Title

The title is complex and interesting. I love it. It truly captivates the reader and conveys the theme of darkness and mystery. I commend you for coming up with such a brilliant title, just a glance and I am already hooked. There's not much feedback other than I hope the book lives up to its brilliant title. From the title alone, I can extract that this work may be of the fantasy genre and thus, I cannot wait to read.

Cover

The cover is very appealing and the purple themes give it a rather mystic vibe. It's almost like a veil of darkness is entrapping the woman—who I shall assume is the main character—and shrouding her in mystery. I can sense lunar themes and thus, I shall assume that the main character is related to the moon in one way or another. Perhaps the moon empowers her? Maybe she worships a lunar god? Maybe she's lunartouched? I do not know, thus I shall have to read to find out.

You chose a really good font for your cover as it appears almost like a constellation. I find that little detail very adorable and it adds more weight to the cover. It strengthens my assumption that there will be lunar themes within the book. However, I do suggest brightening up the title as it is rather unclear and it blends with the background colour instead of standing out.

I also noticed several other subtitles near the lower edge of the book. One says Huda Wasim whilst the other is too small and too blurred to be read. I'm not sure if these subtitles are related to the story or not, but if they are related, then I suggest brightening the fonts and enlarging them so as to make them more visible to the reader. If they are not related to the book, I suggest removing them completely as they only serve to mess up the cover.

Blurb

I already had high expectations looking at the title and cover alone, hence when I came across the blurb, it failed to meet such expectation.

The blurb was extremely vague, and the presence of grammatical mistakes and punctuation errors only managed to throw me off even more. This blurb was confusing and I will state the reasons as to why. First of all, no name is given for the main character. Though shrouding your main character in mystery is not a bad thing, if anything it is an excellent plot device that is great when properly executed. However, as readers, we want to care about the characters, and the blurb is a great way of making your readers interested in the protagonists.

How are you supposed to capture the readers' interest in your characters when the blurb is too vague and too short?

I suggest tweaking your blurb; make it less vague, and expand the length of the blurb to include more details. Perhaps you include essential characteristics of the characters' universe or detail your protagonist a little more. Nevertheless, don't forget that too much information may lead to spoilers. You want to avoid that. 

As I mentioned earlier, I noticed some major mistakes in grammar and punctuation and this dampened my excitement to read the book. Because if there are already grammar mistakes in the blurb, what can I expect from the chapters to come? Please go through your blurb once again and edit those mistakes. I know English is not your mother tongue, so I suggest you get a skilled editor to edit your book and your blurb if you are unable to do so.

Preface

This is actually the first book that I reviewed that had a preface, and thus I shall comment upon it. I found your personal touches very endearing and I am glad that you respect your audience. This preface allowed me to settle into the reader's mindset and get on with reviewing your book. I like the style of your preface and now, I shall get into the reader's mindset and read the book.

The First Introduction

So the very first chapter included the character line up, where you introduced us to the characters by showing us pictures of real-life actors and actresses. Though there is no harm in including reference material, by the time I was reading the actual first chapter, they were already gone from my head.

I guess I just have a hard time remembering, but nevertheless, the only issue I have is that when I see a character linked to a specific celebrity, my mind immediately links that character's personality with the personality of the celebrity they are linked with.

For example, you cast Emma Watson, an actress who I know played Belle from Beauty in the Beast and Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, as Jade the Shapeshifter. Though I have no clue as to who Jade is, my mind basically imagined her as a much hotter Hermione Granger. But then again, that's just me and each author is free to write their own perspectives and add their own reference material. As long as this is not overdone, there is no harm done.

Prologue

I like that you included a prologue, not many books contain that. However, the first thing that caught my eye was a very explicit spelling mistake. Instead of spelling it as 'prologue', you spelled it as 'prolouge'. I suggest you revise this.

As eye-catching as the prologue was, I was dissatisfied with the execution. It made me lose interest quickly; It was too short and the punctuation and grammar mistakes dampened the gravity of the characters' situation. The introduction of the main characters could have been better, as I felt as if they were used as mere plot devices instead of actual people. It was very easy to imagine them as puppets of the author. I suggest showing more of their emotions in the prologue as to help the reader better emphasise with them.

