Datura Reviews

Review 5 | The Art of Mars

Story by erikonthemoon

Review by MiniMoxx

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Blurb

"I hate the way you smile when you see my paintings."
"I hate that you can't see your paintings are beautiful"

Jupiter is a struggling writer with a talent for killing things he finds beautiful. From the plants in his room to the relationships of his past. The only lasting friendship he has is the one with Will, an artist and a trustfund baby whose continuously struggling to stay out of his father's shadow.

When Jupiter admits his struggle with his own writing, Will brings him to the one place where there is an abundance of inspiration for him to draw from. An artstudio filled with overflowing with creatives.

Here he meets new friends, sees new places, and meets Mars, a painter who seems to haunt Jupiter like nothing else has.

Link to story ➼

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𓋼 Review 𓋼
𓋼 Blurb/Cover 𓋼

. The cover doesn't scream romance to me. It screams thriller or horror. There's nothing wrong with a dark cover with just one character on, but you may want to look again at your genre and typical romance covers. The font however is great with placements etc.

. The blurb has a slight issue with spacing with words stuck together. I'm also not sure that this story is a romance from the blurb, it feels more slice of life/drama rather than a romance. If you're looking at this being a romance main genre, I'd consider alluding more to a romance a bit more. I think the blurb could also use a bit more 'oomph'; right now, it is focused on just introducing characters rather than a plot - I think this comes back to my point about romance. I honestly couldn't tell you what the plot point is from this blurb, other than it's about Jupiter and art.

. I would honestly take out those 2 quotes from the blurb, it doesn't tell us much or do anything to lift the blurb.

𓋼 Chapter 1 and Hook 𓋼

. The beginning of chapter 1 is HOOKING. The description is lovely, and really engaging. There's a few awkward moments that could be reworked (a hatred intensified sentence sounds awkward to me, and the flora sentence could be split up with punctuation for example), however it's hooking as is.

. The moment where we talk about Alejo and "the best night of your life" feels a little off to me; I think it might be a grammar/punctuation thing, but it felt so random in the middle of the sentence.

. The middle of the chapter is introducing Will and their living situation. I'm going to be honest, it dragged a little for me. It was one big description and someone offering breakfast. I wonder if you could skip this entire paragraph. There doesn't feel like a hook here.

. Reading on, there wasn't much of a hook in the later part of the chapter, it skipped around in time a lot (the part where there were girls coming out of the club confused me - did you miss a paragraph break, or is this late at night?) and there wasn't much going on. A lot of conversation happened which could've happened later on, for example, and things being described that didn't feel relevant.