Intro:
Obsession was written by ThatGoldenApple. It is a slow burn BTS fanfiction that follows the protagonist, Mae, through various life perils, including her obsession (hence the title) with Jeon Jungkook. It also features other BTS members such as Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung, with Taehyung taking another prominent role in the story.
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Detailed Feedback
What Worked:
I liked the relationship between Mae and her mother. They have a complicated relationship where Mae is lying to her and we watch as she hides it. It's tense, but it's also bittersweet because Mae genuinely cares about her mother, as seen in the hospital scene where she shows her vulnerable side. She admits she was scared, and she admits she would come home whenever her mom needed her.
It added a layer to Mae I wasn't expecting, and it kept stakes high throughout the narrative as we watched their relationship unfold. There was a lot of tension because Mae was keeping said secret from her mother, so at any moment that secret could be up, and that sweet relationship we saw in the hospital could be destroyed. The last thing we wanted to see was that relationship gone.
While on the topic of characters, I actually really liked Jungkook. I wasn't expecting to like him as much as I did. The way he reacted to situations was entertaining, and I especially liked how he acted around Mae.
He's mysterious and we didn't know much about him for a while, and I liked that. It put us in Mae's shoes. She's so obsessive over him, but she doesn't really know much, if anything, about him. Us, the audience, not knowing either made us able to relate to Mae more when she has the realization that he could have been seeing a woman and she had no idea.
Along with that, Taehyung is fun to read about. I like seeing things from his perspective, and also the way he carried himself was entertaining to read. His character was probably my second favorite behind Jungkook.
There were some great descriptions in the story that were thought-provoking and interesting. I think you mentioned that you went back in and added some scenes, and I'm glad you did since it gave more detail to the environments and who the characters are. It gets us in the mood to see more of the story when we have the details to imagine it and place ourselves in the scene with the characters.
The world is interesting, too. I was intrigued from the moment we learned the company name was Xentax. The names you use, whether you made them or they're real places, are engaging and they added to my enjoyment of the story. I always enjoy it when an author gives specific names and destinations instead of blurring out places and replacing them with "Let's meet at xx cafe" or something like that.
It is a slow burn story, and I like slow burns so I'm more in the target audience. I bring that up because I wanted to talk about the plot. I liked the plot. I was confused about it at first, but I suppose I probably shouldn't have been considering I knew it was slow burn, so the information was revealed later.
I mentioned Jungkook earlier to say I liked how he reacted to Mae's advances, but I want to take a moment to bring up the other half of that: I liked Mae's advances. Well, I didn't like them (I thought they were creepy), but I liked how they were handled and I liked the dynamic between Jungkook and Mae.
There was a lot of tension and stakes in the story since every character had their own reasons for doing the things they did, and at any moment, their reasons could either push them over the edge or change the plot drastically. Such as Mae's desire to quit and go live a normal life. Those are the kinds of narrative elements that keeps a reader engaged.
I don't want to spoil too much for other people who might want to read your work, so I won't talk too much about Jennie's inclusion other than to say I liked her and her attitude, she was just a lot of fun to read.
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What Didn't Work:
The one main thing I would recommend is having a more proper blurb. Considering chapter 1 is very vague to set up the slow burn and suspense, it could be beneficial to have a small blurb under what's already written just to say what the story is, generally, about. The blurb currently there is also vague.
There are punctuation errors throughout. For example, from chapter 2, "She loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color-despite it being a dull color, always added to the liveliness of this place."
The dash isn't a proper dash, it's a hyphen. There are different types of dashes, and the one that should be used in that situation is an em dash (—). You use the proper dashes later, so I'm not sure if that was just an oversight in editing or something.
The punctuation is a bit wonky since you use both a dash and a comma when only one or the other is necessary.
So, with the dashes: "She always loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color—despite it being a dull color—always added to the liveliness of this place."
With commas: "She always loved this corridor, always clean, the gray color, despite it being a dull color, always added to the liveliness of this place."
The "always clean" makes the sentence feel very confusing. I would recommend either removing it or splitting up the sentence like, "She always loved how clean this corridor was. The gray color—despite being dull—always added to the liveliness of this place."
I also removed the "it" "a" and "color" from the "despite being dull" section since it felt a bit wordy, in my opinion. That's one way to reword it, but there are numerous other ways. I encourage you to experiment with your sentence structure.
While on the topic of grammar, there are occasional tense issues where the tense incorrectly slips into present tense.
There are dialogue tag issues. When using a tag, the dialogue cannot end in a period, and the tag must be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. Since tags are continuations of the dialogue and not a new sentence, capitalizing them is grammatically incorrect.
You do it like this: "Hi." She said.
It should be: "Hi," she said.
The same applies for special punctuation that is not a comma. So, a proper tag would be: "How are you?" she asked. NOT: "How are you?" She asked.
There were some confusing descriptions in the story. I think you, overall, have a good eye for detail, there were just some descriptions that felt out of place. For example, "her skin paler than a slug's skin." I thought slugs were brown, black, and gray, not pale or light. Maybe it's just where I'm from, but I've never seen a slug that wasn't brown or black.
I'm not sure what the description was going for there, but I feel there were clearer phrases you could have used as a comparison.
While on the topic of clarity, the story would benefit by being more clear about who is in a scene and who is being referred to. In chapter two, shortly after the slug description, one paragraph says "Their job was to find her" in reference to the woman with the slug skin. The next paragraph is "Sometimes she felt like she is going to die" (that's an example of the tense issues I mentioned before, too—"is" should be "was").
I got confused since I didn't know if that paragraph was referring to Mae or the new female we were just introduced to. Considering the paragraph after that says "Taehyung's home was this office, plus, she didn't want to impose," I think it's referring to Mae, but the "she" can also refer to the other woman.
Another example of clarity issues is how many incomplete sentences there are. I think it's fine to use them as a style choice (I use them too), just make sure you aren't overusing them. There are numerous incomplete sentences per chapter, which can lead to clarity issues.
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Summary:
- Intriguing and complex relationship between Mae and her mother
- Interesting characters (particularly with Jungkook and Taehyung)
- Nice descriptions
- Cool world
- I liked the plot
- Consider including a longer blurb
- Grammar errors (punctuation, tense issues, dialogue tags)
- Some confusing moments
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Overall:
Obsession is a slow burn thriller that features characters that have their own reasons for doing the things they do, which leads to high stakes and a lot of tense moments where secrets are on the verge of coming out. If you are a fan of slow burn BTS stories, then I recommend Obsession to you.
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Thank you for submitting your story. I had a fun time with it, and this review was entertaining to write. I hope it's helpful!
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like any additional reviews.