Quest Reviews (CLOSED FOR CATCH UP)

Questint's review

Username: spacelattexo

Book title: Fractured past

Genre: Mystery/thriller

Focus: Plot/plot twist/originality/writing style.

BOOK COVER:

Finding the perfect cover for a mystery is extremely hard. It's not like sci-fi or fantasy or even romance where you just get cool images. It's terrible trying to find a good one that is actually relevant to the story. Being a mystery author myself, I totally understand the struggle.

I just thought I'll let you know the problems I found with yours. I'm hoping this might make it a bit easier to find the right one.

With covers I look at the following aspects:

1. Image chosen
2. Background
3. Graphics
4. Mood/colour/theme
5. Font - colour/placement/size.

And these are the aspects that found issues with. Starting with the image, choosing a girl is good but the picture is pretty out of focus. It looks like it has a blur filter over it, which works for some covers, but the sharpness is brought about by the font in such cases, which doesn't happen with yours. The background and graphics don't blend well with the image both in terms of colour as well as texture. The colour scheme  isn't eye catchy, I don't feel it particularly captures the mood very well. The black you've chosen for the font doesn't contrast well enough with the background making it a bit hard to see the title. The placement of the title and the author's name makes the cover look a bit off balance.

Overall, I think changing the background, image, colour scheme, font and its placement could make this better and be something that your story deserves.

BLURB:

I like the length of the blurb. I think over all it gives of a mysterious vibe.

However, as with anything, there are some points which could be improved.

1. Grammatical issues:

Line 1- "One night a tragic incident changed everything for her and gave her the opportunity to know about her past which she has been wondering about her whole life."

Problem - Tense shift

You blurb is written in the present tense, as it should be, but as you can see from the highlighted words, it slips into past.

Suggested edit - "One night a tragic incident changes everything for her and gives her the opportunity to know about her past which she has been wondering about her whole life."

Line 2- "Little does she know that what she found out was something more twisted than she could ever imagine."

Problem - Same as above, tense shift.

Suggested edit: "Little does she know that what she finds out is something more twisted than she could ever imagine."

2. The second thing that felt could be improved was, that your blurb is a bit too vague. Now, I totally get why you could have gone for this - to give off a mysterious vibe. And it does do that, but the thing is, going overboard with this has the danger of making the story too generic.

When you use words like "something happens" and "a tragic incident" it sort of takes away the punch, you know.

Let me talk about this more with an example:

Instead of "a tragic incident" if you were to say "one night she sees her friend get murdered right in front of her eyes" then that creates an impact with the readers. You are forging a connection, making them want to read more. They become more invested in the story. "A tragic incident" is too generic of a term for the readers to really care about what is going to happen.