Username: UNBROKENSMILE

Book title: In control

Genre: LGBTQ+ General Fiction

Number of chapters reviewed: 25

Status: Completed.

BOOK COVER:

I fell in love with your cover right away. I don't think there could be a more fitting one. The typography, the spatial awareness, colours, themes, everything was so perfect. My only suggestion is that I can't really see the author's name on top.

While I usually don't like taglines on books, can I just say how absolutely perfect yours is? The play on words was genius. And so fitting. Great job with that, it's so damn clever.

BLURB:

Your blurb is the perfect length. It's so intriguing and the way you ended it... Damn! I would have clicked on the book right away had I come across it by accident. Beautifully done!

PLOT:

Premise:

The moment I read your blurb, I knew this was something different. I have never come across something so interesting and original in this genre in a very long time. Your premise of them meeting through the remote was just perfection. It drew me in right away.

Pacing:

The pacing was fine. I didn't find much problems with that.

Relevance:

This isn't a criteria that I usually include for books but your left me a little confused. What I mean by that is, your story isn't really relevant to your genre. I mean, it's clearly a romance, I'm not sure why you have categorized it as general fiction. I don't think it suits it particularly well.

Originality of plot:

The main plot is a bit clichè but I like the spin you put on it by introducing the element of the remote. That was so inspired.

WRITING STYLE: (CREATIVE)

Dialogues:

One of the first things that struck me about your writing was that your dialogues were really good. But even though you are good at crafting them, your writing style tends to be very much dialogue heavy. This is the general impression I got, but chapter 17 was a bit extreme. Jake and caiden are just going back and forth and there's no real break. Usually you do try to break them up with actions or descriptions, but on the whole it's really just a whole lot of dialogue especially in the second half of the book.

Descriptions:

I found the descriptions a bit lacking. As I mentioned before it's either a whole bunch of dialogues or a lot of narration. But when the two intervene, even then in some places It's just off some how. I'll give you some examples:

1. In chapter 16, in one place you include a description to break up the dialogue which goes "Caiden took a few sips of water to hydrate himself before he continued"

The problem I found with this is, the phrase "hydrate himself" seems like such a weird way to describe it in this particular context. It sounds almost clinical somehow.

I've usually heard it decribed like "to moisten his parched mouth" or something. To hydrate himself is a pretty scientific approach to take.

2. Same thing with a later description during the kidnap thing, you describe tears as "droplets of salined water."

It made me wonder if you were some sort of healthcare professional; I haven't really heard tears described that way.

But I get it, they are all continuously crying cause Jake was kidnapped, and I totally understand how hard it is to describe the same thing in a thousand different ways, but these just seem like odd ways to go about it.

3. Another sort of odd description was in chapter 13 where you say "Caiden was quite guarded by the invisible secret service surrounding him"

I get what you are going for here, but this phrasing simply doesn't work.

4. In chapter 6, you say "he was over the moon and under the weather over spending..."

'under the weather' means somebody is sick. Like with fever or flu or something. This phrase has been wrongly used here.

I get what you are going for, you are trying to say he was both elated and doubtful/apprehensive maybe - but under the weather doesn't work at all here.

However these are pretty minor flaws. I just thought I'll point it out. The main problem I had with your descriptions were how you described Jake and Caiden.

To be honest, I'm not a person that ever looks at a cast list for any story. I just prefer to paint my own picture and imagine the characters based off of descriptions, but a lot of people like the cast lists and it's a great idea to include them. I don't have anything against that per se. But seeing how I didn't really pay attention to your cast list, I didn't realise that your story was actually about people of colour until I came across a comment.

Somebody had congratulated you on including people of color (so do I, kudos!) but the thing is, until I saw that, I never realised it.

Because you don't actually describe them that way at all. I know Caiden's last name is 'Lee' but that doesn't automatically make him Asian. I'm somebody who generally pays a lot of attention and I have taken notes every single chapter of the story, but still just by reading the book, I would have never known that they were people of colour.

I can't remember a single instance where you alluded to that, but if you have and I missed it, I'm sorry. But the point I'm trying to make is, it never left that impression on me.

The only physical descriptions you give them are the hair colour and the eye colour. And I know they have abs.

I'm not saying mentioning the skin colour is relevant or important to every story. That's not true at all. But if you are making them people of colour and including casts from different races, maybe include it in the description and not just the cast list?

