Title: Luna

Author: jaXmiXe

Genre: Werewolf

Rating: PG-13

# of chapters: 5 (includes a prologue—ongoing) 

# of chapters I read: 3 (If you count the preface as a chapter) 

Summary/Blurb:

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." ― Anaïs Nin

Dahlia James is an unusual girl. Born with dark black hair, light tale eyes, and pale skin, Dahlia has always been picked on and bullied. Her life dosesn't get any better when her mom dies mysteriously with no clues on how she passed.

Dahlia's life is a roller coaster speeding downwards only making her more miserable andsad. The night of her brother's Alpha Crowning Ceremony Dahlia meets her mate. This is supposed to be the highlight of every wolves life. For Dahlia? It isn't. Dahlia has never wanted a mate, she knows what love can do to a relationship, having to witness her parents fighting over random irrelevant topics, she knows first hand what it can do to others. It strains people and Dahlia doesn't want or need any more stress in her life.

Dahlia's mate isn't just anyone. Her mate is Alpha King Shadow Knight. Shadow Knight is known to be the most horrendous person on the planet. He is ruthless with no remorse for others. He kills for fun and enjoys having his way with woman. He is evil. So evil he killed his parents just to have the crown and to rule over the werewolves.

But Dahlia's problems are just beginning. After a week with Shadow, she finds out that she is a full supernatural. Dahlia is a werewolf, vampire, angel, witch, and warlock. She is the most powerful being ever to walk the face of the Earth. Far more powerful than the Moon Goddess herself. You might think that having these powers is a blessing for only the best. But these powers can only do two things, make or destroy Dahlia. How will she control herself from making bad choices, how will she stop herself from hurting herself, her family and her friends? How will Shadow feel about a woman being more powerful than him? What will he do and how will he react

Review:

Cover: (The author has updated the cover)

You don't know how happy it makes me to see a cover on a werewolf story that doesn't involve two half-naked people. I freakin' hate those. I know they're half-wolf, and have issues controlling their primal urges to bang everything on sight during mating season, but seriously, don't put me off right from the cover. I'm asking you nicely.

Anyway, I like the simplicity of this. We have a howling wolf overlaid upon a girl with her head down. It gets the message across—that this is a werewolf story—without having to resort to soft porn. I also like the title (of the eponymous character), and despite the protagonist's name being a little generic—I mean, Luna is 'moon' in Italian, and we all know that werewolves change under the full moon—I guess it's better than "Rejected by My Alpha". The only problem I have with this is the color scheme—gray is honestly the worst colour you can pick for a cover. It's so dull (yes, dogs see in greyscale, but we aren't dogs), that it makes my eyes tired. Please choose something that's more eye-catching and lively—don't let simplicity be you downfall. Also, make sure the author's name (and whatever those dots on the bottom are supposed to be) are bigger and more visible. 

Blurb:

Wow, this is one of the longest blurbs I've read in my life—meaning that, at first glance, there is a lot of information in here which we could probably do without.

Firstly, I really dislike when an author puts a quote in their blurb without trying to connect it to the content itself. Alright, it's about love and this story is about alpha mates and stuff, but unless you find a way to tie it to the blurb itself, it's pointless to have it sit there on its own. Besides, it's not your own quote, it's a quote someone else wrote—I always think it's more effective to use a quote from your own book, then link that in.

"Dahlia James is an unusual girl."—Nothing about the ensuing description is unusual about her (what are light tale eyes supposed to be). If you told me that she has a third eye in her forehead, a sixth finger on her left hand, or some other deformity, then I could understand what's so unusual about her.

"Her life doesn't get any better when her mom dies mysteriously with no clues on how she passed."— Her mom dying mysteriously is enough. Everything after that is redundant. If she died mysteriously, of course, there are no clues on how she died.

In the second paragraph (excluding the quote) we get a mention that Dahlia is a werewolf of some sort—but this should've been done in the first paragraph when you said that she was unusual. At the end we find out that she's some sort of weird hybrid (vampire/werewolf/angel/witch/ what?) Now that I read it over, that entire paragraph can be taken out. It gives out too much information which will be given out in the story anyway, and it doesn't really do anything to grab my attention. If anything, it makes me want to take a nap.

Then we get Dahlia's mate....Alpha King Shadow Knight. He's supposedly the most horrendous person on the planet (I'm assuming that he's a teenager) yet nobody does anything about him. I mean, he kills people left and right, yet he's still alive and breathing. I'm pretty sure this guy would've either been dead or locked up in some cage, realistically speaking.

