Author: FeministWitch_13

Cover: 

Blurb: 

"𝖂𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝕸𝖞𝖗𝖊𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖘, 𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗𝖞𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖊 𝖓𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖊." 

Grace Carter has always been a wild girl. 

Maybe because extraordinary circumstances create extraordinary people. And Myrefalls - a secluded town blessed and cursed with a secret living among its forest - is about as extraordinary as things can get. 

However, everything changes when a deadly curse befalls the town and Grace's past comes back to haunt her. Now, along with the charming outsider Ryder and the mysterious loner Quinn, she has to embark on a dangerous quest, uncovering buried truths and blood-stained lies on the way. 

On the other side of the tale, deep inside the towering trees and wild streams of the forest, revolutions are sparking. No one is trustworthy, nowhere is safe. The only thing they know is that there's one girl out fighting for the enemy and she, like all things wonderful, must be destroyed. 

Four heroes, two sides and endless secrets. When you don't know who's the real villain, who do you fight?

Title:

Your title gives me Gaelic mythology vibes. The Otherworld is such a prominent figure in Celtic mythology and seeing your title alone made me excited to read your story, so kudos on that one! 

Cover:

The red-haired girl in the green dress with the sword, plus the title style, likewise gives me the Celtic vibes, so I'm loving it. Critique-wise, I would like your author name to be lower than the last swirl on the R in WORLD because it makes it look squished. Other than that, I love it!

Blurb:

Finally a blurb that is the right length... *sobs happily* I honestly really enjoyed your blurb and don't have a whole lot to say about it, which is a rarity. I rarely find blurbs (especially on Wattpad) that satisfy me. That said, I'm going to get detail-picky about it because it is already really good, but it could be better.

For instance, the first line, "Welcome to Myrefalls, welcome to our fairytale nightmare," is a bit repetitive. Besides the fact the font is almost unreadable, you could shorten it to just say "Welcome to Myrefalls, our fairytale nightmare." It's shorter, concise, and straight to the point with still having that direct, chilling effect.

You need a comma after Myrefalls in the fourth paragraph. Maybe also have some details about the curse and how Grace's past comes back to haunt her so it's not so vague and fall into the cliché "something happened, there's a curse, we need to fix it" trope. It's good, but it could be better.

I love the parallelism as well, it gives a nice marching effect which really helps your blurb. But I'm curious as to who the "they" is. Maybe give more details or state who they are so it's not just some mysterious enemy that Grace has to fight.

Also, it's considered unprofessional to end a blurb with a question. Try and see if you can reword it so it gives the same impact without ending like a question.

One last thing. I'd like to see how the title of the book is reflected in the blurb. Because that felt lacking, and it bothers me for some reason. xD Maybe give a clear hint to it so it doesn't feel so distant in the blurb.

Side Note:

It's a pet-peeve for many readers to be dumped with a playlist and character aesthetics from the beginning when we haven't even had time to properly invest in your story. Try saving those for the end.

Prologue:

Opening line. Passive voice. Please fix. It's a big turn-off. Maybe change it to something like "She saw her first dead body when she was ten" or something along those lines. The way it is right now is way too passive and destroys your story's opening.

General thoughts would be, while you do well on the descriptions, many times you come close to being over-descriptive and that does more harm to your story than good. Try to cut back on the descriptions, make them effective to more than just setting the scene. They can help with action and pacing as well.

I have some questions about the plot which could be answered in the story. For instance, you brush over why Grace feels different than everyone else without giving a clear answer. I liked how sweet she is to James and the part with the faery.

But there are some places where your story just feels too telling instead of showing, and this causes your book to drag instead of flowing as well as it should. Cut unnecessary sections or try to work them into the plot so that it keeps moving instead of stopping every few sections to explain or describe. It needs to breathe and it's not quite there yet.

However, I loved the ending line. There are times when your story does have excellent lines, but it's not as often as it should be. Your prologue has a lot of potential and I'd encourage you to push harder to fully reach it.

Chapter 1:

There were two major things that stuck out to me in a bad way in this chapter. First is your improper use of dialogue tags. When using these tags to describe how someone's talking, they shouldn't be capitalized. For instance,

"Hello, darling, want some beads?" Yelled the old lady selling feathers, grass and other worthless things.

This should really be,

"Hello darling, want some beads?" yelled the old lady selling feathers, grass, and other worthless things.

And later on,

"Mom, I'm home." She called out, kicking her shoes off.

Should be

"Mom, I'm home," she called out, kicking her shoes off.

