Taking Rovard
Author: @Mimiforeva
Reviewer: MoniTheTigerEmpress
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SYNOPSIS
Of Love,Of Trust, Of Betrayal, Of Revenge.
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Handling a multi million dollar business was a little too much for a seventeen year old girl right?
Wrong.
Myra Powers is certain she's capable enough which is why when her Grandpa wills the property to her power obsessed mother disguised as aunt instead of her, she's infuriated and determined to get it back.
Her determination only heightens when she notices that Gwen Powers is hell bent on ruining the company. Will she be able to protect her grandpa's years of hard work from her? And what happens when Gwen imposes new living conditions that involves a new housemate?
A grumpy, egotistical guy who takes delight in downplaying her.
Was she going to be able to get her company back ? While also trying to stop herself from falling in love with a guy who has just one lifelong goal.
To ruin her.
During the process, she finds love, friendship,experiences heartbreak, betrayals and uncovers deep dark secrets that has her questioning her entire existence and the purpose of it all.
She also discovers, that everything isn't as it seems.
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Title:
You have a unique title. I can see it is relevant to your story and I haven't seen a book with this title before. 'Rovard' was mentioned early in the book, especially in the prologue so the title is very fitting for your book.
Cover:
I like the text for your cover but I feel that your cover is quite... bland? I think it could be better to really hook a potential reader in along with your blurb. There are plenty of graphic shops out there that you can try, including our community's very own graphic shop, Dreamland Community's graphic shop, and many others. I believe you could get a cover that better represents your book.
Blurb:
Your blurb did well in telling us what your book is about. A potential reader can easily open the blurb and be enticed into wanting to read your book. We knew who the character is and all the necessary information that needed to be known. There were a few small details I wanted to mention that will make your blurb even better.
In the first line "Of love" after the comma you missed a space before "Of Trust".
There was a part where you mention the mother being disguised as Myra's aunt which confused me a little when I initially read it. How is the mother the aunt? How or well, this makes me curious to know who was Myra's mother figure as she grew up and if the mother was pretending to be her aunt. It just confuses me a little and I hope it will be cleared up throughout the book.
Plot/flow/pace:
The pacing of your chapters was okay. They were easy to follow. I think the plot was great and very prominent. There were a few small issues here and there that affected the flow of the chapters which will be mentioned below.
Grammar, dialogue, descriptions & sentence structure:
Firstly, I'd love to say it is nice to see you use paragraphs and punctuation. There were quite a few issues that I noted when I read which I will mention in this section. A lot of these were found in the prologue but quite a lot of the issues were also in other chapters.
The first issue I noticed, and this happened a lot throughout your chapters/book, was a spacing issue. So after a punctuation (e.g. full stops, commas) you miss spaces. An instance of this is already happening in the prologue. So for example in the first paragraph of chapter 1, you have "-pain down the affected area. Grunting, he grabbed-" so you can see from that example, there should be a space between the full stop after 'area' and 'Grunting'. This happens a lot throughout your work so I would suggest reading through and adding the spaces needed.
Another thing I noticed was that you like to use the words "he" and "his" a lot, especially in the prologue. A lot of your sentences and paragraphs start with either "he" or "his" so I would suggest changing up your wording so "he" and "his" words aren't repetitive.
There were times when I was reading where I felt like your descriptions were stilted or that you told us information that was unnecessary. It was more of you telling instead of showing us things happening. I felt that your story, and more so the prologue, felt too formal. To improve in this aspect, I would like to suggest that you could allow your readers to be more immersed in the character's view, for example by showing how your characters felt and such. One example I'll use is from the first paragraph of your prologue. Instead of telling us the main character fell, you could describe in more detail. So maybe their breath stops as they drop? Did they trip over their own feet? You started the prologue with "He fell" but how did the character fall? I would also like to point out that if someone falls with extreme force, they might fracture their knee/legs. I also felt that the mention of the nervous system in the first paragraph was telling us too much and is an unnecessary detail. The paragraph would be better without the mention of that.