Moreover, you also broke up the prologue into three different points of views — three different point of views that made the narrative rather incongruous. Whatever point of view a story is written in, whether first-person point of view, second point of view, or third point of view, head-hopping is still not encouraged, and if you do intend to jump from one perspective to the other, I suggest you split apart the chapters and give each perspective their own chapter.

For example, near the tail end of the prologue, you included the scene in where Liz is running for her life. Why not dedicate an entire chapter meant specifically for this perspective as it allows the reader to take a glimpse of Liz in action.

In addition, I suggest that if you are going a use English as the language of your book, please write it in English. Otherwise, it is rather choppy and it breaks the soft flow of the chapters.

The First Chapters

Written in Tae's perspective, I found myself intrigued by the first chapter and I was slightly amused by the banter. I like how you break the fourth wall by having Tae talk to the audience and narrate the events with a strain of humour. However, I do not like the info-dumping, as I felt it was spoiling too much so early into the book. The part I am referring to is when Tae just straight up told us about his backstory. The backstory is among the things that I would rather figure out as I read the story through careful narrative weaving instead of just being straight up told by the character that 'hey, this is my backstory'. It just removes the natural progression of learning about the characters.

I also found the first chapter to be a little too short. Nevertheless, I commend the friendship between Tae and Kane and I only pray that they will remain friends.

The second chapter had too much exposition. Like with Tae, you basically told us everything about Liz. I was also disappointed by Liz's introduction. Her personality was revealed to be whiny and childish, and in my opinion, those are negative traits to have. If anything, the only character in the chapter that kept me from yeeting the book was Elle. I was also very confused as I couldn't differentiate Eliza and Liz. At first, I thought that they were different people, but as I kept on reading, I finally figured out that they were the same person.

Grammar

The grammar needs improvement as there were many instances where you misspelled a word or missed punctuation. At the same time, I noticed that you spelled Pearl's Heart as PEARL HEART. When writing a proper noun, it is proper to capitalise the first letter but not capitalise the entire word. It certainly felt out of place and recommend you change it.

Whilst on the topic of grammar, I was wondering what exactly this part in the story meant:

'Who is Elle and Who is Liz?' (Chapter 1.6)

If these are the thoughts of the point of view character, it would have been acceptable enough if you only used italics as this is confusing. You use bold letters to signify that the point of view or setting has changed. So when you used bold and italic letters to spell out this short sentence, I was confused. Stick to one form of lettering for thought, announcement, and the typical text.

Characters

I was not very impressed by the characters as I find them cliched and too predictable. For one, Tae acts less like a king and more like a bad boy K-Pop idol. For a werewolf who has lived for over a century, is it really realistic for him to be acting in this fashion?

As for Samara, I felt as if her character was not developed enough. She was cool, being an amazing witch and one of the four lords. However, her role felt less of a feared and respected ruler and more as the feisty love interest for the bad boy vampire.

Speaking of bad boys and vampires, Kane is basically a bad boy vampire, he fits all the tropes and he does all the cliches. He is dominating and I can see no respect in his relationship with Samara. It feels forced and unnatural. He says that he cannot have her yet they are already having make-out sessions. She makes it clear that she wants him, but for the classic reason of 'I don't want to hurt you', Kane keeps pulling away. Along with that, the execution of it just feels so rigid and unimaginative. But as all bad boy stories go, by chapter 1.5, the two of them make love. Their love story is predictable and dry; thus it, unfortunately, did not intrigue me.

As for Liz, I found her to be too whiny, I really wasn't able to enjoy the story with Liz whining constantly. Like I noted earlier, Elle was much more interesting than Liz. Perhaps it might be due to preference, but Liz needs more character development. I suggest you go over her characterization once again and make her less of a whiner and a more of a character in her own right with strengths and flaws.

The blurb depicted her as fearless and cold, however, in the first few chapters, she was nothing like the woman described in the blurb. The only moment that I found her characterisation close to the person described in the blurb was in chapter 2.0. The chapter in which she meets Tae and he claims her as his mate. This is the only time I see her act anything close to the Eliza described by Joe, and even then, the change is so far-fetched that I wonder how in the world she ended up that way.

