Title: The Lost Wolf

Author: joanna388

Reviewer: linalagosya

Summary: 1.5/5

Okay, I'm going to be direct here. I think you can do much better with your summary. It doesn't tell me enough about the character, the world, or the story. From the blurb, I have no idea what I'm about to read. And all of the separate paragraphs seem completely disconnected to each other.

My suggestion would be to start with your protagonist, Val, and tell us what kind of person she is. Something more specific than she's not a normal teenage girl. Because that could be true of any teen fiction protagonist. I think you can tell us that she discovers she's a wolf because this is clearly a shapeshifter story so it's not a big surprise. And her life is overturned. Suddenly she's part of a new pack, and she doesn't know who to trust when mysterious secrets about her past start coming to the surface, and no one seems willing to talk. Maybe mention something about who will be the antagonist of the story. Perhaps the Alpha, I'm not entirely sure.

Based on the first thirteen chapters, that's what I think the book is about. It seems to have very little to do with her past life and not having any friends or moving around a lot. I think saying that the friends are going to betray her and lie to her is too much of a giveaway. You want to set up the main story and plot line. 

Grammar: 4/5

Overall, the grammar wasn't too bad. There were some typos and some issues with dialogue formatting, but otherwise nothing too terrible. You were consistent with your tenses. There were some run-on sentences and things like that, but I figured that it was more a style thing than a grammar issue. The two things that caused some issues was the dialogue formatting and the use of pronouns.

For the dialogue, you sometimes use periods instead of commas. So something like:

"I'm never getting used to that." Daphne drawled.

This should be: 

"I'm never getting used to that," Daphne drawled.

This is true of anytime you have a dialogue tag. You don't always need a dialogue tag. Sometimes you can have the dialogue and then it's followed by an action that the character does. Then you don't need to use a comma. So for example:

"We're here." Daphne pulled into the driveway.

That is correct.

The pronouns were the bigger issue though. It's often unclear who is speaking the lines of dialogue. There are lots of she's and he's it could be referring to. It sometimes made the story very hard to follow along with. For example, in this crucial moment in chapter four:

"Can you hold for a sec?" Samantha passed her book and kept rummaging in her locket. The instant she made contact with the book, everything around her faded to a blur and voices broke out...."

It's unclear if it's Samantha or Val having their vision blur and hearing voices. A few sentences later you have:

"Val? Val!" She flinched and covered her ears....

Because the action is tied to the dialogue, this seems like it's Samantha flinching and covering her ears, because she's the one speaking. Breaking up your paragraphs more and using names instead of pronouns more often will help to clear a lot of that up. You need to make sure to separate the dialogue and the action if the person speaking the dialogue and doing the action is not the same. Also, don't rely on "the wolf" being a good enough way to separate characters, as there are many wolves. The chapter where the rogues show up got very confusing very quickly.

Character Building: 2/5

What I liked about Val is how loyal she is to the people she finds, and how rebellious she is at whatever might bring them harm. She is immediately drawn into this group of friends and then she is fiercely protective of them. She's also curious and wants to know more about the world, even though people are not being as forthcoming as she would like.

I would have liked to get a better sense of Val's character earlier on. A lot of it really doesn't come out until much later in the story, after she's discovered she's a wolf. I think you can find places to show her personality shine through even more. For instance, when she meets Alex. They're interaction is kind of passed over quickly and then next thing we know they're like best friends and Alex is telling everyone about Val. This would make more sense if we could really see them hitting it off as friends, and forming some kind of special bond. And that would help us understand both of their characters more.

Another way to show us Val's character more is to really slow down the story and let us experience the world as she's learning about it. I would encourage you to really put yourself in Val's shoes. If you woke up one day and were told that you were a werewolf, what would you respond with? You probably wouldn't believe them. But what if they had proof? What would your next response be? Would you freak out? Would you have a million questions? Would you wonder what you were capable of? All of those thoughts and emotions that you are imagining when putting yourself in Val's shoes, that needs to show up on the page. And right now, it's not there.

Similarly, she bonds with all these characters really quickly and she's thrust into this world with little explanation and she just goes along for the ride. She doesn't ask a lot of important questions and she seems to just believe everything anyone tells her. She immediately connects with Zack and grows protective of him. I like that characteristic of hers, but I didn't understand what the motivation was. Why is she so attached to him so quickly? If her nature is to be headstrong and rebellious, which is what I got from her character, then why does she not have so many more questions about what's happening?

