CLN's Seasonal Reviews (CLOSED)

Time left for living

REVIEW DONE BY: AimForTheTop

I'm gonna start off with the title, the "for living" part is kinda killing the beauty of it, you have to embody the theme and keep a spark of mystery in it so the readers would wanna keep up with it, so you could name it "time of life" or "lifeless existence" maybe even "Not worth fighting for" all these take the theme of programmed death. You can choose anything else, but the title "time left for living" can be grammatically wrong since we mostly use the "to live" instead of "for living".

Chap 1 : So the chapter started with 3 sentences that being I believe the way you wanna describe the hospital room, but saying those three lines

"White walls" "old hospital room" and "sickness" doesn't give much of a description, so if you took your time to be a little bit more specific about her surroundings, for example she was in the hospital therefore she could hear the "beep" indicating her heartbeat that would be a good start you could then describe her feelings as a young woman in pain and consumed by fear of a bad news, perhaps say "the beep indicating my heartbeat... I hear it everyday, over and over again, and I'm sick of it. But I was destined to hearing it for the rest of my pitiful life. I have no way out of this hospital room" that is just a brief idea.

Also I have noticed a little bit of repetition and I can see sometimes you couldn't find the right words to describe ; for example instead of "loss of interest" you could say "lack of interest" and you should focus more on the feelings of frustration, being in a hospital room causes all kinds of stress you should picture it better.

I also wanna point out something, sometimes while writing ideas are rushing through our head we tend to write down things that don't stick together, and by that I mean you described Hope as a girl in a hospital bed you didn't give us any of her facial features or maybe her hair, her clothes... but you did say her eyes were tired, she was replying weakly to the doctor's questions so how come she ran away ?

If you wanna keep the idea of her running away you should focus more on the feelings like you can say "I was broken I didn't want to believe my days were counted... I had been strong for too long I don't think I can take this any longer... One week, all that's left is that much ?! Was it even worth the suffering all these year ? I don't wanna get through with this, if all I have left is one week, then I'm not spending it in here." Then you say she collected herself and ran away when she found the courage to do it.

Plus when she revealed it to her parents, we didn't see that it mattered to them. In such situation where a soul is juggling between death and life, contact is important, meaning that Hope told her parents she was gonna die, 3 questions about this :

1. Why weren't they with her ? If she failed a test then she's still in school shouldn't her parents be with her when she visits the doctor ?

2. Hope told her parent right away, which is heartless, but the fact is she was in pain so how can she announce something so big in less than seconds without maybe falling to her knees and crying her eyes out ?

3. The reaction of her parents is too shallow, it's like they were expecting such a result, but they didn't. So maybe you should add something like her parents rush at her to hug her... they are the ones who raised her therefore they care about her, and letting go of their daughter must be a very hard stage for parents.

Chap 2 : There are a few things in this chapter that just don't make perfect sense and create a disorder in the story's chronological order.

1. You said Hope wanted to go shopping. Shopping means buying clothes, however she didn't wanna buy anything cause she wasn't gonna wear them anytime soon since her days were counted, instead she just went and had a meal with her mom. Just to be on the same page, if they wanna go shopping, they must buy clothes, otherwise I suggest changing the place they're visiting maybe let them go to the movies or just have a peaceful dinner with her mom.

2. Hope is acting as in she wasn't gonna die anytime soon, basically as a plain teenager, and that isn't the case here. Hope is dying in less than a week, so she should be thinking of that even tho she's trying to make herself forget it. Maybe at the end of each chapter in Hope's POV you could say something like "I had 6 days left, and zero intent on wasting them"

3. In such situations where life is at stake, parents are supportive of their children and wanna keep them happy in order to have the best time before leaving this world. I am mostly sure that no mother would want to send her dying daughter to school, and would possibly think of her education while she has a week left to live.

Chap 3 :

So we finally meet the boy who I'm guessing is gonna change Hope's last week into something better, but I have noticed some flaws in this one, well you see we don't know how old he is, or what he looks like, and I'm still intrigued about Hope's appearance as well, we know he's a player and that is about to change but it's not enough info, you should put more effort in the character design and stuff... Plus, Dan is not "clarifying" the problem with Hope's score on the exam, he's here to get the clarification, so he is seeking explanation instead of clarifying things to the teacher. And I get that he's protective of Hope that is why he is up against the teacher, but it seems the she has no authority whatsoever over her students and that's not the case.

And the same little details are missing in the chapters 4 and 5.

Generally speaking the book is promising but it does need more work and effort than you're putting in it. The feelings need to be exposed more, the description has to be more specific and when talking in POV don't hesitate to get into character better, put yourself in that same situation the character is in, and then the dialogue would come on its own.