The last paragraph is about Dahlia being a hybrid of like five supernatural creatures...I really want to think that this is a parody of some sort, but I don't think it is. Like, I know that you're trying to stray from the clichéness of werewolf stories, but this is way too much. I can't see this working for Dahlia, but I guess I'll have to read to find out how you figure this out. "You might think that having these powers is a blessing for only the best"—no, I don't think that. I keep imagining Dahlia as looking like some sort of weird-ass hybrid—legs of a wolf, angel wings, body and face of a vampire, powers of a witch and warlock....(which are inherently the same thing, warlocks and witches. Except that the first is male, and the second is female).

There are also way too many rhetorical questions at the end, and there isn't a hook—honestly, It's taking all my goodwill not to let my prejudice against werewolf stories get the better of me. I'm hoping that the story will be better than this blurb.

Finally, I suggest you go back and read over the grammar/punctuation. There are some slip-ups every now and then. 

First Impression:

Your intro chapter killed me, but I was revived with the preface so it's all good.

One of my biggest pet peeves on here is when I get a double whammy—an author's note right in the beginning, and one at the end. I haven't even gotten into the story yet and I already feel like I've been taken out of it—is you have to advertise your friend's work, you can easily do that on your wall, and I can also survive without being told about a POV switch in the next chapter (I'll see that for myself soon enough).

The only thing an author's note should contain, namely the FIRST author's note in the book is: when you're going to be updating (which you have done), please vote and comment, a question to your readers (which you have also done), a SHORT dedication (I dedicate this to my friend bfregal for being supporting or wtv) and "Thank you for reading!" Everything else is just superfluous and unnecessary, it just racks up the word count.

Now, for the prologue, that belongs in a chapter of its own, not with the first chapter. I haven't actually read the first chapter yet, but it looks pretty short—if it's lacking detail/info, then I'll let you know about that. But don't put the prologue and first chapter in the same section, especially the prologue is "the end" and the chapter one is, well, the beginning.

Anyway, I like this prologue because of how bloody it is. I'm joking, I'm not a psychopath. But seriously, I have no idea what's going on and I love it—this girl's entire family is half-dead and I have no idea why! Obviously, I'll find out about this later on, but it's a good beginning. I'll discuss the grammatical/punctuational errors in the writing style section, but I'll say something about the prologue itself—"Death. They say it sounds peaceful. That it is a painless process. The removing of your soul from the body."

 I've personally never heard something like this. What I HAVE heard is people saying that they want to die in their sleep, because they pass out and never wake up. So yes, in that case, death is peaceful. But the way Dahlia is dying bloodied from head to toe, her guts probably spilling onto the floor, that's a completely different story—dying that way is the worst because your soul never really finds peace.

So I think it would be better to talk about how Dahlia had always wanted to grow old with her mate and die with him in her sleep—but instead, she's stuck in a slaughterhouse surrounded by blood and guts. Just a thought.

Now the first chapter was very intriguing. I initially thought that you were using the third person omniscient POV and giving the reader a glimpse into the lives of each protagonist, but once the camera panned towards Dahlia, I understood that it was just her seeing the future. It really messed me up, though, especially those three guys that were looking for sacrifices. It's so scary to think how vulnerable young women are in places like this—as you said, they were just looking for a good time, for sex, not to get chopped up and sacrificed to Cthulhu or something.

There were a few things I found a little odd, so I'll just list them:

1. Do clubs in America really open before 7:00 PM? I found it a little strange that it was already so packed, usually it's like this around midnight. I don't know anything about the club scene there, so if I'm wrong just keep it as it is.

2. "Angrily Dahlia spits out her gum into a nearby garbage can and left the club"—afterwards, the scene continues in the club itself, meaning that Dahlia never left the club in the first place. It would be best to say "Dahlia spat out her gum into a nearby garbage can and stormed her way towards the nearest exit, sick of Maya's nagging."

3. Other than showcasing Dahlia's additional powers, I don't see why the girls went to the club in the first place. They haven't been in there for 23 minutes that they're already bickering and leaving. Like, why did they go to the club in the first place if they're not even going to be dancing/drinking? What's the point, you know?

4. You've probably been told this a thousand times, but check your tenses. Whenever you find yourself shifting to the present tense, go back and rewrite it in the past tense. 

