Echoes of the beyond

Author: mia550401
Reviewer: CoffeeAndSilverInk

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SYNOPSIS

Zindagi Bose lived a normal life. She had the best parents , the best of friends and went to the best school in the town. Until one day , everything turns upside down and Zindy is left struggling for survival , having to live with a drug addict mother and a step father who doesn't seem to have any fatherly feelings for her. One fine morning , she packs her luggage and runs away for good , taking shelter at her best friend's place.

Three years later , she's informed about her mother being diagnosed with cancer. Does she care ? No sir. Not after what said mother did to her. Yet she dares to agree to a trip to the past and explore the ruins in search of closure. One thing leads to another and Zindy ends up losing her life.

But is this the end to her story. Uh-uh. Not yet.

Stepping on the other side of Death , Zindy finds herself in a new world. The world beyond death guarded by the celestial entities Karma and Kismet. She thinks she's done with it all.

Her mortal existence on the planet has been served = She's free to live her life as she pleases.

But the immortal keepers of afterlife have other plans for her. She's given an enormous responsibility. A responsibility on which the existence of mankind is dependent. A responsibility she never thought she'd be chosen to be bestowed on. Hop along as Zindy unravels the secrets of Cruciphonix and delves deeper into the mysteries in search of answers. Watch her maintain the balance of life on Earth as she and her friends save the day.

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Note: The following review is written by someone with no real writing credentials (uni degrees and anything of sorts), only the experience of many years within the wattpadian writing world and having written over 50 reviews in the past 3 years. Please note that reviews are subjective and not law, that they're opinions and should be taken with a pinch of salt. If the following review in any way offends you, please note that that is not the goal and it is one person's view of your story. You are entitled to agree or disagree with the raised points. If you are hurt and need to leave hate comments to feel validated, please don't. The reviewer doesn't care.

Title and Cover:

The title works well with the story. It's of perfect length and relates to the most basic element of the story, the afterlife. It's not particularly original, as I've reviewed books with similar titles before, but still a good one.

I like the background picture of the cover. Its colours are eye-catching and work well with each other, and it is, in general, a good image. Font-wise, I always think sticking to one or two fonts only is always best, or it starts looking all over the place, and I think four have been used here. I like the fonts, but the author font is harder to read, particularly due to being one of the smaller texts. Speaking of the text display, I think it's perfect.

Blurb:

The blurb is 271 words long. Even just by looking at it, I knew it was too long and the lazier readers wouldn't want to read it. When writing a blurb, always aim for 120 words or so.

How to cut words? Well, first, the blurb begins with a detailed explanation of the main character's life. Don't take me wrong, this is good, however, the first two chapters already go in depth about all that information, so there's no need to delve so deep into it in the blurb. "Zindagi had a normal life" already implies everything the quote that follows it says. "One day, everything turns upside down and Zindy is left struggling for survival" brings conflict that is explained right away. Why not keep the readers guessing what happened? Tell them just enough to keep them interested without dumping it all on them.

Writing a blurb has a few simple steps that were accomplished. 1. Introduce the main characters; 2. Introduce main conflict; 3. Appeal to the reader (can be worked on based on what I said previously).

Overall, the blurb is solid, but can be taken to the next level if readers don't know everything about Zindy's life from the blurb alone.

Plot/Flow:

I don't have much to work on about the plot per se as I have not seen what will happen after chapter 3. Although, through the blurb alone, I think it'll be an interesting plot. That said, I will focus on the opening, how it feels, the flow and all things of sorts.

For the opening chapter, I will repeat what I said about the blurb. The information is being dumped on readers. All of chapter 1 was a summary of Zindy's past and present life, mental state, introverted personality and, just by the end, present scenes and plot per se. It was a 20 minute long messy chapter. Not only is it info-dumping, the information is written with no coherent line of thought. Zindy starts at the library telling us a bit about her personality and then just goes from flashback to flashback like she's getting all the important information out of the way so the story can begin, only to end going back to that moment in the library and moving to the next scene. Why is this bad? It makes it harder to read and it's heavy on the readers.

All this information can be mobilised, moved and fit into better places of the text. I'd try piecing it together with "show, don't tell" in mind, because this was all tell. For example, the reason she is living with her friend can be introduced in a scene where they are together, and that can explore everything that went down between her parents. The parent situation can also be put during the cancer news. There are many possibilities to explore that can dissipate the mass of information that is firstly given to us and smooth it into the text, giving it all piece by piece without choking the readers in knowledge.

About the events of chapter two, it definitely brought questions. I think Zindy going to see her mother was not justified enough since she got there and showed she truly hated her mother. Her behaviour was also not very consistent. In a moment she was calling her mum all sorts of names and saying how much she despised her and in the next she wanted to help her get treatment. I know you don't just give up on your mother, but the way she changed behaviour so quickly did not make sense. The singing was also out of pocket. I'd accept it if it came with a justification of why singing hurt her mum or why that song came with a reaction. The police also came very fast, which is unlikely unless they live close to a precinct.

