Title: The Other Girl

Genre: Teen Fiction

Author: littlewhims 

Rating: PG

# of Chapters: 13 (Ongoing) 

# of Chapters I've read: 2

Summary/Blurb: 

There's the story about Kimberly Morgan, the average girl who's decently pretty, perhaps smart, and most definitely a naive virgin.

Then there's the story of Stella Reyes. The girl who's so perfect, so admirable, and so enviable that she never gets a voice in the average story about the everyday girl who gets her prince and lives happily ever after.

This is story of Stella Reyes, the other girl, and how her life changes when another girl appears--an average girl.

Review:

Cover [Has been updated, so this observation no longer applies]: 

The cover is very...Tumblr. The font, the image, everything about it reminds me of the site and its aesthetics. For those of you who don't use Tumblr, some posts basically entail in picking a random image and overlaying a dramatic block of text, usually from song lyrics, or a movie. So it could be a picture of rain, and then the text could be "Can't stop thinking about you." The two things are completely disconnected, but who cares? It looks visually appealing.

Now, while that would work to get thousands of notes on a blogging site, it doesn't really do it for me here. It makes me wonder: what does a girl standing in a museum and fiddling with her phone have to do with the story? I mean, yes, of course she'll be on her phone at some point (21st century, y'all) but the fact that it's on the cover—she looks disinterested, and I'm unsure about whether this is a candid shot, or if she was posing.

She looks bored and the dullness of the entire ensemble can ward off readers—I myself would have glossed over this and moved on to the next book.

My suggestion is to get a cover that is more upbeat, more appealing to the eye. The genre is Teen fiction for heaven's sake! I want to think about being young, wild, and free, not old, depressed, and saggy! Take a look at the other covers, make a note of a common theme, and try to incorporate that in your own cover.

Overall— I'm getting down in the dumps just looking at this. Get a new cover!

Blurb:

I want to be frustrated, I really do, but I can't because you're relatively new to the game and don't know how to play. However, I must be 100% honest with you—I've seen hundreds of stories with similar blurbs and storyline.

We have the Mary Sue character (pretty/virgin/antisocial/intelligent) and the super annoying preppy/bitchy/dumb cheerleader that rules the school and spits on nerds. I keep seeing the words "average" , "perfect", "girl" and my eyes keep rolling back into my head, I'm practically risking going blind from reading this.

I can see what you're trying to do, turning the tables. The story is about Stella the queen, and not Kimberly the plain Jane—reminds me of that movie called Happily N'Ever After, about how the villains in fairy tales (e.g. Wicked stepmother) are sick of not having their own"happily ever after" and hence try to fight the good guys about it. Evil ends up getting its ass kicked back to Loser Town, and Good triumphs yet again.

It's a nice take on the cliché, but if you want me to buy it, you need a blurb that's more captivating than that. There's a lot of repetition—I get it, Kimberly is average and Stella is a star, I don't need that point hammered into my brain any more than it already is. 

Additionally, if this story is about Stella, she needs to be the first character you mention first in the blurb, because the story revolves around her. Then you have the paragraph about Kimberley, with a topic sentence that ties the end sentence of the previous paragraph with the current one.

For example:

"Stella is blah blah blah [....] until one day she meets a girl, who despite being a nobody, just another student at Brandston High (I made this up on the spot), manages to question her values etc...

Kimberly Morgan is that average girl [...]"

This story doesn't revolve around "getting the bad boy" but more about personal change and growth. Because that isn't really a dramatic storyline in itself (a person can experience changes in many ways) you have to sell this idea to the reader right from the blurb and make them think that this is the best thing they will ever read in their lives.

Overall—Generic blurb, but with some work, this can become something very interesting. 

Now, for the writing!

First Impression:

I officially love Callum and hate Stella. Here's why. Callum may be a jock, but he isn't a douchebag that treats women like objects, at least from what I could tell in the first chapter. Stella instead to me seemed so...shallow (and horrifically whiny) it was hard for me to empathize with her.

I was like, "Aww, boohoo, bae couldn't go to the party with you, how tragic!" Girl, at least he's trying to achieve something in his life, unlike you, that have nothing better to do than partying. Seriously, do you have any hobbies or something?