I suggest you develop her characterization in a way that is coherent and is believable instead of being a massive leap in logic and consistency.

As for Sean, I found him to be the typical angry, jealous friend. Jealous of the fact that Samara and Kane are mates, he does his all to gain Samara's heart. But in all honesty, he just felt extremely cliche and none of the characters acted like the rulers that they are supposed to be. They all acted like hormonal teenagers in a romcom. I apologize for being harsh, but as a reviewer, it is my duty to give you the most honest opinion and thus I shall state the truth plainly.

Your characters need to be reviewed and you need to revise the way they act and make them more consistent. I understand that you are attached to your characters. As writers, we often attach ourselves to the characters that we create and write. I understand, I feel the same way towards the characters I myself have written, but it is also important to maintain a balanced view.

We must be willing to make the necessary changes if we wish our stories and our character to be more enjoyable and if we wish to improve the quality of our work. I apologise for the harshness towards your characters, but I only wish for you to improve your writing and thus I must state my opinions towards them.

Tenses and Point of View

Normally I don't write a section meant for tenses and point of views when I write my reviews, but in this case, I have decided to make an exception. So when writing, it is important to stick to one tense. If you write in the present tense, stick to present tense, if you write in the past tense, write in the past tense. Otherwise, reading would be a jarring task.

Now when it comes to point of views, you have to pick your choice; third person, or first person? When you choose a point of view, stick to it and don't go from 1st to 3rd to 1st to 3rd back to back. Stick to one point of view and remain consistent throughout the entirety of the story. Now when it comes to the characters, I understand that when you have a large cast, it is sometimes necessary to write using different character point of views. In order to keep your transitions smooth and not jarring, I suggest you stick to one character's POV only per chapter instead of inserting several POV's into one chapter.

Dialogue

Of the dialogues, I enjoyed their banter the most. I think the banter is a good touch to emphasize the friendship between these characters. However, there were times when dialogue just seemed outright cliche. Like they had been taken from an already existent book and then pasted to form the dialogue. I think the most cliche lines were the romance ones, the conversations between Samara and Kane, and the conversations between Liz and Tae.

I would like to suggest that you take another look at your dialogue and please ask yourself honestly, are these lines too cliche? Try to make it more unique, because at the end of the day, your story will be much better and your readers will appreciate your book better. Most importantly, your skills will improve as well.

Overview

I appreciate the effort you put into writing this story, I genuinely emphasise with you as my first stories had the same issues. I understand that you love your characters as I love mine too, it's normal for us authors to consider our characters our little literary babies that we have nurtured and cared for. It is completely normal and any others will agree. However, this attachment can serve to blind us from the issues that others will notice as they do not have the same level of attachment to the characters.

Thus, it is important to be honest and ask yourself, are the characters cliche?
Are they too perfect?
Too stereotypical?
Have I developed them well enough? Are they consistent?
Are they realistic?

Though I understand that this is a fantasy world, even fantasy must be realistic or logical enough to keep the reader's suspension of disbelief unbroken. These are just a few questions to aid you in your writing process. There are certainly much more that we could ask ourselves.

I am very familiar with the fantasy genre, and that includes all of fantasy including its sub-genres as it is the main focus of my writing. I was honestly very excited to read this book, however, I must stress how disappointed I was by the execution. I'm sorry, but I just don't think I can finish this book. There were many issues and lest these issues are resolved, I will neither continue reading nor recommend this book to anyone. You need to improve the consistency of the characters and that includes the pictures used.

For example, you described Eliza as being raven-haired, but the picture shown was of an actress with blonde hair. At the same time, she looked nothing like the face claim presented much earlier. I also noticed that you relied on the reference material too much. Instead of describing the background and the locations, thereby giving the readers a much more immersive experience, you relied on your references and nothing more. The difference between relying on reference and actually describing the story can greatly impact your story. Words sink deeper than pictures. Words are long-lasting, but pictures fade within time.

All in all, I suggest a revision. The plot is a little too drawn out and I believe that if you revise the book with the aid of a skilled editor, you'll be able to improve it. With that said, I wish you the best and I hope that you take these suggestions and implement them.

Reviewed by: Lyssa