Book Title: The Scars You Healed

Author: Optaemus_Prime

Reviewer: Read-aholic2006

•°•°•°•°•°•°•(NOTE: This review is only based on the first 5 chapters. )•°•°•°•°•°•°•

Title: 5/5

Nothing wrong with it, so full marks it is.

Cover: 3/5

If staring at your cover were my only way of gleaning information about your story, then I would have never guessed that your book's main theme is love; your design lacks that romantic element. Also, you should either embolden your title or change its font so that it's more visible—and your username is missing in action!

Blurb: 1/5

Your blurb literally comprises a single sentence. Don't get me wrong—it's an intriguing excerpt, but it's simply not enough to compensate for the shortage of information. Tell your readers what your book is about in the most captivating yet compendious way.

Creativity/Originality: 4/5

It's the kind of fanfic one would expect any ARMY to write. However, I suppose some of the characters are unique compared to those of other similar stories.

Plot/Flow: 9/10

I understand that the male MC doesn't always have to hate the female lead before falling in love with her, but Jungkook literally wants to make Hazel "his" in the first chapter and he doesn't even know who she is. Hence, I found the pacing to be a bit like lightning—too fast. But that's just me, I suppose.

Characters: 9/10

SHOW, don't tell. This rule doesn't constantly have to be followed, but bear it in mind. In one of your chapters, you just state that Jong suk is charming and funny and polite. Allow these qualities to present themselves through a friendly smile, a humorous comment or even a respectful nod. You also describe him as follows: "He had pale skin which was as clear as a mirror. His black shirt was tucked neatly in his black pants." You could edit that description to read as follows: "As if striking a blinding mirror, the sunlight reflected off his pale skin. His snow-white complexion was highlighted by his dark outfit: black boots and an ebon shirt neatly tucked into a pair of matching pants."

That's really the only complaint I have regarding characterization.

Writing style/grammar: 4/10 

Please remember that an ellipsis is the equivalent of THREE dots—nothing more, nothing less. Other grammatical errors include the incorrect use of the semi-colon, using the wrong tense, comma splices, the omission of question marks and using the adjectival form of a word when its noun would be most appropriate and vice versa.

You also have a tendency to randomly embolden and italicize your text; only use those formatting techniques when you want to emphasize important words or highlight a change in tone.

Now, this is my personal opinion, but I honestly cringe when writers replace "eyes" with "orbs". Imagine referring to someone's visual organs as the glowing sphere you'd find atop a wizard's staff. At least, that's the image that comes to mind when I read the word "orb".

You truly possess the expressive hand of a poet; your descriptions are raw pieces of art. However, I do advise you to tone it down a notch. For instance, one of your lines reads as follows: ...Yugyeom winked at her, causing Hazel's cheeks to get invaded by the crimson shade of red as she lowered her head.

No. She blushed. That's all that happened.

Or how about this example: ...her eyes started to shine again with the liquid of torment.

You could simply write: Her eyes began to glisten with tears.

From what I've noticed in the work of other authors and my own personal experience, if writers are afraid that their readers won't be able to picture exactly what they're seeing in their heads, they would illustrate something that should be simple in as many details as possible. The following excerpt seems to prove this observation:

He kept his voice low, and growled like a beast in a strict yet menacing tone that caused shivers to produce as a sign of threat that was slowly becoming danger by the moment... That sentence alone is overwhelming and verbose. Furthermore, do not address your characters as "the frail one" or "the dominant one" or "the juvenile" or any other awkward appellative. Just... refer to them by their names.

Lastly, you're not writing a play, so don't add "Flashback" at the start of a character's recollections and then "End of flashback" to indicate the present day. Simply italicize the memory.

Overall, your writing is decent—clumsy, but decent.

Genre relevance: 5/5

You succeeded in this criterion.

Reading enjoyment: 4/10

In general, I'm not very fond of fanfiction, so when I encountered all those unsatisfactory "wrinkles" and grammatical errors throughout your narration, my reading enjoyment took a sharp nosedive.

Overall thoughts and extra comments: 44/65

You know what you have to work on, so I'll leave that up to you. If you seek any further guidance or maybe have any questions, I'm happy to help.