Title: Heart of Midnight

Author: 

Genre: Fantasy

PRESENTATION ✿✿✿✿❀

Your cover confuses me because it's two different girls' faces, and they're so similar that I didn't realize it for an embarrassingly long amount of time and just thought it was a really weird lookin' girl. My advice is, either make one of them more obviously different than the other (different hair color, different eye color, different facial structure) or just ditch the split face thing and put one person on the cover.

The only other thing I don't like is the text. "Midnight" is hard to read, and we can barely see the author name. The colors of the background are nice and they definitely give fantasy vibes. Just make the title/author name more legible.

HOOK ✿✿✿❀❀

Okay I have to be honest with you. This blurb is a mess. I've read it three times and I'm still confused as to what the plot is. But let's break this down. 

I kind of understand what you're saying in the first two sentences although it still confuses me. It's unclear why sneaking into the king's crowning celebration equals her being a lady. Then the next sentence just has me completely turned around and dizzy because now all this seems like build-up and not even part of the main plot. My suggestion would be to try to trim this down as much as possible and only keep the important parts: forbidden magic, fake royalty, stable boy. This is the backstory, and if it goes on too long it gives us the impression that it's the plot when in fact it's not. Gah that rhymes and I hate myself. 

Then we hit this and my confusion ramps up about ten levels. If Ash doesn't know what the Heart of Midnight is, why tell us it's been rediscovered? It's meaningless. Also, the whole sentence is a rollercoaster that has me screaming. We go from ???? thing that we have no info on, to "pirates wanting it kidnap her stable boy" which is seriously awkward phrasing, to Ash getting kidnapped, to Ash getting abandoned, where? Don't know? That could get broken into about four different sentences. 

Sidenote: if by "abandoned"  you mean the people who kidnapped her dumped her off somewhere, a better word might be "marooned" or "stranded", because abandoned has the undertone of being left by someone who shouldn't have left you. Like your parents or your fiancee or in my case your sister at Walmart. With pirates, this kind of comes with the territory, and you should just count yourself lucky you're not dead. 

The next part is equally rocky. It's unclear why the fairies are targeting her or why the captain vows to help her. It's also a lot of stuff happening in one sentence. I would break that up too. 

My overall suggestions, lacking your own personal flair, of course:

[First paragraph] Ash used forbidden magic to steal a life in the palace but ended up falling in love with a stable boy. 

[Second paragraph] Stable boy is kidnapped by pirates in search of a magical artifact, and Ash is taken and deserted in a location that gives us a more specific idea of how far away she is from home. For example, the other side of the ocean.

[Third paragraph] Ash encounters a crew of magic wielding pirates and a captain who offers her his help for a very good reason that makes sense. However, Ash also has angry fairies after her for other reasons that are explained and make sense. Magic artifact thingy is mentioned again and consequences of failure are stated clearly. 

Okay now I know you're nervous because I totally trashed your blurb haha, but I really enjoyed your prologue. Blurbs are a special kind of beast and you can be a great author but have no idea how to write a good blurb. So let's just move on from that with a clean slate.

Even though Roan is probably a villainous type character, considering how he's introduced, you do such a good job of establishing his character that I immediately liked him and connected with him. I probably shouldn't like him considering he literally took a girl's doll, but he's so grumpy and annoyed with humans, and so gleeful about the king's death. That immediate connection is important, because I can put up with a whole lot of stuff if I like the character. I would not pick this book up for the blurb, but I would keep reading for the prologue.

I do have two notes though: firstly, the spelling of Roan. I assume his name is pronounced like Rowan, but the issue is that "roan" is actually a word describing the color of a horse, and it's pronounced "rone" as in rhymes with "phone". If that's how you're intending Roan to be pronounced, you're fine. If not, might want to consider changing it to be a little clearer.

The last thing is completely personal but it needs to be said. 

For an extremely important magical device that is a central element to the plot, "Heart of Midnight" just sounds so... 

Cheesy. 

OKAY OKAY I'M SORRY.

