Book: The Moments I Recall
Author: DISTANTDREAMER21
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Chapters Reviewed: 1-5

Cover: (95/100)
Absolutely amazing cover! This is a beautiful cover that, though it doesn’t reveal much about the plot, does an amazing job drawing in readers by its sheer beauty alone. The only thing I can say is that it’s a little dark, and there’s not a lot of contrast between the colors. Perhaps the purple splotches can be spread out a little more and occupy some more space, and maybe you can add some colorful highlights to the top half of your cover just to add some extra eye-grabbing elements. Overall, I think your cover serves its purpose well!

Blurb: (75/100)
I personally love Blurbs that feature an excerpt from the story itself, but with choosing to have this excerpt comes an extra risk; If it isn’t written perfectly, readers will have predisposed opinions of your story and writing style before even reading the first page. For example, I myself am a very, very judgemental reader (only in my head of course, so let me just get it out of the way that I loved your story once I started reading it), and one of the first things I noticed is your tendency to overcomplicate sentences using way more words than necessary. Though it’s an excerpt and you can’t do all that much to change it, remember that blurbs should be short and sweet, not mouthfuls of sentences. There’s not really much else wrong with the excerpt portion, and I think you made a wise choice in the part you chose, one that intrigues readers, the second most important aspect. I’ve gone ahead and edited it slightly, just to give you an idea:

As he looks out beyond the edge, I can’t seem to pull my eyes away from him. He smiles, then speaks, but I can’t hear a word he says. The buzzing is growing quieter by the second until it’s only silence. I watch his mouth move, inaudible words flowing into the air, his hands open, gesturing while he speaks. I watch him as he turns to face me, assuring himself that I’m still following, and then his eyes rest on me, his mouth now still. He mouths my name again with a tilt of his head, trying to read me. There’s nothing I can tell him; there’s nothing that won’t change things. But If I keep this going, things will change.

“Xylia.” His mouth forms my name.

I know I said before that I slightly edited it, but I may have gotten a little carried away. I’m not telling you to rewrite your blurb, just take notice of some of the ways I’ve condensed and improved the flow of the blurb. I’m a fan of the way you write, just keep in my mind to use less words to make it flow better. The Three Basics of a good Blurb are: It’s short length, it’s intriguing aspects, and it’s accurate grammar.

It’s absolutely essential that your blurb is perfect, because it’s the only thing between a Wattpader and the Read button. I’ll quit rambling about blurbs now, but I’ve also edited the remainder of it:

Xylia doesn’t remember any of it, despite the fact she’s live through it all. She must watch herself remake every choice, every mistake, everything she had to do the first time to find herself once more. 

The only thing she knows: this is a past life, one among billions. Summer Camp changed it all. And now, her friends are dying, and she can’t remember how to save them.

And It’s all Xylia’s fault.

Initial Impressions: (75/100)
Whether or not you know this already, this section serves as more of a gramatical review (the plot and other stuff come later), but also on some of the instant things that the average reader would notice, that needs to be addressed. 

Grammar:
For the most part your grammar isn’t terrible, and the mistakes I noticed weren’t all that frequent, but remeber to proofread EVERYTHING, because it would be impossible for me to adress every error in this one review. And right off the bat, you have a grammar error in your very first sentence + paragraph, something you need to fix right away. Readers may give a little lenience to minor errors further on, but you can’t introduce your story properly with a mistake.
 
(An elipses [...] indicates that it is only a portion of the sentence, and there’s nothing wrong with the remainder)

Original: ...as I reminisce on everything that could had been…

Fixed: ...as I reminisce on everything that (could have/could’ve) been…

Original: Although, I am change; merely an obstacle of your making, but a vessel of blind sight. The difference between us being I choose not to see.

Fixed: I am change itself, merely an obstacle of your making, a vessel of blind sight. The only difference between us is that I choose not to see.

Your choice of words for the first paragraph are quite interesting, and I like the the mysterious vibe they give off to immediately draw in readers, but in my opinion, it may be just a little too mystifying. If you can, try to elaborate on what some of these words mean to Xylia, maybe how they relate to her life.

There are also quite a few grammar errors within this first paragraph. At first, it didn’t make sense, and my edited version may not even have the same meaning you intended, but you have a lot of phrases kind of just put together that don’t work. Remember you can always break them down. When commas don’t work, periods are your best friends. Also remeber that when using semi-colons (;), that the sentence after it is a complete sentence, because, not that I really know much about semicolons, but I think it’s supposed to connect two related (and complete) sentences. 