I did have a bit of trouble tracking Val's motivations and desires. For example, with Daphne. She says she wants to know what Daphne is lying about and then after her wolfy incident she demands to know what's going on, yet she runs from Daphne and won't actually let Daphne explain anything. If she wants to know, why is she avoiding Daphne?

This will change your story quite a bit, but I really recommend that you only have Val's POV and no one else's. I found the other POV's incredibly distracting, and it was jarring to jump between them haphazardly and so quickly. Most of the story is in Val's POV anyway. I think focusing on her and really drawing out her story and slowing it down will help us to connect with her and see the other characters through her eyes only. And it will clear up a lot of confusion.

If you really want to keep the existing POVs, I would recommend at least devoting a whole chapter to each instead of jumping around. It's really hard to engage with any one character when we're bouncing around like that. Give them a whole chapter, let us really understand who they are and get to know them and get to see their lives instead of just cryptic hints to their troubles. And have more of their chapters throughout the story.

Some of the other characters pop off the page a bit more than others. Sam and Erik in particular, to me, really stood out. They're both playful and fun and have a good energy on the page. Damian also was an interesting character. I liked that he had a different kind of energy, more of a rebellious, sarcastic jerk who secretly has a big heart. I was interested to see where Val and his relationship went. I was a tad confused when it turned out to be Erik she was talking more to about some of the stuff she was going through. I thought for sure it'd be Damian but he seemed to drop out of the story a bit.

I think with Alex and Ian, you can do a lot more with their characters. If Ian is the broody quiet one, he's probably not drawing a lot of attention to himself. But these kids are all friends with him for a reason. Is it because when he does say something, it counts? Is it because of his actions instead? If so, those are all things Val can notice in Ian, which would help to bring him out in the scenes a bit more. As is, the reader can sometimes forget he's there. He's sometimes barely mentioned at all.

With Alex, it's hard because she kind of just falls into the background compared to the other characters. I think she needs something to really set her apart from the others. Some characteristic or flaw or something. Or, if she's the one who is really close to Val and is becoming her best friend, that would also set her apart. But right now, a lot of the one-on-one scenes are with Val and Damian, Val and Erik, or Val and Zack. So we don't get to see the friendship between these two girls grow too much. I would love to have seen more of it and learn more about Alex as a character. 

Writing Style: 3.5/5

Overall I found your writing style simple and easy to read. With the exception of sometimes not understanding who was saying or doing something, which I mentioned in the "grammar" section, I thought it flowed nicely. There wasn't a lot of time wasted on huge paragraphs or pointless flowery language. The style matched the pace of the story, quick and urgent. I thought it was nicely done.

I really think you did a good job with the violence and some of the more horrifying parts of this. The description of the rogues, all skinny with skin hanging off and all that, was great. Val's nightmares and the pain of the shift, that all was described really well as well. Set a nice, spooky tone. 

A few things to consider:

Since you're using third person, I think you could find better, more original ways to describe how the characters look. The mirror thing is a tad cliched, as well as using the parents, and since you're trying to describe multiple main characters, I would suggest finding more unique ways so it's not all the same. Consider describing things other than just their hair and eye color. Readers will quickly forget that, especially if you describe everyone's hair and eye color at the same time. Instead, try and think of something specific and unique to the characters that would stand out and be more memorable. Does one have a crooked tooth that shows when they smile? Can on never tame their frizz no matter what they do?

I think you could do a better job of setting the scene and setting the tone in your stories. There were times where I had no clue where exactly something was taking place or what the space looked like. When you start a scene or describe a place, it is very direct. Like with describing the school or the gym or the lake. It's sort of like, "this was here, that was there, the layout was like this." Instead, I would recommend trying to set a bit of mood and tone with what you're describing. For example, you say that the back wall of the gym is covered in chains. That's fine, but consider adding to it. "The back wall of the gym was covered in chains, hanging ominously from the ceiling. What could they possibly be used for? Val didn't have a guess, and she found it unsettling." This sets an uneasy tone while also serving to describe what the gym looks like. Try and insert more of this kind of atmospheric storytelling throughout, and I think that will make your scenes pop a lot more.

Super minor thought - but you use "drawled" quite often and it has a bit of a different connotation in English. It's usually reserved for a certain slow kind of speech. It was a bit distracting to have it used so much and it sometimes changes the meaning to someone different than what you intended.

