Title: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞© by strawberry1d
Series: CEO (book seven)
Source: ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by TheCieloCommunity
Category: Fanfiction (BTS)
Mature: N (loss of a loved one, mild profanity, sexual references)
LGBTQIAP+: G (brief joke)
Status: Ongoing
Special note (judging): I had six books in this category, and the other judges (mj3648, Lasophie79, Lunatic_Twilight) had six books each.
Result: 90/100

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*****

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: 90/100

Title: 5/5
I love this title. It's light and fun, and why shouldn't it be? Put in other words, you could say "the playful flirt," and that title is perfect for a great Chicklit book.

Cover: 4/5
This is a fun, cute cover to go with the title. The artwork is adorable, and if that's our whimsical coquette sitting on that desk, poor Jimin will be in for quite a ride. I love the font for the title and the little bow beside it, too. The only issue I have is with the subtitle and your name. I think the text says "stand in" right over her legs, but it's really hard to tell, because the font color is so close to her skin color. Same issue with your name. Maybe change the font color in that specific location to something else? Or move the subtitle up to come right under the title and then shift your name into a corner. Something to look at, anyway. Also, I would probably change "Whimsy" into "whimsical" and "turn" into "turns."

Blurb: 4/5
Just about perfect. You lay out the plot and introduce the main characters, and your SPAG is pretty solid, although you may not need the comma after "Little did she know." My issue is with the ellipses. The end of the first sentence with the ellipse doesn't flow well into the beginning of the next sentence. This is my opinion, of course, and it may be fine, but it just doesn't feel right to me. You already have "an unforeseen turn," so I don't think you need "a surprising twist." I think I'd probably cut everything at the second ellipse until "her blind date was." But, again, that's just my opinion.

Plot & storytelling: 12/15
Whenever I read one of your books, the plot is always something entirely new to me. That's quite an achievement. I have to consciously try to find tropes and stereotypes in your writing, because you own your stories so completely that it's hard to notice if any clichés are present. Even in this case, which draws from a K-Drama (that I admittedly haven't seen), I'm still fairly certain nobody could say this is a hackneyed plot. You don't struggle with engaging your readers, either. From the start, you draw them into the action, and it's always hard for me to not comment on your stories.

That being said, there are times when the action is unclear, usually because of flip-flopping from the present to the past tense and back again within the intro summary chapters. I'm not always sure if such-and-such happened in the past, or if it's happening in this scene, and that makes things confusing. But once you get past that and the action really gets going, then it's easier to follow along.

I've probably said this before in my feedback for one of your stories, but you don't have to announce a flashback. It's a bit jarring to see something like "and now, we're going into a flashback" and "flashback ending" when the reader can already tell you're doing that just by seeing italicized text. Your transitions into and out of the flashback are pretty smooth without the blatant statements.

A thought about thoughts (and, again, I may have gone over this in previous feedback). You tend to italicize the text and put it between quotation marks, sometimes single, sometimes double. I think it's better to leave the quotation marks out entirely, because trying to figure out which quotation marks mean what can get confusing. Again, it's pretty easy for the reader to figure out that's what you're doing, since you're still following dialogue rules otherwise. For a nice, clean example: I can't believe I agreed to do this, Minola thought.

As far as the German usage, handling translations within the text is tricky. If this were an actual book, you could put an asterisk after the German words and a matching asterisk at the bottom of the page with the translation, but that doesn't work on Wattpad. I mean, you could do that, but then the translation wouldn't be until the end of the chapter (or section, if you put it above the next section divider). So...I don't have a great solution here. Maybe you could put the translation in parentheses in a paragraph immediately following the German dialogue? Something to think about, anyway.

Character development: 10/10
This is not something you struggle with. Ever. Your characters are always so complex and immediately relatable, and they're always growing and changing, just like normal people. I love all the sides to Minola—the professionally confident but personally insecure woman who turns into an accomplished actress when she fills in for her friend's blind dates. She bemoans her own love life, but knowingly and intentionally flips a switch to become a seductive temptress who casually uses her body against the men she's chasing away via such dastardly (and humorous) methods as faked demon possession and mental instability. And then she becomes a flustered mess when the game finally ends up backfiring on her. She's an international girl who missed South Korea when she was in Germany, and now that she's back in South Korea, she misses Germany. And, as I mentioned, she's a consummate professional, an accomplished scientist working in drug development within a prestigious research lab. Multi-faceted much?

