump into the story.

However, the plot fell flat, for the main plot wasn't what it was meant to be. The character was meant to be catfished but technically wasn't. This sadly takes so much away from the book and makes you question if this was really what the author was going for.

I cannot seem to find any sub plots other than the grandmother's weird need for a cake war with another shop but that doesn't seem like much of a sub plot. That plot point does however seem interesting but not enough to over shadow the main plot which doesn't exactly exist.

The flow of the story is quite slow and with the constant time jumps – it doesn't seem all that fast but even slower. The way certain scenes end make it seem like there is more to the story after it and that those pieces are missing.

Another issue with the flow is the transitions – how a character gets from one place to another. The transitions are written in such a choppy way or not at all that its appears that the character teleported to where they were supposed to be or just appeared there.

This causes once again unrealistic issues within the read and takes away from the story as a whole.

Writing Style:

The author has chosen First-Person as their point of view to write in, however, the tense they have chosen to write in isn't quite so clear as they continuously switch from past to present and back. This causes confusion during the read and makes you question each paragraph as it goes.

Certain parts of the way the author has written things have given way to telling instead of showing and in most parts the description isn't coherent in the sense that it is quite confusing.

All in all, I feel if the author chose a clear tense and thought through what the characters were meant to be thinking and doing – things would work out and make the story flow much better and clearer.

Overall:

I was rather excited to read this because of the premise however 'The Catfish' fell short. In all honesty it could be a rather good story but sadly the author seems a bit lost in many aspects of it. The characters need a lot of work in all aspects and to add some realism to them.

On another note – the book is meant to have humour in it and yet I found and saw none. The interaction between the characters is far forced and the scenes that follow so dragged out – that the humour written in is sadly lost.

I do believe that with more thought and more research into things – the author could turn this into a great book. It just needs a little love and a lot of work.