Reviewer: flyme2them00n

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Fifty Shades of Red

By Daina-ann

Andrea Red is a business woman and the secretary of Angel's Enterprises. She is smart, and very outgoing, but, there is something that hinders her from becoming successful; her fifty different sides. Join Andrea on her journey to the road of success and revenge as she battles with the cancer that's eating her inside, the distasteful death of her five year old son, Mason.

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Cover/Blurb/Title

Cover • Looks pretty good! I would suggest shortening the little blurb in the corner as it's drawing my attention more than the actual title text itself. Speaking of the title text, it's not as eye-catching as title text should be. Maybe changing to a heavier-point (thicker) font would help a bit.

Blurb • Not bad! You might want to go into detail about some things; they're a bit unclear. You mention people in the book that stay there for almost the entire book that aren't mentioned in the blurb. Adding them in would make it more detailed and more eye-catching.

Title • Sounds good! The "Fifty Shades of ____" title is a bit overused and cliched. It also gives off an alluring aura as red is a passionate color and we all think of Fifty Shades of Grey when we see things like that. Rewording it to something like "Seeing Red" sounds a bit more unique and more fitting for your storyline.

Descriptions

I feel like there's just not much description. You want your concepts to stand out, to radiate their own emotion. For now, they're just kinda there. Your dramatic scenes aren't very dramatic. You need to elaborate more so you can convey the emotions of what the people are feeling in that moment instead of just telling what's happening. Where's the setting descriptions? What time of day is all of this happening? You need to convey more emotion in general. Your characters seem to be in one mood one second and on the other end of the spectrum the next. What's happening that's making them feel the way they are?

Characters

I'm starting to fall in love with your characters the more I reread your chapters. However, they seem to lack emotion and personality. What I do with my characters is I've written very detailed character profiles for them and base them off of that. The book's on my profile if you want to check it out. I think going into super fine detail about them will help shape their personalities and how they feel about things. You also might want to solidify their relationships with each other. That'll make the whole ordeal really hit home with how they're best friends. You seem to introduce new characters very suddenly; make the transition natural by adding buffer sentences.

Plot/General Writing

There are lots of holes in your storyline. I recommend rereading it and looking for those holes. You also use adjectives that aren't necessarily correct or convey the correct meaning. The prologue should be split up into two chapters as you have a "time-hop" moment with two completely different concepts. You tend to skip around a lot and the chapters seem a bit bumpy. If you're coming at this from a realistic aspect make sure to take into account real life and how people and things are. For example, Theo's measurements are far too unrealistic. Forgive me if I'm wrong but you seem to not completely understand what you're writing about. The internet is going to be your best friend here since I'm sure you've never experienced spontaneous death (bad wording, sorry) or fainting. I totally understand if you're stretching your boundaries for this; I'm writing a mafia story right now and I've never done anything like that before. Searching up writing prompts on Google and writing little blurbs here and there in the style you want this book to be in will help this flow together a lot better. You mention some concepts in the beginning that you never go back to. Read through your beginning and make sure that all of the concepts you introduce are mentioned in later chapters. 

Grammar

You've got a lot of punctuation errors. The sentences you've written need lots and lots of commas. Read what you've written out loud and see where you need to pause. Add a comma in those places. On the other hand, you also stick commas where you shouldn't. Again, reading it out loud and finding those places helps a lot. Writing in s e p e r a t e d letters isn't frowned upon, but they're not really used in these kinds of books. It makes what you've written seem less formal and more free-formed when it really isn't. Your word choice could be more advanced as right now they seem a bit basic. You also skip a few words when you write. Read over small chunks slowly and find those holes.

Reader Engagement

To be blunt, I didn't feel very engaged. Changing up your word choice, sentence structure, and developing your characters more will help with that a lot. Andrea's character and the decisions she makes is the only thing that's keeping me interested right now. Your chapters don't seem to be in chronological order and they're a bit confusing to follow. Your chapters end a bit too abruptly; try to make them seem like the end of the chapter instead of the end of the book.

Overall

2 stars out of 5

I can see what you're trying to express and it's honestly really interesting. I'd love to see more. With a bit of character work and edits focused on grammar and descriptions of setting this book would definitely go places! The emotions start kicking in around the fourth chapter, which is awesome. I'd recommend going through the earlier chapters and adding some more descriptions so it'll all flow nicely together. I'd recommend this to people who love a good romantic scene or two in their lives. 

Good luck, lollipop!