Title: Tales from a Jaded Writer

Author: Sarah Okon ( RayDuke )

Genre: Short Stories, Romance (MATURE WARNING)

Short Stories Reviewed: Thin Line, Nimue

Blurb Below:

***

I. Title: Tales of a Jaded Writer

Not a title have I heard of, and I am so here for this! I love that since this is a short story collection, it works well with the word "tales" and you speaking about who our author or speaker/narrator will be. It does not tell a lot about the themes or concepts but that is the beauty of short story collections that they range from anything to anything. A lot of freedom with the title and I am happy with your pick!

II. Cover

Quite the aesthetic! I love a white architectural background and I am happy to see it here. My concerns though are the fonts and the color. I understand what you wanted to achieve but the issue is firstly the colors which blend too much into the background. Not to mention on Wattpad, some covers can get blurry, it doesn't help the white color out at all as the words I can mainly see are "Jaded Writer" "tales of a" and a bit of the author's name. I would recommend either making the color contrast with the background or enlarging/bolding them for a better visual on them. To the font, I am noticing roughly four fonts. Not a major issue but it can get quite messy on a cover as it seems to not have a lot of cooperation with the cover or cohesiveness. Also, whatever you put at the top and bottom of the cover, I can't quite spot what it is saying, especially the bottom one due to the blurring and the color. Aside from that, there is a "dark brown bar" that goes down on the left side. Not sure if this was the intention choice, but it does seem like an unfinished framing to the cover.

III. Blurb

Short, sweet, straight to the point, love this! Not much to say except for clever wordplay and making sure you tell the audience exactly what they are in for and what to expect!

IV. First Sentences

I will not be doing this part as since this is a short story collection, it wouldn't make sense since each would have their own first sentences that would need to be reviewed separately. If you do, however, really want me to do them for the selected stories, let me know by either PM me or tagging me in a comment and I can try to get that worked out for you.

***

Shall we begin? SO. You just requested a general look at the short stories, Thin Line & Nimue, and each will get a respected paragraph for them!

THIN LINE: To begin with, a beautifully done opening paragraph. I also love that parallelism with the last two sentences in the opening paragraph and how you show a bit of what our setting will be, plus the people inhabiting it. In the opening paragraph, though, I did notice a sentence with some type of wording issue. I think it was because you wanted the parallelism, but it made the structure of the sentence have a minor issue. Moving on, I adore the challenge to legacies. It shows the opinion of the main character but also brings to light questions about those that may have the "eternal" powers, in this case Athena. Additionally, what you have done is that you allowed your character to think for themselves, even smoothly transitioning to their appearance and current state. After fully reading (the previously noted stuff were my thoughts while reading), I am like "I like it" but at the same time, I can't fully say this. Though the notes of romance are there for the second half of the short story, it makes the first half does not connect in a way. What I mean is that you mentioned Athena, goddess of wisdom & warfare, and Aphrodite, goddess of fertility & love & beauty. But Athena doesn't seem to play a role carrying over to the second half; additionally, Aphrodite is the only one that I could see a connection with, but she is used for a belittling action rather than a sense of her abilities upon Seven and the Mortal. Like, I adore your choice to counter the beliefs in the gods and goddesses, but it should only be used if the next scene would counter these since you even mentioned Zeus's life, Aphrodite's wardrobe, and Athena's temple. It is just a bit confusing on my end with these references since the main connection is that I am guessing, Seven is not a mortal.

NIMUE: To begin with, I am loving this story so far. I think, again, you have mastered how to open the stories with much impact driven from keen wordplay. Though I will mention this, as I was reading, I notice your writing style which is quite unique; but an issue arises due to the style causing some words to not be set correctly. Like the organization and structure of how each word leads to another is confusing, to say the least. Also, when you do time jumps, it is best to reserve a paragraph for them, so it doesn't confuse readers about the time period unless it is within dialogue (still, dialogue gets its own section as well). Furthermore, while I was reading, there was that sudden switch to the Gorgon part which was off for me. Not saying the context is, but the sudden information about it without really a hint-hint about it earlier on is what confused me. I wouldn't call it information dumping, yet it could be classified as such. Overall, it was not a bad read for me. Each story was interesting for me since I like your writing style in how you choose when to be described; but I do want to inform you to try and refrain from information dumping and instead let the setting and such sink in more. I know these are short stories, so characters don't get a lot of time to grow, but the setting also needs to be settled up properly and not in the information dumping sections.

***

Now for my takeaway. I like to keep these short and sweet for you to be able to come back to and just quickly see what you might want to take from this review.

1. Improvements to help:

a. Wording being slightly confusing due to sentence structure and organization

b. Refrain from information dumping (though it was a short story) since you only get a little bit of writing in short stories, so you want to use every moment to pure use rather than a lecture.

c. very VERY minimal grammatical errors

2. My personal opinions of the work:

a. I loved my reading, and the plot was still there, moving alongside the characters. But some elements were throwing me off. I will say this, on a brighter note, your writing style did save it in moments and allowed me to get back into being attached with the reading.

And that is all I have to say. I really did enjoy my reading. If anything, you can message me through PM or through here (you will have to tag me for me to get the notification) for any additional coverage that you would like me to discuss. That is all from me for now!

Have a great day and hope you enjoy this little review of mine!