Sakura Eyes: by naeomiiii

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Chapters Reviewed: 5 chapters (22 chapters)

Update Schedule: Every weekend

Sakura Eyes takes place in the world of Cardea. Sakura and her sister, May, live in a small village and are enjoying the festivities of festival when a group of foreigners come and kidnap their mom. Amongst all the chaos that was happening, Sakura passes out. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a forest with a mysterious group of people, who tell her that her mom is a Royal Demon. This is news to Sakura and her sister, and the two find themselves having to trust the group of people, in hopes to stay safe from everything that is happening.

Now, before I get into this review, I want to take a moment and congratulate this book on receiving third place in the "2019 The Creative Awards". It's a huge accomplishment to enter a contest, but even bigger to have it place. This was mentioned in both the book's summary and the first author's note, which I think is a very good place to place it as I may have missed it in the summary.

That aside, I loved how that story started out. It was a good visual of what was going around Sakura. The entire opening scene was very entertaining. We get Sakura looking for her sister, showing that they have a really good relationship. This chapter also gives the reader a bit of a feel of what Cardea is like. The streets are busy with people walking around or selling things, which can make it easy to lose a younger sister.

Because of this scene, it showed right the great sister relationship between Sakura and her sister, May. I absolutely loved their interactions with each other. May is so innocent and cute. I love that Sakura looks out for her because of this. It's a very wholesome relationship, and I enjoy reading every moment of it.

While those were some things that were strong about the story, there were some things that could be improved upon. The first is detail. Yes, the writer does a very good job at describing what the village looks like, sometimes adding in what the characters look like, but I want more. I know the house they grow up in is small, but I want to know more of what it looks like. Cardea is a unique world, but what does that world look like, like the cities and towns and the feel to those places...what are they like? What's the history to this place? What's society like? What does the forest look like that Sakura and her sister go through? There are times I can catch a glimpse, but as a reader, I would like to know that sort of stuff right away.

That can be hard to change, but one detail that wouldn't be hard to add in there right away is adding the main character's name. The first chapter, I almost thought her name was May, but then I realized that was the name to the younger sister that she was calling out for. Personally, as a reader, if I don't know who the main character is by the end of the first chapter, then personally, I'm not going to be interested reading on. Sure, I could guess her name is Sakura from the title, but even the summary doesn't even have her name. Sakura's name doesn't even come up in the first five chapters either. It would've been nice to put a name to the character right away rather than leave the reader guessing.

Another oddity I couldn't help but to notice was the few grammar errors and formatting the story has. It's not bad. In fact, it's better than most stories I've read, so that's really good to see. There are just a few weird grammar bits that could be improved. For example, in chapter two, there's the phrase "blue dark dress". It should be "dark blue dress" being that dark is describing the kind of blue the dress is. Blue is not describing the darkness of the dress. This is one of the few odd grammar issues I've noticed. As for formating, it's great to see that the chapters are separated by paragraph. The only problem is that some of the paragraphs are indented while others are not. When writing on Wattpad, there seems to be no right or wrong with it comes to which one is right, but it's best to choose one style and stick with it.

Other than that, the story seems to have a strong plot line going for it. I love it when stories jumps right into the action, and that's exactly what happens with this story. I can tell there's a lot of interesting things about to happen, and that can make things exciting for a reader, causing them to turn to the next chapter rather than it sit in their library for a while.

I also liked how real it was for Sakura being out in the wild for the first time. She and her sister have always lived in civilization, but after the events of their mother being taken and Sakura passing out, they have to learn to live outside of that. They are lucky enough that a group of people who are used to this sort of thing can help the two sisters through this, but that doesn't make it any easier for them. Seeing how Sakura squirms at all the changes she has to do—like sleeping on the ground and seeing bugs on her food—it's very comical, yet realistic. I enjoyed reading this.

Overall, this book is off to a strong start. I can see how it received third place in "The Creative Awards" earlier this year. There are just a few technical things that needs to be sorted out, mainly adding a bit more detail to make it easier to visualize and some writing errors that are fairly common, but it can make the difference between a good story and a great story. Other than that, I did enjoy the relationships that are built and the storyline that happened.