Author: mellimack
Reviewer: Shraelyn
Chapters reviewed: 16 (including Table of Contents)
Your Title
I know that through your title you want to express all the things that life stumbles upon on. Everything that we want to happen but doesn't happen. The way life is shaped. The way it all unfolds. But personally I think you could have come up with a more creative title. And more after I read all the anthologies.
Really, the Title doesn't do justice to all the Entries in your book. I suggest come up with something more creative.
Your Cover
At first glance your cover is not at all eye-catching. It will get lost among all those shiny brand new ones. Like your Title the cover does not do justice to the book and if we don't change it many many readers won't click on that read button and will forever be unknown to your great entries.
But at closer look, your cover showed all the elemenys of your book you could ram in, in there. The butterfly on the window, the dog walking alongside the man, the empty dark room, the dining table with the plate on it; basically everthing. But you could still represent all of that in a creative way.
Try some covers shops and make it more creative.
Your Blurb
No complaints. Tells reader everything they need to know 'bout.
Plot
Well, let's start off with some minor changes, shall we?
Okay so there were 15 short anthologies in your book. All of them represented something that says tells about each phase of life. It's not all sunshine and flowers and that is a 5 star point. That your stories focus on topics that are never discussed publicly, people shy away from it yet tells us about the basic happening in life.
But what I didn't like was that you sometimes repeated words, broke sentences into to and used wrong propositions unneccessarily.
It breaks a reader's link of reading and is even an pet peeve for some.
Yes, I know you said that you did all of that because you wanted it to make a impact on the reader, say more about the situation and tell us exactly how or what is the state of the protaganist's mind. But you need to understand that repeated words and wrong grammar ain't the key to that. Dive deeper and open up your vocabulary to express that. This change is mandatory.
Other than that, when I read the first entry, '20 steps' I don't know if it was too dense for me too understand or something was off about it. But when you are expressing that the protaganist is dreading having to go inside that house tell us why, you just went in how she was dreading it and how she wanted to escape but never did the reason surface.
Again in 'Zombie' you could do better with your description of his love for her. He himself is telling how special she is, how different, unique but give the readers more about his love. I get that the point is that he doesn't feel anything, a zombie inside, but he does know that she is special that he is grateful then show some more emotions.
Grammar and typos
No. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. I couldn't find one typo nor anything tense mix ups. Just the one I told you about above.
Interaction with readers
Well you didn't interact through A/N's but you did reply to comments and I think that counts.
(If you found anything offensive or thought that I was wrong, remember this review comes from honesty and there isn't one bit I lied about.)
XOXO
Shravani.