Another issue I should mention is the paragraph where you described the streets being deserted and it being evidence that it was past midnight which is found in the prologue. Streets, realistically speaking, can be empty/deserted at any time/hour of the day or night so it isn't really exclusive to a night thing. For this scene, you could describe what the character sees so maybe the night sky, the moon in the sky, or even the stars and such. If you really want to show the time you can even show the character looking at a watch they may be wearing or even the time on their phone if they have one on their person.
In the same paragraph as the one above, in one sentence you say the "streets were deserted" and in the next sentence "there wasn't a single person in sight". These two mean the same thing so you can easily get rid of one or the other. Although, in my opinion, you can get rid of the sentence "The streets were deserted, an evidence that it was past midnight." And show us the darkness of the night and such then go on to say there "wasn't a single person in sight."
I did notice while reading you had a run-on sentence or two, especially in the prologue. One run-on sentence started with "His entire being vibrated as he spat out a mixture". This sentence is considered a run-on sentence and you can either break it up into a few sentences, simplify it, or rewrite it.
Another sentence in your prologue that I wanted to talk about was where you state he "dimmed his eyes to adjust to the night light". A person cannot dim their eyes but "squinted" would probably work best given the context of the sentence/scene. If you also wanted to hint that the person did not feel well, you could keep dim and describe how they felt. Maybe a headache or them feeling weak or pain in certain areas too.
In your prologue, there was a run-on sentence I would also like to mention and talk about. It is one long sentence but also a paragraph and it is the one that starts with "He felt himself slowing down...". I admit it took me a while to understand and grasp what this paragraph was meant to tell your readers. I honestly suggest breaking it down into two sentences and simplifying it a little so it won't confuse the reader. You could probably reword it to say something like this: "He refused to accept that his body was slowing down. The footsteps seemed to be a lot closer than they previously were. If he didn't know any better, it sounded like they were almost running to catch up to him."
In one part of the prologue, you have the characters age "31" written in numbers. Do note the general rule: numbers under 100 are generally better written out so like "thirty-one".
I did notice while reading that you overuse commas quite excessively, especially where they are not needed. There were a few instances in which I took note where you had a comma that did not need it. In your prologue alone, you used commas about sixty-six times. It made your sentences feel choppy and often I felt disconnected from what I was reading. Below are a few instances where I noted an unnecessary comma.
One instance is the following sentence: "One of them, had gotten to where he lay now." The comma (,) after "them" here is not necessary and doesn't add anything to the sentence. It also makes the sentence read odd, so I suggest removing it. I would also like to let you know that I found this entire paragraph short and choppy, and I felt that you could have added more details. As a reader, I would like to know what the character felt, their thoughts, etc.
Another sentence I wanted to focus on is the middle of this sentence: "-ruin his entire reputation, by sentencing him to jail-" The comma after "reputation" here is not necessary either and it makes the sentence read choppy so I would suggest getting rid of the comma too.
I would also like to mention a rule when it comes to action tags vs dialogue tags. When a dialogue tag is present (said, asked, yelled, screamed, etc) a comma must be used. When an action tag (what the character is doing) is present, a full stop must be used. So when you say "his smile still dominant" instead of a comma, you should use a full stop after "dominant".
Character Development:
Right off the bat when I read the prologue we could see the character fell and then I was wondering what this character had done to be chased by these people. We could see this guy is probably known and powerful too. With the ending, we could see the character wanted to get revenge on this Gwen person. With that said, I felt like we could be more in your character's headspace. Like more emotion and more sensory details just so we can feel more at the scene with the character and so it doesn't feel too choppy at certain points too. There was too much telling of feelings and not enough showing them.
Overall:
With all said above, your story has potential, and a lot of possible readers will be interested in reading your work but there were some aspects that needed work. In summary, if the following is fixed, your story will be even better.
•-> Changing your cover to something that will fit your book.
•-> Fixing run-on sentences.
•-> Add spaces where needed
•-> Removing unnecessary commas.
•-> Showing instead of telling us things so we feel more connected to the character.
•-> Be careful not to over-tell or give us unnecessary details.
•-> Try to not use "he" too much especially in sentences one after another.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review your book. I hope this review helped! Good luck with your future writing endeavours.