Title: Reveal
Author: VampireQueen1006
Reviewer: MoniTheTigerEmpress
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SYNOPSIS
[The Vampire Queen Series Book 1]
What will you do if you wake up and see your reflection coming out of your mirror?
Laurel Johnson was a normal girl. It would seem she has everything an average person would want: A loving family, a best friend, cheerleader in school and good in studies.
The sudden arrival of a stranger changes her life. Her destiny is revealed, where she is destined to rule a realm, a new world of fantasy. She now has magical powers, magical weapons and frightening enemies and two deaths to avenge. She discovers somewhere she belonged to, something that actually belonged to her, exciting new abilities, new friends, lost families and last but not least evil enemies.
She learns a lot, experiences a lot, gains a lot and loses a lot too.
Read Reveal to know who the stranger was and follow Laurel's journey as she discovers herself.
Welcome to The Vampire Kingdom.
Happy Reading, Dear Readers.
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Title:
I think your title is simple and does its job.
Cover:
I think your cover is quite beautiful. I do love the font and how clear the text is. I love the red on the cover too.
Blurb:
I think your blurb is fine. It tells us who the book is about and the conflict in a way. I think it would entice a potential reader to read the book.
Plot/flow/pace:
There is currently a lot I want to address with this review so I am going to try and talk about everything. So firstly I think the plot of the book was fine. I can see where you wanted to go with this. I felt like in places things were moving too fast and in places the pace was very very slow. There were also times I felt like you described too little or over showed with details that were not necessary especially to the plot but that will be explained later in the review. On one hand people will appreciate you having short but sweet chapters but on the other hand you need more details in a majority of the chapters/scenes which I will touch up on later.
Grammar and dialogue:
For a majority of the time you had correct grammar but there were times especially with dialogue that could use improvements.
To begin, I would like to explain the different between dialogue tags and action tags as I noticed a few times you used the wrong punctuation at the end/start of your dialogues when one or the other was present. So one example I will use is from your second chapter where you have the following: "I may not be able to kill you but can certainly injure you." I said showing her my knife.
Now 'I said' is a dialogue tag so the full stop after 'injure you' must be a comma not a full stop.
To help you understand better, I will explain them! A dialogue tag is the way a character is speaking (said, yelled, whispered, screamed, etc). When these are present after dialogue is spoken, dialogue must include a comma. When this is present before the dialogue, the comma must be after the said/yelled/whispered/etc.
Examples:
"Hello," she greeted.
He yelled, "Where are you?!"
"How was the trip?" she asked.
As for action tags, these are the actions of a character so what the character is doing. Weather they are waving their hands about, throwing a suitcase out the window, or just about anything really. Now when the action of a character is present, dialogue must end in a full stop even if the action comes before the dialogue.
For example:
"Hello." He waved from the across the room.
Her eyes burnt holes into my head. "What?"
You can't take these." He grabbed the tray and walked off.
Another thing I wanted to mention which I noticed a lot of is you having more than one person speaking in a paragraph. There is actually a rule about that which is 'a new paragraph for a new speaker.' So what I would suggest is going through your work and separating the different people who speak per paragraph.
Another thing I wanted to mention was you do not need to use all CAPITALS in a dialogue to show the character is yelling. A simple exclamation mark ( ! ) does the job instead. I only noticed this in the first chapter. Generally capital letters can jar a reader.
Character Development:
N/A - Applicable with other parts of the review.
Descriptions, writing style and sentence structure:
This section might be a little lengthy but there is quite a bit I wanted to talk about and I genuinely want to help you and your book be the best it can be.
The first thing I want to address or talk about is the numbers. Generally number 100 should be written out. That makes your work look more professional. Also, it would be best to write out abbreviations too. So for example you have '3 hrs left' this should be 'three hours left' Also '17th birthday' should be 'seventeenth birthday'. I would suggest combing through the rest of the book and fixing any numbers!
Another thing I wanted to talk about was the brackets issue. In a lot of what I read, you had some of the narrative/text in brackets or even breaking the 4th wall/addressing the reader in the brackets. Instead of talking in the brackets, get rid of the brackets and try to make it seem a part of what your character is trying to do during the scenes. Having the text in the brackets breaks the flow.
You also don't need to use bold to highlight the importance of words. The bold kind of ruined it for me. Especially for 'her voice sounded exactly like mine' for this you do not need to bold it.
I also wanted to point out the issue with the descriptions or the very little descriptions throughout. There is generally the rule show, don't tell but not everything needs to be shown or not everything needs to be told either. Some details can be unnecessary, some examples could be a character showering or using the bathroom. So in regards to your writing I would say the part where the main character says they still have three hours to drag themselves to the bathroom is quite unnecessary.
I also felt like a lot of the writing was rushed or needed more detail. For example, the first paragraph of the first chapter. The dream and then the character waking up. This was very rushed and I felt like you could do more with this dream and flesh it out further.
I would also like to point out that you shouldn't rely on images. For example the knife in chapter 1. You have an image of the knife at the start of the chapter but you did not describe it in the scene. I think it is better to describe it so your reader can picture it better.
The first three sentences of your second chapter essentially mean the same thing so I would suggest just going with the description and removing the other two sentences.
Another thing I wanted to address was the 80% healed in regards to a wound that is mentioned in your second chapter I believe. Generally when it comes to describing wounds saying things like '80% healed' or a percentage doesn't help us readers to know what the wound looks like or anything as each wound can be different and can heal at different rates.
Overall:
Overall, I felt like your story has a lot of potential. You have a great base for a story but I would highly suggest re-writing/reworking the starting chapters and describing more and doing more showing vs telling.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review your book and good luck on your future writing endeavours!