honeydixon

Rating: A-

My favorite thing was the excellent opening. You stretch it on for a while until you finally reveal that they killed someone, and you do this subtly and through dialogue. Very well done. The tone and the plot twists are also excellent.

The VERY first thing I notice was the length. Holy guacamole. I'm no stranger to reviewing long stuff but please do keep in mind that most of your audience will be on phones and this will seem like an endless first chapter to them, which will make them more likely to quit or stop reading. It would be a good idea to break this up into several chapters instead of keeping it all one. However, for such a long chapter I enjoyed it more than most first chapters of other books. However, not everyone is required to read it through to the end. Lots will see it as daunting, so that's something to look out for.

The second thing I noticed was the lack of show don't tell. You said they were "feeling scared." Like, that's great and all, but I don't believe you. For me to believe they're scared you'll have to show me the nervous glances around them, the hushed whispers, the panicked speech. You'll have to show me the stutter, the stumbling, and the anticipation. 

Make sure to always write "toward" and "forward" rather than "towards" and "forwards."

I also noticed you have a tendency to skew up your descriptive words and general sentences. I would recommend a line editor if this weren't so easy to learn yourself. Ways to do this are to go onto YouTube and search for examples, generally read so you can come across them, and to give a couple google searches. there are hundreds of thousands of websites and pages dedicated to grammar use, so I do heavily recommend you use at least one of the ways I suggested to fix this. As always, not a big deal, but it also is a big deal since your story, in actuality, is just a bunch of black lines on white background.

You seem to have your plot and characters all figured out. It reads like a proper crime genre, so I won't lay down any criticism on the plot or the tone of it since I have none. This is a relatively short review for a long chapter, but I hope you know what you have to do to improve your chapter and book.

You obviously are no stranger to writing this genre, but do make sure to make the necessary edits. I wrote in your book in one of the comment sections that students would never be in their parent's class if their parent was a teacher. This goes for elementary, middle school, high school, and college education. It's a general and universal rule that is never broken. This'll be the hardest to fix considering you already started your story with this plot hole, but it is one of the most important to fix, since a plot hole in this genre is fatal. 

Good work and good luck with your story! Thank you for applying and I wish you well in your journey as a writer.