And then, of course, we have the male lead, Park Jimin, playboy extraordinaire, business tycoon, and eternal bachelor, constantly butting heads with his overbearing grandfather, amused enough by the sexy mental case he met on his most recent forced blind date to (1) call her bluff during the date and throw her into a tizzy and (2) call her up later to ask her on another date, if only so he can prove to her he deserves more than a 6.3 on her hotness scale. Which then leads to him discovering the fake dating scheme, so he again calls her bluff, gets her real phone number, and calls her up again. The actress has met her match.

So, those are the two main characters. But we also have the colorful Soseong, the severe grandfather who, oddly enough, loves watching K-dramas, two male best friends of two different women who have been thus far unattainable for both—yep. All the complex characters here.

Writing style: 9/10
The only issue in this department is the (oh so wonderful) language barrier, which results in occasional odd phrasing or unusual word choice that at first may not make sense to native English speakers. Most notably, this can happen with apparent discrepancies between character emotions and dialogue, as portrayed by body language, facial expressions, tone, and actual words. Sometimes, I find myself scratching my head, thinking, is he really laughing with amusement and yelling angrily at the same time? It's not too big of a deal, but it does happen occasionally.

Otherwise, you have a very smooth, engaging writing style that draws the reader into the story immediately and keeps the fun coming. Well, fun in this case. The actual tone may vary pending the story content, but your writing is always much lighter and happier than a lot of other stories, and I always appreciate that.

Grammar: 6/10
This is always the problem category thanks to that pesky language barrier, but without looking back to double check, I think this story is cleaner, grammatically speaking, than Chasing Shadows and Fly Like Flower Petals. It still has its issues, most notably the past/present tense flip-flops, but most of the other issues I saw were one time things, so I'm chalking them up to proofreading misses. Things like missing punctuation here or extra punctuation there, a missed capitalization, an occasional missing or extra word, an occasional misspelling, repetition of sentences or phrases where you were very clearly playing with where to put a sentence and forgot to cut one out. That kind of thing.

I will say keeping one speaker's dialogue together will really help to make the action clearer (along with fixing past/present tense). Typically, a reader expects dialogue to go A B A B, with each alternating paragraph belonging to a different speaker, so if there isn't a paragraph between sections of a single speaker's dialogue, things get really confusing. In most cases, it would be better for you to just put all of one speaker's dialogue in one paragraph, even if that runs a bit long.

Also, when Minola is speaking in German, "Oh my gosh" translates the same way as "Oh my God," so it should be "Oh mein Gott" in both cases. I can't speak for the rest of it, as you don't use common phrases I've picked up before, so we'll just have to trust Google Translate. Or hope a German speaker who can verify will come along, eventually.

Originality & creativity: 10/10
I think I covered this pretty well above, but I can throw some praise for your descriptive detail here, too. In Chasing Shadows, especially at the beginning of the story, you tended to over-rely on pictures to provide your descriptions, but that isn't an issue here. Yes, there are pictures, but they enhance the descriptions you've written into the story, and the story wouldn't suffer if the pictures disappeared. And, again, I'm really jealous of your ability to put together fashion descriptions, and I really hope my characters don't read your stories and get envious of all these characters with more than two items in their wardrobe. 😅

Emotional impact: 10/10
The main emotion I got in this story thus far is amusement, and I expected as much from the title. There's been mention of sad, painful, or tragic events in the characters' pasts, and that does trigger a sympathetic response, but the current events in the characters' lives tend toward comedy. Classic sitcom-style (or K-drama style) misunderstandings, fun pranks gone wrong, intense embarrassment and awkwardness—since you draw the readers into the story and the characters' lives right from the start, you also draw the readers into the characters' emotions, so empathy is very, very strong.

Pacing & structure: 5/5
Absolutely perfect. My only complaint here is that there are not more chapters to read. I know you have, like, 15 stories you're writing simultaneously, but write faster! 😉

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

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10/10
It took me a while to get into Chasing Shadows, but once you sunk your authorial claws into me, I became a lost cause. Seeing one of your stories on my judging list always brightens my day. And this book is no exception to the rule. It's fun, it's engaging, it's creative, and I'm sure I'll recall that hysterical blind date and chuckle all over again for quite a while.