Transitions:
By transitions (in this section), I am refering to the bits of text/symbols you have between two seperate times. I love the way you do this, but I think you can format it in a way that’s a little more pleasing. For Example:

...I choose not to see.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

PART ONE:

WHEN A TIME IN MY PRESENT MEETS MY PAST...

1976

He moves me…

Making sure your transitions/time-stamps are neat just makes for a better, more organized reading experience. And when you use your regular time stamp (the star), don’t use so many and center it on the page so it looks neater. Just some suggestions!

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

D

ialogue:
I’m happy to say that your dialogue is pretty good! But one suggestion I try to offer in every review is to ‘show and not tell.’ It seems that almost every string of dialogue in your story is followed by a speech word, (says, whispers, screams, asks, and even thinks)

For example, in chapter one: “How long have we been driving for!?” The orange-haired girls yells.

The first issue is the punctuation at the end of her dialogue. I get that you want to show that she’s asking quite loudly, but putting two punctuation marks (!?) looks very unprofessional, so I would always stick with the ? and explain afterwards that she screamed it.

Fixed: “How long have we been driving?” The orange-haired girl’s scream drowns out the other noises in my ears as her wide, pale-brown eyes look up at me for answers. 

Study the example above. Notice how you still get the point across, but I didn’t end the dialogue with “she screamed.” You can take dialogue as an oppurtunity to really let your descriptive self flow, and find ways to show how the character is acting during the dialogue. This is not the greatest example, but remember when you have speech tags such as ‘asks’ you could put, ‘he furrowed his brow in confusion’ instead.

A few tips that you know, but occasionally messed up: Remember that when ending a string of dialogue with an ! or ?, that the pronoun afterward is lowercase. “How much did you drink?” he asks. And, when ending a string of dialogue that ends with a period and is followed by a speech word, remeber to replace that period with a comma. “Xylia,” someone calls faintly…

Tense:
Ocassionally you strayed from the present tense in your story. There are quite a few example throughout your story, (and in the scene where they’re on the bus, ignore the person’s comment about ‘had hopped’ because that is correct tense in that case since Xylia was thinking of a past event) so just be sure to proofread and make sure your verbs describing the events happening at that moment are in the correct tense. I’ve fixed one example to illustrate:

Original: “The bags under his eyes drooped in layers of old skin, and his non-existent lips parted.

Fixed: “The bags under his eyes droop in layers of old skin, and his nonexistent lips part.

Further Analysis: 80/100
Immediately as I began reading your story, I could tell that I was in for a confusing one. I certainly like the premise and promise of your story, and the plotline is interesting enough to keep readers engaged. Though it is interesting, it’s also very confusing. This so called summer camp offers quite a bit of confusion, some of which that I’m sure would be better explained the more you read (which is both a good and bad thing). I suggest that you take a little time to elaborate more on what these events mean to Xylia, for example, you might could explain more about the phantom preschool’s significance to Xylia, or even better of explain the feelings that the ‘zappy’ fence gives her (Also, I think it’s kind of redundant that she has to touch it three times before she decides it isn’t helping). 

This next comment goes with pacing in the sense that your story progresses neither too quickly or two slowly, but it does seem like you have many events in a short span of time. I think that you should work with your plot some to solidify the most important events, and cut out some of the lesser ones that are kind of just there pointlessly. Eg. the meal scene where Xylia is talking to Charlotte. She’s such a temporary character, and I feel like you could find a better way to work in the fact that these kids at camp can’t remeber anything, perhaps with the introduction of Harper, but keep some kind of way where Xylia witnesses a spaced kid before she meets Theo. Also, if all the books in the ‘summer-camp’ classes are different, how does Xylia know what random facts that Haroer learned from reading?

As far as characterization goes, I think you did an amazing job with Xylia and Theo. As for Harper, I feel like her personality changes too fast after she touches the fence. She goes from being a bully to being helpless, but later Xylia still describes her as bad-tempered when we aren’t really seeing these qualities at the moment and until later on. (Afterwards though, her personality is definitely fitting) If you can, just try to work on these few inconcistencies. And another question: why do some characters have zero idea who they are while others like Harper do? Perhaps there’s an explanation in the future… 

Final Notes: 80/100
Reading the first few chapters of this book has truly been a pleasure! I love the way you write and describe the events in your story, and if you apply the tips in this review, you have so much more potential as a writer. Like always, I suggest you proofread x100 just to catch all the tiny mistakes we all make as writers, and I hope this will help you develop Xylia and her haunting past into a perfect story!

Thank you for choosing me as your reviewer, and LMK if you have questions about any aspect of this review!

—Cyprus