Review Shop - Quotev And Wattpad (CLOSED)

Obsession - Detailed Feedback

I don't want to spoil too much for other people who might want to read your work, so I won't talk too much about Jennie's inclusion other than to say I liked her and her attitude, she was just a lot of fun to read.

~~~

What Didn't Work:

The one main thing I would recommend is having a more proper blurb. Considering chapter 1 is very vague to set up the slow burn and suspense, it could be beneficial to have a small blurb under what's already written just to say what the story is, generally, about. The blurb currently there is also vague.

There are punctuation errors throughout. For example, from chapter 2, "She loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color-despite it being a dull color, always added to the liveliness of this place."

The dash isn't a proper dash, it's a hyphen. There are different types of dashes, and the one that should be used in that situation is an em dash (—). You use the proper dashes later, so I'm not sure if that was just an oversight in editing or something. 

The punctuation is a bit wonky since you use both a dash and a comma when only one or the other is necessary.

So, with the dashes: "She always loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color—despite it being a dull color—always added to the liveliness of this place."

With commas: "She always loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color, despite it being a dull color, always added to the liveliness of this place."

The "always clean" makes the sentence feel very confusing. I would recommend either removing it or splitting up the sentence like, "She always loved how clean this corridor was. The gray color—despite being dull—always added to the liveliness of this place."

I also removed the "it" "a" and "color" from the "despite being dull" section since it felt a bit wordy, in my opinion. That's one way to reword it, but there are numerous other ways. I encourage you to experiment with your sentence structure.

While on the topic of grammar, there are occasional tense issues where the tense incorrectly slips into present tense.

There are dialogue tag issues. When using a tag, the dialogue cannot end in a period, and the tag must be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. Since tags are continuations of the dialogue and not a new sentence, capitalizing them is grammatically incorrect.

You do it like this: "Hi." She said.

It should be: "Hi," she said.

The same applies for special punctuation that is not a comma. So, a proper tag would be: "How are you?" she asked. NOT: "How are you?" She asked.

There were some confusing descriptions in the story. I think you, overall, have a good eye for detail, there were just some descriptions that felt out of place. For example, "her skin paler than a slug's skin." I thought slugs were brown, black, and gray, not pale or light. Maybe it's just where I'm from, but I've never seen a slug that wasn't brown or black.

I'm not sure what the description was going for there, but I feel there were clearer phrases you could have used as a comparison.

While on the topic of clarity, the story would benefit by being more clear about who is in a scene and who is being referred to. In chapter two, shortly after the slug description, one paragraph says "Their job was to find her" in reference to the woman with the slug skin. The next paragraph is "Sometimes she felt like she is going to die" (that's an example of the tense issues I mentioned before, too—"is" should be "was").

I got confused since I didn't know if that paragraph was referring to Mae or the new female we were just introduced to. Considering the paragraph after that says "Taehyung's home was this office, plus, she didn't want to impose," I think it's referring to Mae, but the "she" can also refer to the other woman.

Another example of clarity issues is how many incomplete sentences there are. I think it's fine to use them as a style choice (I use them too), just make sure you aren't overusing them. There are numerous incomplete sentences per chapter, which can lead to clarity issues.

~~~

Summary:

- Intriguing and complex relationship between Mae and her mother

- Interesting characters (particularly with Jungkook and Taehyung)

- Nice descriptions

- Cool world

- I liked the plot

- Consider including a longer blurb

- Grammar errors (punctuation, tense issues, dialogue tags)

- Some confusing moments

~~~

Overall:

Obsession is a slow burn thriller that features characters that have their own reasons for doing the things they do, which leads to high stakes and a lot of tense moments where secrets are on the verge of coming out. If you are a fan of slow burn BTS stories, then I recommend Obsession to you.

~~~

Thank you for submitting your story. I had a fun time with it, and this review was entertaining to write. I hope it's helpful!

Please let me know if you have any questions or would like any additional reviews.