The end of the chapter had me frowning—from the way Calum and Stella behaved, I would've thought they were dating. But then at the end, they're just "friends with benefits" or something. This should've been made clear from the beginning—because you're writing in the first person, these are the kind of thoughts that should surface at times like these. Like maybe she longs for the day when he will ask her out or something, after the part "The shadows disappeared from his figure as he entered the light and although I couldn't see his face, I knew he was happy."

I also felt like the party scene was a little unnecessary—Calum didn't give any reason as to why he showed up at the party. It was like he was thrown in there just to save Stella from the creep, without giving the scene any real substance. Later on, at the cafeteria table, there isn't even a mention of that encounter—or the party at all, for that matter—which further proves that the scene could easily be deleted. It would reinforce the idea that Stella likes Calum, but he prioritizes sport over trying to build a relationship with her, and it moves the plot forward. 

Writing Style:

I enjoyed reading this. The writing was clear, coherent, and I couldn't find any grammatical/punctuational errors. Each character has their own, distinct personality, conveyed through both their dialogue and actions, with their behavior being justified (for the most part— I will discuss this later). 

Even though they are 'cliché' you have obviously made an effort to make them as realistic as possible, to give a deeper meaning to the story. You didn't make the characters rich and popular just to adhere to the stereotype—there's more to it than that. The sentence that struck me the most was, "We were similar in that fasion—two wealthy, popular, perfect kids that had everything they needed to do laid out before they were even born. It was no longer a question of what to do—it was a question of when you were willing to do it." and it really made me think.

We look at the lives of wealthy teenagers from a superficial standpoint. We see the money, the cars, the swimming pools, and aspire to have all those things because our materialistic society makes us believe that that is what would make us happy. Not your family, relationships, experiences... but material goods. More is better. Money equals happiness.  But does it really?

Calum and Stella are two sides of the same coin. 

Calum is the school's all-star football player. He's handsome, rich, popular—basically has it all— but is unhappy because he doesn't get to control his own future. He, along with his two other siblings, have to take over the family (business) empire, and there's nothing more to it. The guy has no say in it. Calum doesn't want to comply with this, and something tells me that shit is going to go down regarding that later on in the story—in the first two chapters, he's already showing signs of rebelling. 

Contrarily, we have Stella, who is quite happy with what she has. I considered her 'shallow' because all she thinks about is partying, cheerleading, and having fun—but why should she give a shit? Her parents have already shaped her future for her, she's going to die a rich woman. The majority of the population has to work their asses off their whole lives, but never even gain a fraction of what Stella has— and she's still only a teenager.

*clears throat*

Okay, I got a little too carried away. Basically, the characters (and their motivators) are the strongest points in this story. They go against the bad reputation of the genre regarding cardboard cut-out protagonists especially when it comes to stories revolving around high school dramas. 

I only have two suggestions for improvements:

a) Info-dumping. Don't hit me with paragraphs of backstory. Feed it into the story one teaspoon at a time, I don't have to know about the dynamics of Callum's father's company. 

b) Page breaks. Don't jump from one scene to the next (you won't get away with using page breaks) because it interrupts the flow of the story. Having transitional phrases, that lead in from one scene to the next work a lot better, and it's much easier for me to place the characters in a different setting.

Characters:

Callum— A jock, with all the characteristics that give a girl good *beep* material. Is Stella's potential love interest. What I like about him is the fact that he doesn't behave like a 'typical jock'. He's not an asswipe, doesn't bang everything that has a hole, and is actually kind of adorable. I can see why the girls fawn over him.

Stella— The cheerleader. Very popular, but not because she behaves like a complete bitch, because she doesn't. She's popular for all the right reasons. 

Stella's friends— There's a lot of them so I won't list every single one. Overall, they seem like a relatively supportive friendship group. They gossip—like every teenage girl out there—but not in a nasty way. 

Kimberly— The other girl. She's the 'average' girl everyone keeps talking about, and apparently has to tutor Calum. Yikes, I see where this is going already. 

Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 8

I would've given this a nine if it weren't for the blurb/cover/ page break fiasco because it made me think about the meaning of life and because your characters are relatable. For being a new writer, you're doing a lot better than the majority of the Wattpad population, so kudos to you for that!