(You may have noticed my newfound obsession with Community gifs. Rest assured, my obsession with Community is not new and will remain steadfast. Community > Friends)

GRAMMAR ✿✿✿✿❀

Grammar is excellent, almost perfect. I would just advise you to watch out for two things I noticed: repetition of words and unclear pronoun use. 

Neither is a huge problem but I noticed it happening more than once so I'm pointing it out. For example, you use market/marketplace three times in a kind of small space in the prologue.

Or there's this sentence, where all the shes and hers get a little jumbled up.

Again, not a huge problem, but worth pointing out for the sake of editing.

The one other thing that caught my attention was the way you've formatted the dialogue for Margery. Other than randomly leaving off g's, it doesn't seem to convey any sort of specific accent and just didn't read very naturally to me. I think it's because her vocabulary doesn't sound any different than Ash's. Accents are more than just left off letters. The actual words Margery uses, her grammar and sentence structure, should also reflect her accent.

PLOT ✿❀❀❀❀

Ah, you heartless author. You have teased me with the excitement of Roan and his king-killing only to drag me into the dull world of Ash and her castle-cleaning. I confess: I skimmed. Shame on you! you howl. But you must see I had no choice. Were I to endure another paragraph of Ash wandering around the castle and smoothing her worn dress, I may well have gone mad.

Even though I normally only read three parts, this time I let your two part chapter one count for just one, so I gave you a fair shake. Unfortunately the opening just drags and drags. It's not until Roan offers Ash a wish that it gets a little exciting and feels like the plot is moving forward. By that time you have lost me. 

Part of the problem is that I don't connect to Ash, but we'll talk about that later. A larger part of my issue with this is pacing. Why do we spend so much time talking about Ash cleaning the castle and going so in-depth into her backstory? We don't need to know everything about her before the plot starts. We can learn more about her as the story progresses. 

I would say introduce Roan at the festival in the first chapter, because that's the inciting incident. Then you can have Ash go home and introduce her father and her family life while she's thinking about her wish. That way we get a bit of her backstory, but we feel like the plot has started moving forward.

As is, four chapters in and we still aren't even close to the main plot point of Ash getting kidnapped. You gotta murder some of your darlings. 

One other thing I would suggest, that probably doesn't pertain to plot but has to be fit in here somewhere, is to refine your world-building. The setting for most of the scenes feels general and not unique to your world. We have castles, docks, markets, okay. What makes your castles and docks and markets different from everyone else's? To me, they read flat, and maybe part of that is you're relying on the fact that everyone knows what a market and a castle and a dock looks like. Put your special signature on it. World-building should be surprising and vivid, and when it is, it makes your story memorable.

CHARACTERS ✿✿✿❀❀

While Roan as a character pulled me in immediately, Ash just does not stand out. I think this might be a remnant of this book's fairytale retelling days. Ash reads very much like Cinderella, but the generic Disney animated version.

Now this is partly a matter of personal taste, because there are plenty of princess books where I find the main characters to be dull and same-old same-old, but they still get published and sold. Still, I would encourage you to think about Ash as a character and what makes her unique. Because as it is right now, she's not. 

One thing that could help is to think of characters you really connected with, and why you connected with them. For example: I connect with Gwyneth Shepherd from the Ruby Red series because she's funny and clumsy and endearing. She has this kind of self-deprecating sense of humor but she likes herself and who she is. She's snarky but sweet, not stuck up, and she takes action. 

I'm not telling you to copy other peoples' characters, but draw inspiration from them. Try to figure out what makes a character come alive. I know you're capable of it because you did it so well with Roan. Share a bit of that magic with Ash.

ENJOYMENT ✿✿❀❀❀

Give me more Roan getting angry at dolls because they do not bring him joy. Give me kidnapping pirates and fairy wars. Give me king assassinations and forbidden magic. You have interesting stuff going on here, but you're being stingy with it and I want all the things. 

CONCLUSION:

The ghost of the fairytale retelling is hanging around here and I think it's holding you back. You've got the writing chops, you just need to let loose and get a little wild. 

TOTAL SCORE:

17/30