Book: From My Eyes
Author: nanyapixie6
Reviewer: Dark_Ghostie
Chapters read: 31
Cover: 4/5
The cover is beautiful and I love the parchment, and historical look. Furthermore, all your elements are nicely arranged, especially the castle and bow and arrow. However, the fonts can be a little clearer. The title is fine for the most part, but the wording at the top could be a little bigger while the font for the name at the bottom can be a little bolder.
Title: 5/5
I think the title of the story. It really captures the essence of the story perfectly, especially since Elaine is mute.
Blurb: 4/5
The blurb is beautifully written, but I don’t really get how the first sentence about the lemons and grapes is connected to the rest of the blurb.
Mechanics: 12/20
Throughout the story, I noticed that there was a major punctuation issues. Not all your dialogues were properly punctuated. For example, ‘“Apologise to him now” the Duke said…’ should be ‘“Apologise to him now,” the Duke said…’. Dialogues should end with either a full stop, comma, exclamation mark, question mark, eclipse or dash and do note that if you have a dialogue tag after the dialogue, the article or pronoun shouldn’t be capitalised.
There were also quite a few grammatical errors. And I noticed that there was a slight confusion between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. Do also note that at certain points, your story slipped into the present tense before changing back to the past.
Your sentences are also either missing a few words or punctuation. Some are even split up into sentence fragments across different lines when they should be combined in one line. Some of the phrasings can also be tweaked a little. Furthermore, when switching POVs, you tend to not indicate whose POV it was, making it kind of confusing to follow the story. And one part that I also don’t get is if the story is written in Elaine’s POV, how does she know what is going on when she isn’t even there to witness it?
Plot: 15/20
I love the plot. It’s unique and the descriptions were quite accurate if I do say so myself. It’s clear that you’ve done your research and I love the touch of fantasy that aligns with the historical accounts of witches. The little romances here and there also help to spice up the story.
However, the introduction of the Hallreizides could’ve been more solid. I wasn’t entirely sold on their sudden appearance and why exactly they wanted her back. After that, everything just went downhill really fast, not that it’s bad. The only problem is that the foundation for the war or fight isn’t very stable and I also find it a little surprising how the gang can defend against those fantasy beings so easily. Other than that, I think you have a great plot that has a lot of potential to shine!
Flow: 7/10
There were a few gaps between the chapters and I was very confused as to what was going on. For example, chapter 2 ended with Elaine going to sleep in the rosebushes, but chapter 3 suddenly talked about her shooting arrows. A lot of the sentences are also broken up across various lines, breaking the sentence flow.
Hook: 9/10
The story was quite interesting. Good job!
Character development: 13/20
There is some character development for Elaine and Fredrick while the other characters remained kind of the same. It’s like the characters only have a few qualities, making them quite simple and harder to root for or relate to.
When developing your characters, maybe try asking yourself these few questions—What is the character like? What are some of their strengths and flaws? What have they experienced? What makes this character special? Throughout the story, how do they change or grow?
Overall enjoyment: 5/5
Despite all the errors and slight confusion, I absolutely love the story and I can’t stop reading it.
Total: 74/100
You’ve got a great story plot with very interesting twists. However, all the errors and plot inconsistencies can cause confusion which may result in readers losing interest in the story as they can’t enjoy it as much. Other than that, keep up the good work! I look forward to reading what happened next :)
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