Word Count: 1634

Title: Caught Up

Genre: General Fiction

Blurb: A man faces a tough decision when his life catches up to him in prison. Serving a sentence for attempted murder, he tries to free himself from his old life as a gang member in order to save his future. Will he rise to success, or fall back to his old, dangerous ways?

~~~

Starting Points: 30

Cover: Although it doesn't immediately strike me as a professional/orthodox book cover, I do like it. Personally, I think it fits the books theme, setting, and whatnot. No points lost.

Title: It's catchy, and goes to the point of whatever the hell it's referring to. But, I'm guessing it has to do with crime. I'm not a title interpreter because I don't have the time, but I can definitely look at the cover for context clues. Oh yeah, and the tags.

Summary:

- I truly do hate short summaries, but when they cover everything the readers needs to know and pulls them in—I really can't find any fault.

-My only notes are to add the main character's name.

-Otherwise, I want to read on, congrats!

Plot: Dude is in jail after getting involved in shady business, shady people, and bad mistakes. Shit might come back to ruin his life even further.

-I'm ready!

Opening thoughts:

-This should have been in (limited, to be specific) third person. (-3)

-You're starting far too many sentences with "I," and it's tiring to see. (-3)

-Lord, it's still happening, and it's becoming worse. If I took off one point for every time a sentence began with "I," this review would be so easy to end. Stop this nonsense! This is to everyone who thinks writing repetitive/twin sentences are neat. They aren't. It only shows you're amateur. You really need to be creative with your sentence structures people. Even when I'm reading published books I do this. It literally makes my eye twitch. Fix it, Christ! (-3)

Character:

-Sadly, I'm a bit annoyed.

-The writer themselves is Mexican (yo!), out here repping for their fellow Mexicans, and decided to write about her own. Which I really admire, since there's a lot of writers on here who are POC or black who, for some reason, decide to write about white main characters. This may be my personal bias. However, it really annoys me because if you're not going to take the opportunity to write about characters that are never represented correctly in literature (and you have the standpoint to really know how to do it just from your own real experience?), then who the hell will?!

-Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know POC writers shouldn't feel pressured into writing about "their own" (which is quite sad if the author thinks it's "pressuring/forcing"), but you can't complain when all you see is white characters. I'm not going to blame it solely on the POC/Black writers though since they're conditioned into knowing how to write white characters better than POC characters because of the lack of representation. But, that's for another day of, "Lecturing from 'M' of BHR".

-Any way, that wasn't entirely my point and I got off track. My point is, in this context, you're kind of unknowingly promoting the Mexican stereotype. I'm not talking about sombreros, tacos, or the poncho. No, I'm talking about "Ese/Chico" that comes from Compton and is part of a gang. It's like I'm watching a "serious" version of Next Friday.

-I'm not saying writing about this should be completely avoided, because this can be great...if done properly. Just don't lose your character in the ocean of stereotypes that Mexican characters (and Latinx/Hispanic) characters tend to get drowned in.

-Anyway, Ismael came from a broken family, had a shady gang banging past that he wholesomely regrets, poor, and is now paying for it in jail. I'm still intrigued to see where this goes though, so I'm not going to take off points off. I'm feeling generous today.

- I lied. Ismael isn't the best narrator. (-3)

Dialogue:

-Excerpt: "....from each other," She said... (-1)

-Correction: "....from each other," [s]he said...

-Before every dialogue tag (e.g., the cop said, she said, she shouted) add a comma before the closing quotation marks. No capitalization required because a comma isn't a punctuation. (-1)

-Yay! I'm glad you properly translated your dialogue. *High fives you*

-Excerpt:

"Atwood Street Gang doesn't play around if you talk about stepping up, you better expect to be put in your place," I said.

Their faces turned green, "That wasn't us carnal. Relax! It wasn't us! I swear, on dogs, I got no clue what you talkin' about," he pleaded.

"Too late motherfuckers," I whispered as I squeezed the trigger.

-This legit happened. I can't even laugh, I just feel empty at this point. What's even worse is that this is a fucking flashback. *Audience weeps with me*

