Title: The Culprit's Verdict
Chapters read: 5/13
Score: 3.5/10
INTRODUCTION:
The Culprit's Verdict is a tale of vengeance. The story of a girl who lost her family to a mysterious bombing. Although intriguing at most and definitely interesting at first glance, repeated grammar mistakes, high use of colloquial words, and swathes of meaningless conversation really destroy the book's intrigue and professional vibe. The book's confusing plot also adds further salt to an otherwise grievous injury.
What I LIKED about the book:
The representation of grief towards the loss of a loved one is fully represented throughout the story and is the driving force in Max's plan of revenge. It's an authentic reaction to such a traumatic event, and is a break from common wattpad problems, which are treating the loss of loved ones as not important to character development.
Conflict was established early on in the story and I can certainly tell that this was a good tactic as your conflict has the potential to draw readers and suck them into the story.
What I DIDN'T LIKE about your book:
The story was at most confusing, mostly because of the writing. So much important info was overshadowed by irrelevant descriptions.
Let's start with your descriptions, they were pretty much straightforward, kinda like the character is not narrating but rather, talking to the readers themselves. Trust me, breaking the fourth wall is not a good idea when it comes to narratives, unless you have a good reason yo do so. The descriptions were kinda sloppy and awkward at many points, which led to normal situations sounding awkward due to the sloppy way of describing them.
There is absolutely zero to little attention given to scenery here. Given that scenery helps in visualization of your story and it's very scenes, and to give color and life to the book itself of course. Let's just say that the whole time I was reading the book, everything felt really bland. No scenery, and definitely at a loss in sensory descriptions.
There's also a problem in your use of figures of speech. Some metaphors just didn't make any sense while some sounded irrelevant to the scene they belonged to, like it just sprang out of nowhere. Figures of speech is used to beautify and to add color and use that to your advantage, don't use figures of speech as word fillers.
Dialogue either sounded awkward, artificial, or forced. There are a few exceptions however, there are still so much dialogue that sounded generic and inauthentic. The hospital part and the elevator scene definitely contained the most artificial dialogue and must be worked on. Try practicing your characters' dialogue by literally speaking to yourself and if it sounds human to you, then it sure would sound human to others, otherwise your standards of human speech is way overboard.
The lack of emotions and body language or any emotional factor at all makes it hard for me to sympathize with your character or to just relate to her. Max sounds like an interesting character, it's just her portrayal in scenes the problem. She wants to sound like a hero but she comes off like the annoying, bitchy damsel-in-distress kind of woman in cliche chicklit stories.
CONCLUSION:
Sorry for the harsh review!
I definitely understand that English is only your second language and I believe there's lots of space for improvements.
Keep practicing! Everyone starts from the bottom! Even I did!