Title: Love Across Universe by thevioletscar
Source: ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by TheCieloCommunity
Category: Science Fiction
Mature: N (alcohol, blood, bullying, infidelity, loss of a loved one, mention of physical assault, racism, religion, sexual references, strong profanity, underage drinking)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Complete
Special note (judging): I had three books in this category, and the other judges (TJDW1989 and SSears90) had three books each.
Result: 94/100

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. → 

*****

Rubric:
- Title: 5
- Book cover: 5
- Description (blurb): 5
- Plot & storytelling: 15
- Character development: 10
- Writing style: 10
- Grammar: 10
- Originality & creativity: 10
- Emotional impact: 10
- Pacing & structure: 5
- Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5
- Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10
Total: 100

*****

Total: 94/100

Title: 4/5
The concept for the title is good. It includes romance and invokes science fiction as well. My issue is with "Universe". If it's singular, there should probably be an article (the) before "Universe," or you could make it plural, and then the title's fine. But this could also be an intentional choice on your part, so I guess I'll reevaluate after/during reading.

Addendum: After reading the book, I'd still say there should be a "the," but it's up to you.

Cover: 5/5
This is a gorgeous cover. I love the blending of the two images and all the interplay between their elements—day/night, boy/girl, both with their faces tilted up but eyes closed, two hands, a bird at the end of one finger and a flower held in the other hand, the rings on their ring fingers, the red thread binding them together—ah, there's so much going on here, and it's so good. The text is also absolute perfection. Props to _BLACKSPADESZ for this cover!

Blurb: 4/5
I like the content of the blurb, and your grammar is spot on. You've introduced the two main characters, and although the specifics of the plot are ambiguous, there's enough information to pique a potential reader's interest. But I would recommend putting some of the single lines together into paragraphs. Every line break is a break in thought for the reader, which interrupts the natural flow of the sentences, and thus dulls its hook. I'd definitely keep the first line with the 3, 2, 1 separate, and I'd keep the questions separate, too, as the split makes sense for these because it punctuates or emphasizes these ideas to get the reader thinking, but I'd probably put all the other sentences into one paragraph for a better flow.

Plot & storytelling: 14/15
This is a fantastic plot and an amazing story that defied all my expectations. The way you've told the story of Soojin's life, with an undercurrent of something beyond human comprehension, is just so beautiful. Her sweet friendship with Alain is over far too soon, and then she has to come to terms with that loss and try to move on, but she's always hopeful, always searching, if only subconsciously. The ups and downs of life affect her, just as they do for everybody, making the apparent resolution with her creation even more bittersweet. It's a false resolution, though, a fabrication to replace what she truly longs for, and the abrupt end to her story in the epilogue was so heart wrenching. I love how you've tied her story in with the Tanabata festival and its origin story. You've taken the star-crossed lovers destined for each other, but also destined to spend an eternity apart from each other, and turned it into an ongoing story, one that you've retold with Soojin and Alain.

That being said, the beginning is not the best. The current beginning lines feel like the middle of a paragraph, not the beginning of a story. I have a couple of suggestions for that, though. You could skip the exclamation and the first sentence to start with the next sentence, reworked slightly, and then you could include the skipped bit later. So, this could be your start: "I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a bed with pristine white sheets." Or you could start with Alain's first dialogue and work all the previous info into the following paragraphs. That would be my first choice, because I think that would have the strongest hook.

I'm not a big fan of the headings. Since most of the story is in Soojin's perspective, there's no need to state that in every chapter. At the end, when there are perspective changes within the chapter, I don't think you need to denote her perspective, either. She's the primary speaker throughout the story. Just marking Alain's perspective or the author's perspective would be enough to show the reader the break from the usual. Although, honestly, I don't like headings much even in that case, as the reader can deduce who's speaking by context clues within the story, but it gets tricky when there are only a few paragraphs in a different perspective. A section divider, like a row of asterisks, would probably be sufficient to alert the reader of the change, and then they can figure out who is speaking for themselves.

My thoughts on headers for time skips are similar. You can just insert a section divider and work the time change into the story. The very first time skip is a great example of this: "The next day: (paragraph break) "I went to school alone." You can just say, "The next day, I went to school alone." It won't always work out that cleanly, but you can slip the year, month, or day changes into the story like that, and that creates a more natural transition than a heading.

Your transitions improved as the story progressed, but early on, they were often very jerky and sudden, so I'd recommend going back to the beginning to smooth them out. Actually, your writing style in general changed and developed throughout the course of the story, which is great, but that introduced some consistency issues, and I have more observations and suggestions related to that which I'll go over later in the writing style category.

You introduce foreign words very infrequently, and they come one at a time, too, so instead of inserting the definition immediately after the word, I think it would be better to just define them all at the end of the chapter. They're pretty easy to figure out through context clues, anyway, so that shouldn't cause a ton of confusion if the reader has to wait a few minutes for the definition. Or, if they really want to know right away, they can scroll down to the end to find it. Another option would be to create a glossary chapter for readers to reference, and then you can do away with in-text definitions completely, but that's up to you.