5. There needs to be some description—not paragraph-long descriptions, but these have to exist. Like you should briefly describe the hall where they held the ceremony, and lace the physical description of your character in between their actions. Like, "She walked over to the pole that held the roof and put her leg around it and twirled."—"She sashayed over to a pole, her long, golden hair undulating past her shoulders, and when she reached it, grabbed it with a hand and turned back to give me a little wink." I got an idea of what their dresses look like, but not their features—so it's important that you place more emphasis on the latter. 

There were some parts that had me rolling my eyes (like when she almost got a heart attack from seeing her mate—whilst he didn't even notice she was there. I think if mates have such a strong connection with one another, I think it needs to be reciprocated by the male as well) but there were other parts that had me either giggling (how the werewolves have a Teen Wolf magazine), or concerned with the character (like when her mate knocked her out with chloroform. What's up with that? He's crazy.) The book is only at its beginning stages, a lot of editing needs to be done to not make this fall into the cliché pile, but there are moments where it really shines. Especially when it comes to the one-liners or even the character's own inner musings.

Writing Style:

There were some grammatical and punctuational mistakes, and at times these took me out of the writing, but during others, they could just be glossed over. The main thing I noticed was how you had dependent clauses (which express an incomplete thought) standing alone as sentences such as "Always getting what he wanted"/ "Worshipped Satan". I know that this was done to place emphasis on the phrases (and you can get away with it sometimes) but because it was overdone, it became too obvious not to ignore. 

There was also some redundancy, such as "Angela was never quiet. She had a loud mouth. Never quiet. Of course, since she had a loud mouth, [...]". The paragraph just went in circles—these are things that can be hard to catch unless you go back and re-read it, so I suggest that you watch out for those as well. There are obviously some clichés, the ones that come with the genre itself (protagonist's mate being the alpha of another pack, protagonist losing a parent, protagonist having sick powers, etc.) but as long as you add depth to these and don't rely on them to make your story, there shouldn't be an issue. Everyone loves a good cliché, as long as it's done well.

There was sentence variety, but at the vocabulary was a little on the simplistic side at times—causing the aforementioned repetition of words, etc. I don't think you employed figurative/emotive language into your story, which is why the writing seemed simple. Some of these things can only be developed through writing and reading about these, but figurative language (similes, metaphors, onomatopeias, allusions, etc.) help add  color to your writing.

Finally, make sure not to over-format your writing. You don't have to underline and bold to show that it's Angie speaking, instead of Dahlia's thoughts. Dahlia's thoughts can be in italics while Angie can be in italicized quotes. Bold is just jarring to the eye. 

Characters:

Dahlia—The protagonist. She lost her mother not too long ago, but has a loving werewolf family, so the loss isn't as great as it would have been if the mother had been the only person she could rely on. Nobody knows how she died, though, and I suppose we will find out about this later on in the story. 

What I liked about Dahlia as a protagonist is how genuine she is. Like she didn't come across as bitchy or superficial to me, just like a normal teenage girl, I guess. She was funny, a little over-dramatic at times, but despite being a werewolf, didn't revolve her life around finding a mate. I really hate when that happens in the genre—people forget that werewolves are both human and animal. While an animal just acts on instinct (eat, sleep, poop, mate, repeat), human beings do that and beyond. I'm still a little concerned about that weird combination of five different supernatural creatures—I'm hoping that it doesn't turn out to be a complete mess.

I was also confused about why her wolf, Angie, didn't come out when Dahlia saw her mate. I think that would've been a good time for her to come out, instead, she made her appearance in the changing room. 

Maya—The bubbly friend that always wants to have fun. But she can reel it in when Dahlia starts to be annoyed by it. 

Peyton—She was like a second Maya, and I'm unsure about why you decided to have her take Maya's place in the second chapter. Their personalities are eerily similar, even though Peyton seems to be a lot older than the two girls.

Shadow Knight—Dahlia's mate, but also sounds like a serial killer. I only got to the end of the second chapter, but that cliffhanger had me thinking that he's going to do something bad to her. Where the hell did he get the chloroform from? Also, he wasn't exactly looking for her in the chapter—he seemed to be pretty distracted by those around him. I would've believed that he was looking for Dahlia had he actually approached her in the ballroom.

Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 6.5

As of now, Luna is only a breath away from being a seven. I decided to give it a 6.5 because it's better than a six, but not quite a seven. It's only a first draft, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done—with regards to the behaviour of the characters in certain parts, descriptions, the blurb, grammar/punctuation etc.—but I think what you have as of now is pretty engaging already. The werewolf genre is infamous for its terrible clichés, so it's important you don't rely on these to make your story. The foundations for a good story are there, you just have to build on them.

Good luck!