Title: The Popular
By: DhanishthaG
Genre: Teen Fiction
Status: On-going
Score: 2.4/5

REVIEW:

Cover:

I honestly don't know what to say about it. I mean, from afar, the cover looks pretty good but it is not related to story(up till now).

Description:

Your description looks pretty interesting but to be honest, I was disappointed when till eight chapters, the plot did not move.

Plot:

I don't know what your plot is. I have absolutely NO IDEA! I don't want to be harsh, or cruel but seriously, your plot has absolutely nothing. I have read all of the eight chapters that you have posted and for FOUR chapters, all I leant is about the new house you shifted in and the next TWO chapters, it was all about your first day at college with nothing unusual.

Let me be honest with you, readers don't care about these things. Not at all. They tend to skip these parts just to jump straight to the action. We don't care about the large LED tv in your house unless it is used to display some important news. We don't care about the glass table between your two sofa unless someone fell on it and got injured. We don't care about your wooden kitchen or your new cutlery unless it becomes of some use. We don't care about how your rooms look like. We don't care about your professor's features and physique unless you start crushing on them. We don't care how your new university looks like, how was your class room, what did you do. WE JUST DON'T FREAKING CARE!

So don't spend FOUR chapters on these things. Yes, telling about the places is kinda necessary but telling about them in SO MUCH DETAIL is completely unnecessary. Because readers, specially Wattpad readers, like action, drama or the beginning of something terrible. If you explain things so much, your story would just become boring and no one would read it. I'm sorry it's harsh but I don't know how else to say it.

Instead of explaining all these things, you could simply tell that:

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

"My new house was just like the ones from my dreams. A fully furnished, airy living room that overlooked the garden with finely trimmed grass. The kitchen, as per my aunt's wish, was made of wooden. She was just setting the brand new cutlery she bought so fondly with not so-happy-uncle who practically had a heart attack seeing the prices.

Passing from the library filled with all the new and old books of uncle, and the master room of uncle and aunt, I rushed to see my room once again. Just as I opened the door, merriness filled me in. Seeing the calm, grey toned-walls lined with my favourite quotes, I sat on the fluffy bed. I jumped on it and giggling, I fell on the daffodil pillows and cushions. It was all perfect. For a moment, I thought shifting here would be difficult but seeing my room, I was confident I'll survive.

"Yo!" Kyle, my cousin, with a loud kick on my door, entered. His eyes scanned the room before they landed on me. "My room is better."

I rolled my eyes. "We both have same rooms, idiot."

"Yeah but still. Your room is so girlish. Bet you'll be staying here all the time. Who am I kidding? You stayed in your previous room all the time too."

"Yeah. This is heaven." Only if my parents were here with me too.

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

This is not the best replacement, but a little better.

So, what we learned from up there?
🕸 Madeline has shifted into a new house.
🕸 She lives with her uncle and aunt.
🕸She loved her new house.
🕸 She loved her new room.
🕸 Kyle's room is the same except it is boyish. Obviously.
🕸 Kyle is her cousin.
🕸 She is an introvert. (From Kyle's dialogue)
🕸 She misses her parents who are not with her anymore.

See? Just two paragraphs and a couple of dialogues have taught us so much.

We don't need those five chapters no matter how short they are. And just like this, you can tell about the university too.

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

"Sitting in Kyle's car, my hands shook out of nervousness. Kyle, seeing my shaky hands, increased the volume of his favourite song that I had heard at least a hundred times and saying I hated it would be an understatement. I lowered it but he increased it again. "What?" He asked annoyingly, a sheepish grin on his lips.

"Can't you see I'm nervous here?"

"Why would you be? There's nothing to be nervous about. After a week, you'd be making excuses to not go."

"Excuse me, I'm not like you." He has been studying for two years, how would be understand my nervousness.

"Yeah, I'm much better."

I rolled may eyes. "I just want to make good first kimpression, you know."

"Oh, you would, kiddo. Don't worry."

I just blew a breath and stared ahead. Soon, the road swirled in a lake and all I imagined were my parents drowning in the lake, screaming, begging for one more breath—one more day. Tears glistened my eyes and for Kyle to not notice, I turned my head and looked out the window. Oh, if only they didn't go out that night. Mom said seventh is their lucky number. Then how would the day of their seventh marriage anniversary became the day of their death?

When the car screeched to a halt and Kyle turned around to pick up his bag from backseat, I instantly wiped away the tears as I stared at the building of the university. I pushed out the thought for my parents to be with me for i didn't want to cry anymore. Like a switch, my emotions were flickered from remorse to nervousness.

I followed him in the massive building of the University of Bristol, staying behind him.

"You don't really have to worry. This is a chill place."

"Yeah," I shifted my bag to my other shoulder. "Says the one who will be leaving in just a week leaving me here alone." Since Kyle is studying Management with Study Abroad, he will be going abroad for the third year of his course.

"Aww ... little sistie would miss his big brother?" When I deadpanned, he just chuckled and ruffled my hair, "don't worry kiddo, we'll both be together soon." That is what I hope become true. Even if uncle and aunt has allowed and supported me to pick up the same course, I still am not so sure with my fate.

After fifteen minutes of squirming under the gases of other people and behind my brother, he finally left me with my timetable in my hand.