If it's an action tag, then yes, it should be its own sentence, but dialogue tags are different.

The second thing was your descriptions of people. When you describe Grace, you're using the mirror tactic, which is overused and is not considered professional. It's too much telling. Introduce these details about Grace as you go along in the story. For example, you could say in the beginning something about her dress while she and James are going through the marketplace. Maybe Grace puts her hair up with the cotton scrunchie. Maybe she licks her lips and tastes sugary sour lemonade. Either way, please don't use the mirror tactic. It destroys what could be a powerful description.

With the description of the outsider, your focus seemed to be more on creating a sensuously-attractive dude than describing a character that might be important later on. If you're going to describe him all at once, change your focus. Unless you're writing a plain romance novel, just going for attractiveness isn't going to quite meet the mark for a character description. Make him sound more natural and not some perfect-looks guy, maybe give him something odd about his appearance that makes him really stand out to Grace and therefore stick out to the reader that he's important.

My other issue was that while your descriptions of the marketplace really brought the scene to life (great job on that one!) there were instances where, for example with the shrine being destroyed, it didn't fit. You didn't go into enough detail about it. You introduced the problem and then jumped to the next part. If it's important, than you need to spend more time with it. If this is the event that causes the plot to really start moving, it needs more attention. Maybe Grace and James can go investigate it instead of being just "oh well" and worry about it later. It doesn't feel natural.

Good points would be your description of setting. Those are always very realistic to me and I have no trouble seeing them in my head. I also like your dialogue and aside from the grammatical issues, it's very natural and breathes nicely. I just would encourage you to watch your character description and especially your characterization. I know this is only the first chapter after the prologue, but your characters need more depth. Showing more emotion from them, especially with the scene of the shrine or Ryder's introduction, would really bring them more to life.

Chapter 2:

This chapter seemed more solid in terms of plot and pacing. It flowed a lot more naturally than the prologue and first chapter, and I was reading too fast to really pick at any of the capitalized dialogue tags. But since I mentioned that in the previous chapter, just keep it in mind. ;)

I was super confused as to why Ryder was throwing rocks at Grace's window. Maybe I missed something when reading the end of the previous one, but it felt out of place. I would like a clearer description about why he was there in the first place. Also, if it's dark, how come Grace and Ryder are able to see colors so clearly? I found that a bit unrealistic, unless maybe you could mention there's a full moon or something. Else the colors wouldn't really show what they were. And Grace pulling out a full fancy outfit was a bit unreal. xD Maybe make it more generic or say she always wears fancy clothes or something, because that also didn't make sense.

Quinn feels really shallow. I'd like more depth with her. You mentioned that she seems to hate the faery folk and while I don't think it's necessary to really say why she hates them quite yet, I'd like to see more showing of how she hates them. Maybe it's the way she speaks of them or her body language as they begin to emerge from the lake thingy. Either way, I'd like to see more from her. 

Ryder seems to be the oblivious "outsider" who doesn't understand how things work in Myrefalls, but I would like to see more depth from him as well besides just "what the heck is going on here? Why is this place so weird???" kind of stuff. Maybe show why he's confused more than just stating he's out of place. 

But once again, great job on the ending line. Really sets the pace and feel for the rest of your story. 

Overall thoughts:

You have a very interesting story and it shows a lot of potential. I think your greatest strength is your description settings and your dialogue. Aside from grammatical errors in dialogue tags, your dialogue feels very natural and I enjoy reading it. A lot of books on Wattpad sadly have stilted dialogue, but yours was realistic for the most part. Your descriptions of settings were also well done and I could easily picture the scenes you were trying to create. My one suggestion is to always think of all five senses when describing. It will help your settings come even more to life. 

My biggest issue with your story was your characters. Your descriptions of them didn't feel natural and didn't flow as well as they could have. I would encourage you to use character descriptions as something that helps your plot, not stopping it to show what so-and-so looks like before moving on. It's slightly more challenging, but would make your story so much stronger. I also feel that your characterization, or showing your characters' emotions, was also a weak spot. (I also struggle with this, so I feel you!) Try to show how a character is thinking or feeling through body language or the way they speak, or if it's Grace, how she thinks. It brings so much more to your story. 

In closing, I just want to say that I actually really really enjoyed getting to read some of your story and I wish you all the best with it. I went a lot more in depth in this review than I do normally because I enjoyed it so much and recognize its potential and want to encourage you to work to reach it. And who knows, maybe one of these days when I have more time I'll continue reading it. ;) Good job!