About the afterlife lore, I hope the forgetting part is further explained. It makes sense that they do not recall who they are and their previous lives, but the forgetting rules don't seem clear. How can Blondie not remember anything about herself but remember random facts about Guy? If she truly couldn't remember anything about her previous life, who he was and all of that, how did she remember so much about him? Personally, I think it'd make more sense if they only had the feeling of knowing each other but couldn't piece it together.

At first glance, the afterlife is looking like Asphodel. Maybe that's the point, I wouldn't know.

Flow wise, it works just fine. Within 2 chapters all the heavier feelings happened and she's in the afterlife, where I assume it's where the story will truly begin. It's fast paced, but not too fast, it's a pace that keeps readers interested. Although, the first chapter feels slow because of the aforementioned reasons.

Descriptions:

There are almost no descriptions of people and locations. There are many emotional descriptions and metaphors almost touching purple writing.

Characterization:

Zindy is a character who's been through traumatic circumstances and that's obvious through her mental state and everything she's been through. It's interesting to see how her immediate response to being diagnosed with suicidal ideation was to be angry and feel the need to create a world where everyone would be happy. I assume her role in the afterlife might have something to do with that wish.

She's a bit childish too. Her interactions in chapter three show that. For example, the way she is disgusted by the things Guy likes just because she doesn't like them.

From the opening, we know she is a character who likes quietude, which is ironic since her diagnosis requires her to be surrounded by people.

The way she separates her "good mum" from her "bad mum" is very Kleinian in my opinion. I don't know if that was on purpose or just a way to show how Zindy found a way to cope. Either way, following that logic can become very complicated and messy. However, if that's the way to go, if it's going to be further explored, I suggest doing some research on those topics.

Zindy is, as previously mentioned, inconsistent in her relationship with her mum (which I guess would make sense on a Kleinian pov, but let's not go there), going from hatred to pity. Although, she is similar to her mum if we note both think it's better if they just die.

Her mum is rotten and there's not much to say about that. By the end she was trying to help Zindy by calling the neighbours and the police, but at the end of the day she was the one who caused all bad things in Zindy's life.

Writing:

As mentioned previously, the info-dumps make the story harder to read. The paragraphs are clunky and too long. Most of them can and should be split when the subject of the paragraph changes, increasing readability. The ranting also makes it exhausting at times.

There are purple patches and the writing attempts on being whimsical but often touches purple writing. Metaphors are used constantly. This is fine as long as the target audience enjoys that type of writing and if it's done with moderation.

The writing is mostly a mix between too long paragraphs and dialogue scenes consisting of one-liners that disrupt the flow. The size difference between chapters is also very big (E.g. Chapter 1 was 20min and Chap 2 was 7min). This is also not wrong, but readers tend to prefer smaller sized chapters (I'd say 2K-3K).

The expression "Analysed my observations" is redundant. Perhaps the intended meaning was "Analysed what I knew" or "Analysed what I saw". Also, it is not single song, it's sing-song.

The whole book needs editing grammar wise. Commas are not well placed, the dialogue punctuation is also all over the place, and the *giggles* are just wrong. Writing is an art that requires you to describe everything and that includes action. You cannot just write *giggle* or anything between asterisks. It needs to be a sentence. For example:

"The sky is blue." She giggled. "But the clouds are white."

Or

"The sky is blue," she said with a giggle, "but the clouds are white."

Now, let's talk punctuation rules:

Dialogue should always be between quotation marks.

Do not put asterisks anywhere.

For punctuation there are two ways to finish dialogue.

E.g.

"Lara likes honey," said Brianne. (US) or "Lara likes honey", said Brianne. (UK)

This is when the quote ends in a dialogue tag, a continuation of the sentence. Every time we finish the quote with a dialogue tag we place a comma after the quote.

"Lara likes honey." Brianne frowned. (US) or "Lara likes honey". Brianne frowned (UK)

This is when the quote ends and a new sentence begins. "Brianne frowned" isn't complementary, but an action unrelated to the quote, so we put a full-stop on the quote before the new sentence.

Here's a link to a dialogue guide:

https://www.ajcollins.com.au/resources-for-writers/how-to-punctuate-dialogue/

Overall enjoyment:

I only read the very beginning chapters so I can't say much about the story, but I definitely think the premise has potential, and so do the characters, to create a good story.

I found these first chapters interesting and will definitely pull the readers in through their heavy emotions and cliffhanger-endings. I think it'll definitely be a very enjoyable read.

Good luck with your future projects and thank you for choosing me as your reviewer.