My hands shook again but I braced myself and looked for class. As I reached the stairs, I bumped into someone. "Oh my, I am so sorry." I said ...

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

Not the best clean up, but I guess you have gotten the idea.

I would suggest you to explain her parents' death in bits and pieces rather than dumping all the info at us. If you do, we will we like:

If you explain bit by bit, we would be able to learn about Madeline's emotions and how she survived through all the trauma more easily.

If you won't then it would become hard for readers to continue. Like I said umpteenth time before, we don't care. We seriously don't. Your story is too boring with all these descriptions because they are useless. Tell me, what purpose do they serve in your story? You should know that each and every description, dialogue, character and even word, should be used to serve the purpose.

Now you might say that readers care about these things. Like in Harry Potter, JK. Rowling explained so much. Yes, she did. I completely agree with you but because her world was completely different from us. Now if she'd say just, 'Harry sat in the dining hall' or 'he saw Hogwarts from afar' won't let readers know what the hell is Hogwarts until it is explained. Because that is total different. No one had ever been to Hogwarts. No one knew how would it look like. So, to paint the picture, those descriptions are necessary.

But in your case, they are not. We already know how a house looks like, or how the university might be. We don't need four chapters to know how is the house or how is the university. Nor do we want or need to know how her first day at her college went if it was just ordinary.  Like, seriously, what really happened on her first day?

🕸She sits in her class
🕸she finds a new girl
🕸the professor comes who is oddly handsome
🕸he asks the new students to introduce themselves
🕸she goes and introduces
🕸she comes back
🕸and the same cycle♻️ repeats itself

Don't do it. Please, don't. Your readers would leave your story and lose I Teresa like I did.

Characters:

Again, I don't know much about your characters since they were not discussed much. All I can understand Madeline(from the things you told us) is that she is an introvert and that she does not like making friends; a basic trait of an introvert. So, up till now, she is fine.

But Kyle, I don't like him. He is older than her so he should behave mature. I know it is just a small scene but it bothered me. Like when he asked Madeline to cover his eyes and describe him the room. I mean a. You don't see the rooms for the first time because when you were buying the furniture, you would've obviously seen the rooms to know what would suit the rooms and what size would fit so, seeing the rooms for the first time, is pretty er ... childish. And b. You know your sister, you know siblings usually are not serious so when he slipped down to her legs because he was so scared his room might be exactly how Madeline explained, was also childish. I also know he might be joking too but from Madeline's perspective, it did not seem like one.

So, yeah, I think you can work on him because siblings relation is not uniform; if they joke with each other, they will not always joke with each other and vice versa. The sibling bond serve a pretty good purpose in your story so you need to understand the fragility of it and know the limitations too to let the readers be engaged.

Her uncle and aunt are alright. You can still work on them too though. Like you can make the uncle very miser and the aunt a lover of shopping. In this way, your book would have some good humour as well.

Grammar:

You need to work on your grammar a lot. Especially, the past and present tenses. At some points, I see you have used present tense and some past. So work on it. Make sure that you keep tenses consistent. If you won't then if will create confusion for readers. At times, your readers would be like:

Your punctuation marks also need to be understood properly.

In your Chapter 5,

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

"Good morning sweetie", Uncle max greeted me as as I was in their line of vision. "Good morning!!!", I greeted him back.

⚫️🔷🔶🔷⚫️

This is the best line to highlight your major grammatical errors.

First, let's try to clean it up a little:

"Good morning, sweetie." Uncle max greeted me just as I entered the kitchen.

"Good morning." I greeted him back.

I know, I changed it a lot because I needed to. I don't really want to raise a controversial topic by inserting my periods and commas before the end of speech marks but I did so because we usually use "Good Morning" as a complete sentence hence, my ending it with a period or full stop (.) that is why I did what I did. Also, when you call someone, like "sweetie", "honey", "love" or whatever, the name is usually followed by a comma.

Example: "Good morning, sweetie."

Next is your repetitive use of punctuation and words.
From your Chapter 5:

▫️🔳▫️

"Where is Kyle??"

"Where do you think he is???"

"Still sleeping!!!"

"Just woke up .." humph....humph.
What will I do with him??
▫️🔳▫️

We don't need so many exclamation, question marks and dots. We can understand quite well when you use only one exclamation mark or one question mark. Because in professional English, these things do not look well. It is also better is you use only three dots.

Note: you can use this repetitions in the text messages between one character to another.

Also, I would like you to give each character their own paragraph even if they are thinking And try not to use the words "humph" so much especially when you want to tell us the character is thinking. It comes off quite unprofessional.

Writing style:

Since you have just started, it will take time for your writing style to be developed so I won't say anything on that.

Quality:

I'd say to work on it more because you end your chapters at an ordinary line. Nothing special to depeoct it is the end of the chapter or to let readers know that the next chapter would be exciting. You can use some cliffhangers to let them wait eagerly for your next chapter.

(I know it is not quite necessary but I'd say that you use graphics a little less. It is good if you clear our concepts using the pictures of the house but using them to tell us about what watch she wore or what car she wore, or how her breakfast looked, well, I think it is not really necessary.)

Conclusion:

I think your story could come out good if you work on the things stated above. I hope my review did not disappoint you and discouraged you since your are a beginner writer and English is not your native language but we all start from somewhere so don't worry. Just read a lot and write a lot.

_______
Huz