Only Fire

Author:
Reviewer: CoffeeAndSilverInk
Author: FantasticalChaos

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SYNOPSIS

Ember may appear to be a typical outcast high school senior, always sitting alone and avoiding any interaction. However, beneath her detached exterior lay fiery feathers, yearning to break free from its confining flesh.
From the moment a phoenix is born, it is bestowed with a purpose. However, when she realizes that her purpose binds her to the relentless undead vampire, Zane, she faces the daunting challenge of evading his icy grip. Despite being natural enemies, their connection intensifies the more they are exposed to each other's contrasting elements.
Knowing the dangers, Ember realizes her choice has consequences beyond herself. Will she stay, letting the ice extinguish her fiery walls, or run and save those involved from being burnt?

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Note: The following review is written by someone with no real writing credentials (uni degrees and anything of sorts), only the experience of many years within the wattpadian writing world and having written over 50 reviews in the past 3 years. Please note that reviews are subjective and not law, that they're opinions and should be taken with a pinch of salt. If the following review in any way offends you, please note that that is not the goal and it is one person's view of your story. You are entitled to agree or disagree with the raised points. If you are hurt and need to leave hate comments to feel validated, please don't. The reviewer doesn't care.

Title and Cover: The title makes sense to the story, but I don't find it particularly appealing. From the blurb and what I've read, the focus of the book seems to be romance, so I would go for a more Romance-y title.

The cover involves important elements from the story, but the title blends with the main image. Its greyish tone makes it harder to spot and the author is also easy to miss. I think a different font and having both textual elements in white would improve the readability. The winner sticker could also be better placed.

For the winner sticker, put it round instead of square shaped (it's easy to do on Canva) and lower its position just enough to not touch the corner. If that doesn't look better, try finding a likeable spot.

Blurb: The main character is introduced in a fairly good way, although she could be further explored. Zane is introduced as what he is to her and not as an individual character, and the blurb would be more interesting if the readers got a peek of who he is, instead of only the contrast.

The main conflict is not well explained. The romantic part is implied, but not truly told, and the most important part of the blurb is clearly stating the main conflict. It's mentioned that Ember makes a choice but without saying what the choice is, and that paragraph could be the stakes part. But how can you have high stakes when the conflict isn't properly explained?

I suggest trying to reword it and working on the ending.

Plot/Flow: The opening was good and showed Ember's world and how it works to us. Her lives and who she is are both later further explained and link perfectly to the opening. But then again, it doesn't mention conflict and it may not spark interest.

The conflict could be stated in chapter one, and yet it is not. In fact, her purpose is explained much later. I'm counting her Phoenix life's mission as the purpose, the main conflict that will link her to Zane.

Because the blurb is vague about it, I cannot say for sure if the conflict there implied would be her Phoenix life's mission to help Mr. Schwartz, or simply the school project that is forcing her and Zane to work together. If it's the latter, it's unoriginal and not really interesting. If it's the first, it should be stated during her initial rant about her lives and the whole phoenix lore.

The world building is good and well explained, although at times seems like inf-dumping. The phoenix lore and "Remember" both work well together and give depth to the character concept.

However, there seems to be an inconsistency when it comes to the way others perceive her. It is overstated how she is fire and draws everyone to her, how people stare because even if they don't know how she is different, they were drawn to look at her. Then, it is explained that Lucy doesn't see how she is different because humans simply don't know. How can it be both?

Aside from that, their deal seemed unnecessary. It truly seemed she was just accepting the phone to make him less sad, which doesn't make much sense. It would make a lot more sense if she felt strongly about his touch and really wanted him to stay away from her physically. Maybe she did, but if she does, it could be explored.

They already like each other and that is very obvious. They don't know it but the way Ember describes his reactions and the way she feels towards him have a romantic undertone. That was well portrayed.

Pace wise, it is slow. Because there's a lot of worldbuilding, but specifically, because the worldbuilding explanations become repetitive and redundant at a certain point, each chapter is mostly descriptive rants about Ember and other creatures instead of action. Each chapter has 2 or 3 important scenes that could be further explored (by focusing on other parts of the story, such as characterization other than creature wise, physics and location descriptions,...) while avoiding the repetition of already stated themes.

Descriptions: There weren't a lot of descriptions. Descriptions are the soul of a book, paint the scene in readers' minds and make the writing smoother and nicer to read. That said, "emerald circle" is one of those ways to avoid saying the word "eye" and it only works in purple writing, in my opinion. They say "said is not dead", but "eye" is not dead either.

I suggest working on those when editing.

Characterization: Ember's personality confuses me. She's first introduced as this phoenix that draws attention and she often mentions quotes that call for pride and such, but then she acts the exact opposite. Sure, she wants to not get attached and go about her most recent life without being noticed, so she acts antisocial and outcast-y on purpose. The thing is, I don't think it's on purpose at all. That truly seems to be her actual personality.

Despite all of that, her inner dialogue often makes her selfless, since she chose a life without attachments so no one would lose her as a friend. Her usual quotes about pitying Lucy or other humans for not knowing who she or the vamps were also makes her prideful and not real pity.

Zane is cold, as stated many times. Lucy also calls him sweet, in contrast to him slamming his books on Ember's desk. He doesn't show much emotion unless he is with Ember, to which he shows interest and compassion.

Lucy's whole character is being vain and liking boys. Is she supposed to be the Caroline of the book? If so, it'd be nice that she has a development.

Writing: The wording throughout the story is good, although it could be more descriptive. It could also be more fluid.

Some information seems to just be plastered there when it could be narrated in a smoother way into the text. I mean this particularly towards the world building part.

The myths about vampires in chapter 1, for example, can be in a single paragraph instead of stretched out.

The story becomes redundant when there are many repetitions of certain information, such as world building. For this, my suggestion is keeping in mind "Show, don't tell" while editing. There is also repetition of the word icy when talking about Zane, which could be avoided by using synonyms.

Don't randomly introduce characters by name after introducing them in a nameless way because readers won't know who they are. There are also a few typos and dialogue quotes issues, but nothing a reread cannot spot. Also, blond is for boy and blonde is for girl, just as brunet is for boy and brunette is fro girl.

Chapter 1 begins with the word "Rain", which is unnecessary as the rest of the paragraph already implies it's raining in a more descriptive way. The quote where she tells him not to touch her again all caps, word by word, has the vocative "icicle" separated in a way that makes the yelling die out. The all caps, word by word format should be kept even then.

In chapter 3, she calls herself a racoon and later someone else does too. It's weird that they called her the exact same thing she thought about herself.

Overall enjoyment: Despite being slow paced, I enjoyed the main characters' small interactions. The teenage drama actually reads like The Vampire Diaries in my opinion.

I only read the first 5 chapters, so I only touched the surface level, but I think it's a good story with lots of potential. I hope I could help pointing out where to edit.
Good luck with your future projects and thank you for choosing me as your reviewer.