Plot + Originality: 2/5

I think there are a lot of good plot lines here and I think there are a lot of unnecessary ones. There's A LOT of story in this story, and it's clouding the stuff that's actually interesting about it. So here are the storylines I liked the most: 1) the potential issue with the rogues, 2) the mystery of the missing Alpha and what he might be up to, and 3) the mystery about Val's past and her parents, and how that all ties in. Those three storylines I thought were great and intriguing and I wanted to follow more.

But, because there are a bunch of other storylines, this all got really lost. It's really hard to track or care about these really cool storylines because I kept getting distracted by everything else happening in the story. I would suggest really paring back all the other storylines and focusing on Val and these three main plots. In the same way as I suggested you get rid of all the other POVs. We can't track six different characters all having their own separate issues. The stuff with Ian's sister, Sam's marriage, whatever history Daphne has, the random cut-aways to this David guy, whatever Damian and Alex's issues are. I can't stress enough, it's WAY too much. I had a lot of whiplash as a reader. And just when I was getting really invested in one storyline, another one would come in and I found it hard to care because I just wanted to go back to the more interesting storyline.

It also just was all happening way too fast. I suggest beyond focusing the plot to a few key storylines, you need to slow the plot and pacing way down and really give the reader time to follow along. Whenever Val is getting new information about this world, we need to hear it too and make sense of it. 

Speaking of worldbuilding, I was a tad confused as to why this isn't just a shapeshifter story? Why do we need vampires and witches as well? What's the purpose of mixing it up? I found it a bit distracting, but if there's a reason for it, I think that's okay. You just need to try and make them a little bit more necessary to the story somehow. I think overall, you could do a better job explaining this world and the rules of it to us. Try to keep it simple. And remember, Val is going into this knowing nothing, so she should be questioning everything and getting used to things. Let the reader follow that journey along with her and they'll understand everything much more!

I hope that makes sense and is helpful. I know I was a bit direct, but it's because I think this story could really shine if you just focus in. You clearly have a story here and you have a strong idea of where the plot is going, that much is obvious. You have a good imagination. It's just all hidden right now behind way too much story.

Some smaller thoughts as I was reading:

The scene where Val meets Erik was super cute. I liked that a lot. A little bit more of that, fun, poppy scenes where characters are interacting and we're getting some characterization, I think would be good.

End of Chapter Three - Whose perspective are we in here? If Val's, could we get a sense of what she thinks of the person who walked in? Are they attractive? Does she not care? Is she curious?

The conversation after the kids were sparring in Chapter Four - Why is it up for the kids to decide what or how or when to tell Val? Why not the principal or an adult? Why does Alex care about Val so much? They've hardly spent any time together. What's the appeal? I think you can make this all a lot clearer.

Chapter Five - Where are they? It's unclear from the beginning of the chapter what the setting is. Why doesn't Val wonder who this man is who is telling her this? Why does she even believe him? It would be good to see her shock and disbelief play out a bit more here. She should probably be asking a million questions. Or maybe she's too stunned to speak. Either way, I'd love to get into Val's head a bit more throughout the scene.

Why are they training? What's the purpose? What's the end goal? Even if it's supposed to be a mystery, why isn't Val asking these questions? She's just going with the flow and not questioning anything.

Chapter Six - It might be nice for Zack to explain to Val what hunters are. She mentioned it when they watched the movie, she could ask something like: "Wait, hunters are real? What do they want with us? Is that why we're training?"

There's a lot with the parents in Chapter Eight, but I don't know anything about the parents, so I can't be surprised or shocked by this information. If we knew exactly what had happened (or what Val thought had happened) then we could understand the lie a little better. Why does she think even their names are not accurate?

Chapter Nine - The action is a bit confusing here. I'm unclear how many rogues there are versus who has arrived from the town. I recommend slowing this down, really sticking to Val's perspective, and describing things in more detail and with clearer pronouns and subjects. It's unclear often what "he" or "she" or "the wolf" is referring to, and that was a large part of the problem.

I don't understand how Val having visions makes her a scout. Per Erik's description of what a scout can do, they seem like two completely different things.

OVERALL SCORE: 13/25

You clearly have a story here and an idea of what you want to happen in it. I think the key is just really focusing in on Val's character and a few specific plotlines. Once you nail those down, I think this story will really come alive. Having too much story is better than having not enough, I say, as it's easier to cut stuff out than add stuff in. This is all stuff that will improve as you continue writing and revising. Once it all comes together, those who love a good shapeshifter story will really enjoy it.