Shadowed by Moonlight written by KryssaStevenson

I'm back! I apologize for the completely sloth-like pace in my reviews these days, and I know it's frustrating. (in my defense, i literally had surgery, then had my face swell up to the size of a bowling ball from complications, then randomly broke my foot?) Anyway. Let's get to your story!

i. COVER & TITLE

This is not my ideal cover, but I really only have one solid reason for my dislike of it, and that's the font. To me, this font screams 'made by an amateur on canva'—even if that's not who it was made by and where it was made. I do like the picture, but it makes for an extremely bland cover. There's not much here to work with in terms of piquing interest. I'd suggest working with one of the designers in my graphics list to see what you can do with your cover.

As for your title, I'm slightly happier. Unfortunately not much happier, though, because your title is again quite simple and more common than you'd think. I do think it's perfectly fine and probably doesn't need to be changed, but there is potential for it to be thought about a bit more, in my opinion! (I do later recognize the significance of this title, so that's cool!)

ii. BLURB

Right off the bat, I have some problems with the blurb. First, I find the immediate toss of the age and name of the MC generic and overused. Honestly, we don't really care how old they are right now. The name is slightly more important, but you should always start off with something a tad more substantial when working with something as important as your blurb.

Moving on from that, I do appreciate how simple and streamlined your blurb ends up. It's very effective in the format and the information. However, I don't like the beginning, as I said. I honestly don't think it needs my rewrite at this time, but my suggestion for the hook would be: Toa has known nothing but jealousy. Then you would go on with business as usual. Most of the time, I argue against using a name right in the beginning. However, since this is only a three-letter nickname, I think you can squeak by.

Lastly, I think the entire third paragraph needs to be taken out. All the information you need in your blurb (regarding the storyline) should be presented in the actual story blurb. No one really wants to read that summary written academically. I'd take it out entirely—it's not needed.

0 9 / 1 5

i. PUNCTUATION

You do have a few instances where you lack a comma, and it causes confusion. With that said, you're pretty good at using them in the right places. Take a look here:

'I've never seen Masina pick up a needle or braid ti leaves before, but since she's Masina of course this is what her first lei would look like.'

So here you have a tense problem with the 'I have' in the beginning, but that was the only tense mix-up I saw. The comma problem here lies in the fact that you need a comma after the clause 'but since she's Masina.' Now, because having both commas there would introduce that middle clause as nonessential, that's not quite right either. And in the sense of creative writing, I always find comma minimalism is more effective than comma overload. Therefore, while you can use both, I'd recommend only using the essential one:

'I've never seen Masina pick up a needle or braid ti leaves before but since she's Masina, of course this is what her first lei would look like.'

(right now, I'm looking at the little red line Grammarly puts after 'of course' because it wants a comma there too, and it would be WRONG don't listen to it. however, I do think this sentence can be overall reworded better for clarity)

Another slight problem is your commas before conjunctions. Easy rule: If both of the clauses being linked are independent (that is, they form a complete thought on their own) then you include a comma. Otherwise, you don't. Here you forgot one:

'Her hair was in its usual bun and she wore her favourite bone necklace carved to look like boar tusks with a wooded kaulima on each tricep.'

That turns into a run-on (although I would argue it's a bit wordy either way) but can be grammatically correct by adding in the comma before 'and' since both of these clauses are independent.

ii. DIALOGUE

You have dialogue issues in continuation. Recall that dialogue tags are a part of the dialogue, and they end the sentence—hence why they are lowercased, as you have understood. However, when you place a dialogue tag between two lines of dialogue, you must be careful as to how your continuation looks. Here's an example:

"Morning brother!" she sang, "Are you up?"

The problem here is the comma there after the tag. Since you've ended the first dialogue with special punctuation and not the usual comma, the next dialogue has to begin with a capital:

"Morning brother!" she sang. "Are you up?"

These two sentences are separate, and therefore both cannot be connected to the same dialogue tag—that would make them the same sentence. So that's why you cannot do this, either:

"Morning brother," she sang, "Are you up?"

You make this mistake nearly every time you have dialogue continuation, so I would recommend looking into it.

