Hello everyone and welcome to the test critique of Shut Up and Read Book Club. This is an excerpt from a long forgotten story I wrote a while ago, which I thought would be suitable to use as a test critique. Read this story as you would if I was your critique partner. Think about what you like about the story, what you didn't like, what I can improve on and more importantly how I can improve this. Start your feedback with #SUAR and then write a decent amount of constructive feedback. What most writers want is to improve and the way we can all help each other to do that is to provide constructive feedback.

Chapter One

I had a chain when I was a girl, it was not particularly fancy or elaborate, it was rather plain. Upon the dull gold, links hung an oval-shaped locket, but nothing gave away the importance of this rather plain piece of jewellery that came to me by accident.

The day I became acquainted with it was no different than any other. I remembered it clearly. It was early evening, my legs hurt from the school's annual cross country run that I had begun to loathe. Mud and dirt clung to the pale skin of my knees that were tinged red and raw. The black plimsolls I still wore were caked in a thick coating of mud, or at least I thought that's what it was. The last thing I wanted to do was to sniff them! I walked back slowly through the streets towards my home, passing the pretty country cottages that made up the village where I live. The evening sun was bright and warm, its glow cascaded across the countryside as it began to set. I looked at my watch, it was close to six o'clock in the evening.

I knew mum would be busy cooking dinner while Dad prepared the surgery for the evening appointments. My phone pinged. A text from my mum read 'where are you?' My pace quickened as I walked with a hurry in my steps and turned the corner towards my home.

From the road, I could see the sign that hung on the wall above my front door. 'King and Son's Village Veterinary Clinic' the woods deeply engraved on a wooden plaque. The Vet's had been going for as long as I could remember before I was even born, I had been told. Passed from father to son for over one hundred years, since 1889, and still in the same cottage in Wisteria Village, Huntingdon.