-Okay, let me explain to you why this is horrid. For starters, this is one of the most clichést thing I've ever read. Ismael is probably the least scariest/threatening gang member of all time. I'm not exaggerating. He seems like someone who accidentally got into the criminal life because he was poor.

-However, in the real world he would've been dead a long time ago. Sure, you're telling the readers that he wasn't tough when he first started, but somehow rose up the ranks and became the gang leaders "right-hand man" with no actual believable evidence that shows that he could have been.

-Any character can fucking shoot a pointless character, but you showed no emotion to it. Make the readers give a shit that the dude is getting shot. Little tidbits in Ismael's action, making the setting known, describing the character's facial expressions to show their fear and the tension in the room. Also, show the readers that Ismael is down-with-the-shits and doesn't fucking play!

-This isn't being executed to its full potential. (-5)

Inconsistencies (if any):

-Excerpt: The east wing was available to cellmates one to sixty, meaning I was showering naked with fifty-nine other men.

*Sighs*

-What was the point of that sentence? First of all, the first portion is weirdly worded, and sure the other half explains it, but doesn't really say anything rather important. You already said in a sentence before that he was going to the east wing to shower, so I'd assume he hasn't changed his mind? I think the only purpose of that sentence was so the character say that other naked men (*13 year old boy squirms*) will be in there with him because y'know...cudies. (-4)

-"Befeed"........

-What the hell was that? I didn't realize this was a book that required made up words, but maybe I should have been notified sooner. All sarcasm aside, this isn't a word and it needs to be removed. (-3)

Writing Style:

-You seem to lean towards the very simple writing. Your sentences are pretty short, and direct, which makes it easy to follow. However, you need to add more descriptions it's starting to feel like I'm reading journal entries. Especially, how it seems to be jumping around to present time (not the tenses, just whatever the narrator is yapping about) then to the past.

-Normally, it wouldn't be seen as weird if you didn't have all these page breaks for no apparent reason. (-1)

Likes/Dislikes:

-There is nothing happening. I'm not too bored really, but it's the fact that Ismael is in jail but besides some dude saying another guy stole his soap and a fight breaking out...nothing really important has occurred. The readers are just following Ismael on his day-to-day basis, his showering patterns, when he eats, and even when he drops a shit. It's ridiculous. (-3)

-I'm in chapter two, so that's always good.

-The chapters aren't too long!

-Main character is Mexican.

-There are no sensory descriptions.

Grammar/Punctuation issues (if any, or if they're noticeable to me):

-There are somewhere, and I did spot some few. However, none of them are important enough to even remember or to point out. Find an editor if you really want a run-down on your grammar. I'm not anyone's editor. The only time I will be pointing anything out if it's repetitive and it causes me to internally bleed.

Where you need to improve:

-Adding sensory descriptions that can grasp your reader by the balls and immerse them into the story.

-Stop telling the story! Show woman, show!

-Give your characters more depth. Right now he's falling flat, and he isn't very believable.

-Fixing up oddly worded descriptions that make no damn sense.

-Don't make up words, unless you're writing a truly fictional world/alternate universe that requires its own terminology.

Why/When I stopped reading: I died of disappointment. Just kidding, you ran out of points in the beginning of chapter two. Nonetheless, I read the rest of the chapter.

Gummy Bears or Dust: You get...............

*Drum rolls*

*Clips nails*

*Eats a sandwich*

*Takes a shit*

*Cries*

*Comes back*

*Drum roll ends*

*Crickets*

A ELEPHANT SHAKING DUST OFF ITSELF!!! Basically, you get dust.

Please donate some lotion for the Elephants. It makes me sad to see know one care about their permanent dryness. Unless if it is suppose to be that way for natural purposes.

I don't know much about animals.

*Coughs*

This review may be harsh, but so are a lot of the others. Anyways, I do wish you luck on your story. I'm assuming you're new to writing, so it really isn't anything to worry about. If you're serious about writing I'm sure with practice and patience you'll see improvement.

Lord, I sound like a tape recorder. Fuck it, good luck pal.

M, out!