Author: @readingkeyheart

Reviewer: hallonn23

Genre: Romance

Summary:

Vera has lost yet another significant person in her life - her Sister.

At this point, she's convinced that life has nothing to offer other than sadness and despair.

That is, until something very peculiar replaces the grief stricken life she led so far.

The fictional dreamy boy Vera and her Sister conjured in the pages of a book has now shown himself to be real after Vera fills in the last information they hadn't put before.

She's gone, he's here.

And if that isn't strange enough, it's revealed that Vera is the sole person able to see him.

Is it Vera's fate to fall in love with this man or does her fate lie in fulfilling the alarming promise made to her Sister?

And what about him? Is he a visionary illusion or here to stay?

Cover: Hey, so I usually like to start with the cover of the book. This is the first thing your readers will see, so it needs to be effective in pulling them in.

Your cover looks really good. I can see you took your time to really try and polish it up. I love the fonts you chose. They are easy to read; however, that is were the good news ends for me in regards to reviewing the cover. Subtracting points is always my least favorite thing to do, but I'm really just trying to help you improve. As always, remember this is just the opinion of one person.

While the fonts you choose are clear and easy to read, I still think you shouldn't have so many spaces in the word "your." It kind of throws off the entire title and makes it a little harder to read. (-0.5) I also have to say I love how you did the word "eyes" in a different font for effect, but I think you shouldn't have extended it all the way up to the top of the cover. It makes it less clear what the word is to me as a reader. (-0.5)

The colors you choose are basic and pretty much fit the romance genre your book falls under. This is nice, but for me personally, its a lot of pink. I find that nothing in particular stands out on the book or draws me in and makes me want to open it. From the outside, it appears to be just another cliche romance or maybe even chick-lit or teen fiction. There's nothing on the cover that suggests its a romance. (-0.75)

I understand why the girl's eyes are cut/blurred out on the front of the cover, and I believe that is how the cover ties into the title. This was a clever move; however, I think it could be done a bit better or with a different effect. Right now, it makes the cover look very much like it was done by an amateur and even airs on the side of childish. (-0.25)

The cover could match more to the blurb. You mention in the blurb how she can't feel anything but sadness and dispair, but the cover doesn't show any darkness whatsoever. (-0.5)

So, I'm going to leave your cover with a score of 7.5/10.

Summary/Blurb:

Your summary/blurb is a great length in my opinion. It's not too short, but it's not too long either. You give yourself enough space to really hook your readers and force them to open the book, but you don't overdo it by adding a lot of unnecessary words or clutter. Great job! You also hook me with the first sentence because I'm curious as to what other significant people Vera has lost in her life other than her sister.

I do have to say that it could be improved. The phrasing throughout the entire thing is quite odd in my opinion. I had to re-read a few of the sentences which made it sound choppy. (-0.5)

You bounce around quite a bit throughout the blurb. It doesn't flow easy just like the pages of the book should. It does introduce the characters, but you don't give me as a reader any reason to care for them or hate them. Why do I want to open a book and read about the life of someone I don't know or can't relate too? You mention Vera in the beginning, and that's great. You tell me she is faced with sadness, but why should I care? You also immediately jump to her pain and grief being replaced with something peculiar? That's odd phrasing to me. How can it completely replace the feelings she had about the loss of her sister? It just seems unrealistic to me. (-0.5)

I also feel like you could have ended the blurb with a way bigger hook. You didn't up the stakes for the reader. You didn't explain the challenges they will face to be together. You kind of just leave us with a let down...  It makes me wonder if it's going to be another cliche 'love at first sight' things. (-0.75)

Your blurb/summary earned a score of 8.25/10.

Content:

So, let's talk about content, content, and some more content! I want to start off by saying I loved the length of your chapter. It was enough give the readers a taste of your style and welcome them into your story without being so short you cheat them out of content.

You have a very nice style and your writing flowed well in my opinion. You did a great job of showing the emotion Vera was feeling. I could feel the sadness and loneliness you talked about in the summary/blurb. You also were very quick to progress the plot. I can almost see where this is going, but alas it's only the first chapter.

So, here are some things I noticed. While your writing flowed well, there were definitely instances where the word choice was odd and your grammar wasn't the best. A few of the pieces of dialogue had the punctuation done incorrectly and it was a little bit of a turn off. Readers don't like to start a story littered with errors. I'd spend some time cleaning up this first chapter. (-0.5)

I also think that your plot progressed almost two quickly if you're wanting this to be a romance novel instead of a short story. You didn't give the reader enough time to learn more about Vera and spend time with her since the loss of her sister. I don't feel connected to her at all as a reader and you've already progressed the plot so quickly you've already introduced the what I assume to be love interest... Cato. Your main character also seems to be already in love with him and they haven't ever met... I just find it odd and unrealistic. There are people out there who like their cliches, but love at first sight turns a lot of readers off. Vera needs to be her own person with her own dreams and desires first... you can't fall in love if you don't know yourself first? Ya know? I've got to dock some major points because of the fast progression. It just feels to rushed to be pleasurable. You need to develop your characters more to hook your reader. (-1.25).

The whole premise of Cato worries me as well. You've already discussed in the first chapter how perfect Cato is. He's the perfect boyfriend and what not... I don't want to read about someone who is perfect and neither do your readers because it's not realistic. The whole point of the romance genre is for two characters to fall in love and help each other grow and build as individuals along the way. If Cato is already perfect where is the room for growth? And if he doesn't turn out perfect you've already got a plot hole because he was supposed to be perfect. (-0.5) 

I'll give your content a 7.75/10.

Next Steps:

Ah! Yay, we are finally to my favorite part of the review. I get to help you forget about all the negative comments you might have received and focus on how to make those negatives into positives. Remember writing is hard, and takes a lot of practice! Don't let comments bother you, instead, take them and learn from them so you can shove your much improved work back into that person's face with a smile. Lol. Anyway, enough rambling! Let's talk  about putting that elbow grease in to polish that story up nice and shiny!

Let's head over to the community forums and see if we can find a great graphic designer to help bring your story to life at first glance! We want our readers to see our cover and be like wow! That's beautiful. The writing will be beautiful too! There's a lot of graphic designers out there who will give you something great. We want to keep the thing with the eyes because that's an important detail, but we want a more romantic looking cover that will stand out against other books in the romance genre! If you want a designer, search for TheLittleMissShadow. Her cover shop just opened again, and her work is so professional!Let's work on a rewrite of the blurb and focus mainly on Vera since the story is from her POV. We need to convince the reader that Vera is interesting and they need to stick around to see her story. We want a big hook on the end of the blurb to make the reader open the book to our face chapter. Let's find and editor or take some time to edit our content ourself! Get rid of the grammatical errors and clean up the punctuation around the dialogue. We need to make sure our work is at its best for our lovely readers. We want to read something nice and so do they!Let's work on developing Vera's character more. We need her to be her own person before she starts to rely too much on Cato. You want your reader to be very invested in your MC. They need to care about her on a deep level.We also need to find some flaws or rework the plot to find some flaws for Cato. Describing him as the perfect boyfriend is much too cliche and I think it will run readers off. He needs to have a character flaw to make the story realistic. That's the only way the readers will relate to him. Lastly, let's give you a pat on the back for even starting the first chapter of a novel! It can be a daunting task. You deserve credit for all the hard work you've put in and all the hard work you still have to do!

Great job! Thanks for allowing me the honor of reviewing your story. I think with some work you can really make this story shine! If you ever need anything or clarification on something I've said, feel free to contact me. I love to help other writer's improve. I hope my comments were helpful. Keep your head up, and keep writing!

"Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come."

- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

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