1 3 / 1 5

i. PACING

If I pick up a book and it begins like one of my chemistry lessons, I put it back down. Now, yours may not present entirely like a lecture to most, but that's exactly what your beginning paragraphs are. They are summary, not story. Summaries are fine, but they are extremely ineffective as the beginning of a story. They have the feel of info-dumping and talking at your reader. You always, always want to start a story in the middle of something that is happening or about to happen or some sort of story, and never a summary.

However, I do think your paragraphs were effective for summary. I think it was an interesting start, but I did not appreciate the flow. Basically, I think these things need to be moved around a little to make the pacing at the beginning become less of a lecture. If you start the story like this:

'I wake to the soft smell of flowers and the burning feeling of jealousy.'

Now that you've started in the middle of actual action, you've eradicated the summarizing, and yet you can actually still include it at this point. Because it has become a part of the story now—that is, a part of the action—it turns from an ineffective pre-explanation of sorts and into a beginning chapter with a great hook.

ii. TRANSITIONS

I think you end your chapters in good places, but I do think your actual story transitions are jarring. For example, at the end of chapter 1a, we have this awesome character interaction, giving us lots to think about, but then there's this abrupt transition to Toa leaving. The problem here is the flow was completely disturbed, causing me to nearly forget all about all the good things this chapter had done.

Fixing this isn't a straightforward thing, but there are lots of places to start. When you have a character leaving a scene or doing something that changes the dynamic, the easiest way to avoid abrupt transitions is to have your transitionary sentence relate to both the situation that is being left and the one being approached. Then, one more sentence that is a little less relative to the leaving scene and a bit more relative to the approaching scene. Here's what you had:

'I nodded my thanks. Then, remembering how late I was, I took off running for the orator's house.'

Applying my above ideas, those sentences would look like this:

'I nodded my thanks. Realizing how late I was, I wondered if the lei had been some sort of purposeful distraction. Without a glance back at Masina, I took off running for the orator's house.'

So here I've started with the same sentence you did, but I made that transition less jarring by having a sentence that related both Masina and the lei scene to how he needs to leave now, and then another sentence that briefly mentions Masina as well. This tactic of transitioning is not only better for smooth writing, but it will also help to avoid confusion!

0 7 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

Do I think you heavily info-dumped the description of Masina? Yes. But do I think it...worked? Also yes. Sometimes, that just happens; the writing is smooth and careful enough to info-dump while remaining effective. However, I would urge you away from doing that with other characters. I think you talk a bit too much about Masina, and it causes us to feel like she's the main character. An easy way to avoid this is to always relate Toa to any comments about Masina to remind us who we're supposed to be rooting for. Remember—if we find your main a little too annoying (which at this point I wouldn't worry about) we'll probably stop reading. From what I've read, you've managed to make him pretty relatable, and even though he's curt with his sister, I do still root for him.

ii. SCENES

I think you wait too long to describe scenes. In chapter 1b, we get three paragraphs before we get any sort of visual of what we're working with. So although I like your sprinkled descriptions, I think you need to start sprinkling quicker, because if we don't get just one sense of description (even saying massive hut instead of just hut, for example) we might start to get a little lost. Establish description with at least one word, then build off that as you go on. Other than that little problem, I don't see any reasons not to love your description.

0 9 / 1 0

i. PLOT

I think your plot is wildly unique. I absolutely love the dynamic I'm currently experiencing, with the whole jealousy of a character that seems perfectly loveable. The Hawaiian structure is new and original to me (maybe because I'm not Hawaiian?) and I like the spin you've put on the concept of family. I'm excited to see where you take it.

ii. TONE

Although I don't really mind your tone, it's not one I find myself obsessing over for the reason that it's almost completely academic. From my standpoint, I don't see any literary devices nor evidence of any forms of craft. Obviously I love the metaphors and the abstract descriptions, but that could just be my preference. But it is something to think about.

0 8 / 1 0

I love the originality you show in the crafting of this plot and these characters, although I do see the potential for your tone to turn into something a little more unique. Your logistics are excellent, your flow needs a bit of touching-up, but overall this is a pretty high-quality story! (I'd recommend getting a new cover soon so everyone will know that right away!)

4 6 / 6 0