╭⋟───────────────╮
Hello, Mr. Jeon!
╰───────────────⋞╯

Author :: kimsuga86

Reviewer :: bykhongjoong

First Impression :: 9/20

» Cover :: 5/10

It’s certainly not the worst cover out there, but it’s not the best either. The picture in the background is generic and nothing unique. The pink blob of circle behind the title seems out of place because of the color, so it would have been better if it matched the overall color scheme of the picture used. The author’s name and subtitles are too small, so I would suggest using a bigger font. Overall, it’s a decent cover but could use some more work on it.

But if we’re talking about the theme of the cover matching your story, I wouldn’t say it does that of a good job at it. The theme you should be going for is something a little angsty while still ensuring it conveys the dazzling life one of the main characters leads and adding something that represents the other. What you went for instead is something I’d see on the movie poster of a rom-com film. So, really, in the end, I’d suggest completely changing the cover instead of tweaking with only some of the elements.

» Title :: ⅖

Like your cover, the book’s title is also generic. It’s not very creative, and it did not stand out to me at first glance. Not to mention, there are also grammatical errors within it. There should never be any sort of space between a word and a punctuation mark, which is exactly what you did there with the exclamation mark after ‘Jeon.’ 

The title is also vague because it represents only one scene from the book — Y/N and Jungkook’s first two meetings. But even then, there are no scenes where either of them says this particular sentence. If it was a frequent occurrence throughout the book or a little inside joke between them, then this title would have been fitting, but you based it off on scenes where the sentence does not even exist.

» Blurb :: ⅖

Even if we look past the grammatical errors, there isn’t much to say about your blurb. It isn’t the ideal length, it does not say much about the plot of the story, and once again, is only based on the scene from the first chapter. 

Even if your book is a short story, your blurb needs to have a summary of the whole story, the conflict, and the things that are at stake if the conflict is not resolved by the characters. I suggest you redo your entire blurb.

Beginning of a new start :: 6/10

Hello, Mr. Jeon! kicks off with a good start, but I won’t say it’s something completely out of the box or something that captivated me from the first sentence. It’s decent, in short, if we look past the grammatical errors and the lack of in-depth description. But I’m not quite fond of the little info dump about our Y/N at the beginning of the first chapter. You could have taken a different route to explain why she was the one doing the delivery instead of the staff some other way because her being the owner of the flower boutique could have been a great way for Jungkook to know more about her.

Overall, I don’t have much to say here. It’s a good beginning, but it could use some work. I’ll explain further in other categories.

Concept and plot :: 13/25

The concept’s nothing I haven’t seen before; an ordinary person and an idol falling in love with each other or messing around in secret is nothing new. The same goes for the plot. Some of the things here are predictable, which makes the story a little boring. Nonetheless, I’m pleased with how the story started and how it ended.

Let’s talk about the execution, though. Your book lacks description, or if I have to be specific, there’s too much description where it isn’t required and vice versa. You vaguely describe things that need in-depth descriptions while using a three-line complex sentence to describe something that can be done with just a few words, and this leads to the pace of the book. Unnecessary descriptions slow down the plot even in a fast-paced story, while little descriptions unnaturally increase it. So you need to ensure that there’s a balance between them through your book.

Characters and emotions :: 8/15

There were only two characters throughout the book with a brief appearance of one of the members, so we only have Jungkook and Y/N to judge. Jungkook has a solid character and you’ve given him motives behind most of his actions. The same cannot be said for Y/N, though. Her character seems two-dimensional, and there isn’t enough to know about her other than her little descriptions from Jungkook’s point of view, and it all comes back to the fact that your book lacks description. 

The same goes for emotions. There’s little to no depth in the emotions either of the characters is going through, and whatever there is, feels as if anything possible is put together just for the sake of it. The only advice I can give for this is to read more books and focus on narration.

Tone and style :: 4/10

There’s a lot to say about this category. The book is poorly narrated, and there are barely any literary devices used, which takes us back to the fact that your writing style needs a lot of work. I’ve said plenty in <<Concept and plot>> and <<Characters and emotions>>, so I won’t go into detail here. 

There’s also the point of view inconsistency. The entire book is written in second-person with most of it being from Y/N’s point of view, but some are from Jungkook’s point of view, and they just feel out of place. I suggest writing in a third-person point of view — that way you’ll be able to cover large portions of scenes without constantly having to change points of view.

Other than that, the writing is monotonous, there are tense inconsistencies, action beats, and verbal tags that have grammatical errors and are not balanced well, confusing sentence structures, and many more. 

Grammar :: 8/20

Like I briefly mentioned in <<Blurb>> and <<Beginning of a new start>>, there are quite a lot of grammatical mistakes. Let’s start with the blurb. There’s the space before the punctuations (exclamation and question marks); there’s also the questionable “Sst..” on the second line, and then there’s the wrong usage and form of an ellipse. The correct way to show an ellipse is by using three periods (…), but in this case, using an ellipse is wrong because they usually convey trailing off in a speech whether in verbal form or thoughts, or they are used to create suspense. Here the preferred punctuation is an em dash (—).

If we’re talking about the grammar in the story though, the majority of it just depends on periods and commas. There are so many errors in general, like misplaced commas, comma splices, capitalization (the k in Jungkook’s name — if you want to capitalize the ‘kook’ part of the name, do it with a space after ‘Jung’ so that it should look like Jung Kook), wrong formation of action beats and dialogue tags (commas and periods placement), and more.

My advice, work on your grammar and read books, not fan-fics but actual books with good grammar either on Wattpad or paperbacks. Reading other authors’ works is always a great way to improve yourself.

Extra Note :: I hope I was not too harsh with my review. I tried to point out your mistakes as honestly as possible and tried my best to give advice too. So I hope the review is helpful :)

Total :: 48/100