Reed of The Willow
Author: honey-locust
Reviewer: LadyInLostYearn
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SYNOPSIS
A moon beneath the willow promised that you'd return, but instead, I was left with a reed." In the past year, Dai Juna usurp her drooling brother's seat in the family business while her absent father searched for "enlightenment." From bandits to a ship running aground, Juna thought the worst of her year was behind her. But when a winter storm brings a mysterious man with shattered memories to her shores, Juna finds herself torn between her duty to her family and the longing in her heart.
As she struggles to understand the man's connection to the sabotage that jeopardized her family's business and navigates the demands of an unwanted engagement, Juna is forced to confront the pain of her past and the ghosts that haunt her. She must decide did she save a victim or a handsome saboteur?
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Disclaimer: While I was reading your book with my best effort to stay unbiased, I might not have caught your intended style for your characters, storyline, or purposes. By the end of the day, you control its narrative. I was just passing through, exploring around, and giving a deduction.
Overall review:
The cover is beautiful, enough said. The blurb is good. A mistake present where the word "usurp" should be in the past tense "usurped". A couple of suggestions. The last line could be, "She must decide whether she saved a victim or a handsome saboteur."
There's a repetition between two separate sections: When a mysterious man with shattered memories is brought to Juna's shores during a winter storm... Perhaps you wanted to hook the readers in when they first see the book. However, this "A moon beneath the willow promised that you'd return, but instead, I was left with a reed." is already interesting and you don't need the first section.
The imagery told in this story was woven enough that it wasn't dragging.
The relationships between Juna and the other characters were dynamic and somehow managed to show some depth in a short time, especially about Ge Shun. About the voice she heard and her older brother, despite I never knew his character, I felt a slight sorrow. Great work when you showed the moments of grief, in my personal preference, successfully. No flowery words or that kind of sort. It hit Juna out of nowhere at the most unsuitable time. The pacing was good because you didn't shorten the chapters, you didn't put too many fillers, and something started to brew in chapter 4. It was fast enough yet left many mysteries to unfold that kept me intrigued.
Several grammar mistakes, though, and I'll provide examples:
1) A whole shipment of goods in the bottom of the... "in" should be "at".
2) "Ge Shun! He's alive! W-we just need-" suddenly, she felt the cold up... and She looked away, "There was a bad storm..." shouldn't have action beats as dialogue tags.
3) Great, she sighed was confusing. Was sighing a dialogue tag or Great was supposed to be separate? If not, why great has no quotation marks? There was extra space between two words, etc.
More suggestions:
Especially since...The spirit tugged at her sleeve, and she looked up to nothing. The ellipsis could be replaced with an em dash if the next sentence comes in abruptly or disturbs the line of thought. Be careful of using the same words frequently at the start of the sentences in one paragraph, like this, "She held up her arm to block the wind and continued down the path. She didn't see her crates and didn't dare step into the water. She had gone halfway up the coast when she saw something in the grass."
"She" was repeated at the start in each of these sentences, and it kind of felt like this becomes narrated in a repetitive monotone. So it's a good practice to vary the start of your sentences to avoid it.
I'd also like to see elaborated descriptions of physical appearances of important characters and facial expressions since they could help the readers to imagine them more clearly.
Recheck the book and use Grammarly and/or ProWritingAid to help you, although don't fully rely on them. Good read.