Again_if_only

Rating: B

Let's start off with what I like. I like your main character. She's thoughtful and constantly self evaluating. She lingers on thoughts and thinks just about everything. It's a constant, pitiful battle within her that rages between what she wants and what she must do. I like that.

That also seems to follow your current writing style, which for certain reasons are good and bad. I'll get into that later further down, because that style clashes with the character you're writing. I'm not attacking your writing style, but you're character, actually. Again, I'll get to this further down.

So I'll discuss hook first, because there is none.

All I see for the first two paragraphs, the two most important paragraphs in a book, is a description of her waking up and opening her eyes. Now be warned for this single paragraph of review, because for this type of stuff I do not hold back. I have read too many, far too many openings and "hooks" of books which begin with this cliche. The waking up cliche, no matter how well or uniquely you use it, is something to stay away from. It's like a red flag telling me your book isn't special, which I know and which you know is not true because both of us read your first chapter. There is literally an infinite amount of ways to open up a book; an infinite amount of ways to begin your story and hook in the reader. I don't like using the word hook, but I use it for lack of a better term. In your first few paragraphs you want to offer something different, genuine, and original. I'm not completely against cliches, since you can make them yours and you can make then original as you progress through the story, but it's awfully hard to do that with the waking-up-beginning-of-book-cliche.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest. Let's begin.

Let me quickly talk about imagery. I'll cut to the chase. your book lacks it. Your prose mostly consists of thoughts and actions in between dialogue. You'll need more imagery to better establish the setting, atmosphere, and sensations if you want to better ground the reader in your story. It seems that wattpad writers hate imagery because I never see it. There's rarely a thing called too much imagery, so go nuts!

Now onto other things. As I mentioned above, I like your main character.

However,

you mentioned in the description that she is a former cadet. She would, by training and mentality, have much more control and self discipline. This paragraph is related to your writing style. Now, I'm not saying that she wouldn't be taken away by some sort of love and one night stand. While it's unlikely, I'm not saying that part is impossible. What I'm saying is, in regard to the constant battle within her of temptation and duty, she would have (especially at the start of this romance) a lot more self control and self discipline. It comes when you are, or once were, an army cadet. And even if she lost all of that self discipline and self control, then she would at least regard herself in a bad light because she's a pale comparison to what she once was.

I warned you in the comments when I saw those broken ellipses! Prepare yourself.

An ellipses is a dot dot dot (...) that is used to show a trailing off of dialogue or thought. It should solely be represented as the dot dot dot (...), unless it is at the end of a sentence. Then, it will have an extra period (or punctuating mark) to show the punctuation after the trailing off. Examples:

"You're supposed to punctuate after an ellipses...."

"I think you're supposed to punctuate after an ellipses...?"

What you're not supposed to do (I see this in wattpad WAY too much) is use it so casually, commonly, and many in the same sentence. You're also not supposed to give it more than 3 dots unless it's punctuating, and you're not supposed to ever give it less than 3 dots. There's my rant.

Let me quickly talk about dialogue format and grammar. It's okay, this won't be a lecture like last time. Here's a quick example to a common error I saw in your chapter:

"Yes," he said.

instead of

"Yes." he said.

Notice the difference? That's the jist of what you gotta do. Here's a quick video to help.

https://youtu.be/VfpPcoPo3zU

I don't know if that shows up or not because wattpad copy and paste is broken and stupid half the time because they're paranoid. If it doesn't, just search up Megan Panek - Formatting dialogue correctly.

So, that's all I really have to say. I liked your chapter. Your flow and style is pretty good, even if I had some problems before in its relation to the character. However, there are easy fixes to get around that. I hope you have success with your book and I hope beyond everything else you keep writing because that's the most important thing a writer can do. Good luck with everything and thank you for coming to my review shop!