I do want to make a note about bold and italics. Using italics to show the science fiction element works great, because reserving changes in font for special occurrences makes it easier for the reader to know what it means every time they see the change. I don't like the bold and italics for the trailer, though. Some people have trouble reading bold font, and I think probably italics too, but to a lesser extent than bold. Similar thing with the text messages, which use bold and italics in a specific format (bold name, colon, italicized text). Now, the text messages are a onetime thing, so that may be fine, or you could just follow the left- and right-alignment typical with a phone screen (which I think you did), and just do it in normal font without the bold and italics. It's pretty self-evident what the reader is looking at. But, as for the trailer, I would definitely change that to normal font. The center-alignment makes it special enough.

Character development: 10/10
Every single character is a complex, believable, well-developed person. Soojin obviously gets the most attention, but other characters I could name and provide multi-sentence descriptions about without looking them up include Sooah, Alex, Miss Stephens, Ren, Sakura, Alain (beginning of story), Alain (end of story), Miss Brown, Soojin's parents, Rachel—in short, pretty much everybody. The growth in Soojin's character follows a logical progression from a teenage girl to a young adult woman to middle age. She is not the same person at the start of the book as she is at the end of the book. Life happened. And I have more to say about that in the emotional impact category.

Writing style: 9/10
I already said your writing style changed as the story progressed, and it changed for the better. It was good to start with, but I could see your growth, especially with transitions and descriptions (which I saw in the author's notes you were intentionally working on improving). That does mean there are some noticeable discrepancies in style between early sections of the story and later sections, though, so I'd recommend going back through to standardize everything.

The main issues I saw are contradictory statements and breaks in the fourth wall. There are phrases like "which was probably hurting," referring to Soojin's jaw in Soojin's perspective. She should know if it's hurting or not. Similarly, there's this sentence: "Sometimes, it felt like Alain always tried to shield Elisha..." Is it sometimes or always? It can't be both.

As far as breaks in the fourth wall, they introduce issues with past and present tense when Soojin jumps in to provide self-commentary. It's tricky to pull this kind of thing off, and since it doesn't carry on throughout the story, anyway, I'd recommend going back to write these bits out. Basically, if you break the fourth wall in the beginning, you should continue that throughout. And that doesn't work with your style and the tone of the story once she's an adult.

On that note, it really impressed me when I saw the distinct change in tone from teenage Soojin to adult Soojin. Altering your writing style to fit different characters or reflect something like normal aging in a specific character is something many people really struggle to do, and you nailed it. That added so much to the story right there, and although your writing was already good before then, that's when I sat up straight and was like, "This girl's got talent." This really is an amazing first book, and you deserve all the kudos for it.

Grammar: 8/10
As with the blurb, your grammar is usually pretty solid. Yes, there are mistakes here and there, but there's nothing consistent. You do all of it right most of the time, so I'm not too fussed about the one random noun/verb disagreement I saw in chapter such-and-such, or the extra space before that one period. Things get a little messier starting with the chapter titled "A Proposal Which Cannot Be" and continuing through the rest of the story, but the errors are still pretty infrequent, and there's nothing that detracts from the story's readability.

Originality & creativity: 10/10
I said you defied all my expectations, and that's because I've never seen anything like this story before. I almost want to say the blurb doesn't match the story well, but it does. It's just that I approached the story with my own set of expectations, past experiences, and assumptions, none of which was intentional, but it's impossible to start with a completely blank slate. And from the start, the plot did not go the way I anticipated. I think I expected a space voyage, or interdimensional traveling, and that is not what happened. What happened was better. It was unique; it was well thought out; and by the time the major plot twist happened (you know what I'm talking about, but I'm not trying not to spoil things for others), I had already buckled my seatbelt and thrown my hands up in the air, abandoning all pretenses of knowing what you were doing, so it was just another loop on the rollercoaster ride.

I'd also like to note here that the work you put in toward improving your descriptions paid off. I saw the change as the story progressed, and they had reached level "gorgeous" well before the end of the story.

Emotional impact: 10/10
Soojin is an immediately relatable and empathetic character, which pulls the reader into the story right away for immediate emotional involvement. By the time I reached the ending, the false resolution really made my heart clench, because I knew she was happy, but it wasn't right. It was tragic. And then that epilogue made it all the more tragic by extending the pain to others around her. I'm not a person who cries easily when I read, but this almost brought tears to my eyes at the end.

Pacing & structure: 5/5
You've structured the story really well. The beginning sentences aren't the best, which I talked about earlier, but the beginning itself was great. The inserts of italics hinting at the unknown science fiction element are perfectly infrequent, timed just right to remind the reader that what we see is not the full story, because there's more underneath the surface. You've struck the perfect balance of dreams and visions interrupting Soojin's life, too, and you spent the exact correct amount of time in each phase of her life. And, of course, that ending was spot on.

Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5/5
Free points. Yay! 🙂

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10/10
In case you can't tell by now, I really, really, really liked this story. I'm not a fan of swearing, but there wasn't too much of that, so it was easy for me to look past it and get into Soojin's life. The prospect of a sequel had me literally bouncing in my seat. I might be in for more heartbreak, but you've basically surprised me at every turn, and while I don't know what a sequel to this would possibly look like, I'm excited to see how you do it.