The only place it left an impression on me was the epilogue where they adopt the kid.

And the description of 'curly haired boy' and 'Raven haired boy' was mentioned too many times. It started getting too repetitive, and I counted how many times Jake/Caiden hair colour was mentioned for some chapters.

7 times in chapter 13

8 times in chapter 14

5 times in chapter 15.

And most of the opening paragraphs of the chapters mention either 'curly haired' or 'raven haired boy' especially in the second half of the book.

It was just too repetitive.

But the one place I really loved your description was the way you described the diner 'Gabby's.' I read that and immediately realised you true potential. Maybe you could try and work out some more descriptions the same way.

Flow:

I found your flow pretty consistent. The place where it tripped me up was chapter 4 where you talk about Landon crushing on the roommate and then it shifts to Caiden catching himself from tripping. The transition was a bit jarring.

Another place was in chapter 5 where two consecutive paragraphs start like this:

"Jake did hope Taylor would find someone"

"Karley did like Taylor"

Since they are structured so similar and are placed right after one another, it breaks up the flow.

Otherwise you had clear correlation between each consecutive idea, and chapters. Great job with that!

Prose:

Your prose very heavy on telling the readers what's happening instead of showing them.

I'll give some examples down below:

1. Chapter 3 - Jake and Lucas relationship/friendship.

You just told us their entire history in a single go.

2. Chapter 3 - How Jake feels about coffee.

3. Chapter 5 - How Caiden feels about parties.

4. Chapter 20 - Landon feeling weird about Hannah.

5. Chapter 4 - How Caiden feels when he sees Jake for the first time.

My suggestion:

The only way to correct a prose that is heavy on telling, is to first understand why that's happening.

It's because of two main reasons,

1. Descriptions which haven't been properly executed.
2. Dialogues that bounce off of each other without any breather.

On the whole, the "show, don't tell" rule is just a balance between dialogue, description and action (narration)

When the narration does the job of description or when dialogues do the job of descriptions it creates an imbalance, which to the readers comes across as something that's telling us what's happening.

To put it simply, it's just how you present/convey the information to your readers. If you tell them staright up what's going on, it becomes telling. If you add bit of pizzaz in the form of dialogues and descriptions, it becomes showing.

Let's say there is particular plot point: A character is doing/undergoing something.

Narration answers the question 'what is the character doing?"

Description answers "how its being done"

Dialogue will tell us what each character feels about it.

When the three get intermixed, or when one becomes significantly higher than the others it becomes telling us.

For eg, in your Jake/Lucas thing, I call it telling because:

It was just narration. There were no descriptions nor dialogues.

The best way to fix this, is by asking your readers where they found the prose to be heavy on telling. Or you can read someone else's work and analyze if it feels like they are telling you what's happening or showing you what's happening.

On the whole, if a reader feels like they can 'see' what's happening it's showing. So go through the story scene by scene, and try to see it from the perspective of a reader to check if you can actually 'see' what's happening. If you can't, then chances are, your readers can't either.

WRITING STYLE: (TECHNICAL)

Your writing is solid. I didn't come across grammatical mistakes or typos.

CHARACTERS:

Overall, I like your characters. They felt very three dimensional and real to me.

Jake:

The problems I faced were with Jake. There were inconsistencies with his characterisations.

1. Chapter 16 - Jake comes to Caiden pretty frustrated. He is really doubtful about their relationship and isn't sure where he stands at all. He is quite upset. So why then would he be the one to open up first? I understand Caiden is closed off, but Jake is quite upset, why would he tell Caiden about all his vulnerabilities when he is questioning their relationship? Why would he make himself even more vulnerable? It just didn't make sense to me. The shift was too sudden and jarring.

2. Chapter 21 - Jake has been kidnapped, and he shrugs and says "Cool. I should be dead in less than two hours."

This seems very out of character. Your portrayal of Jake is that he is sort of on the sincere and not so chill side. This extremely laid back back and sarcastic response is just not something that he would say based on what you've established him to be.

Caiden:

Caiden is very well written. He is three dimensional, his thoughts and feelings makes sense. His portryal overshadows Jake's and leaves quite an impression.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Your ideas are extremely unique and interesting. You are really good with the technical aspects. You know how to get the reader's attention. As with anything, there are always room to improve and I really hope my review helped in some way. Thank you for choosing me to review the book, I wish you all the very best on your writing journey!