Author:

@MrSanguine

Cover:

There is a nice, gritty and dark quality to the cover, which gives a good suggestion as to what the tone of the story could be. The neon blue is striking, and works well against the dark of the rest of the cover.

Blurb:

The blurb works well enough, although there are some questionable sentences, with a strange structure at times. It could be strengthened with some cleaner sentences. For instance, it's best not to start a sentence with 'but', and mentioning 'a brief brawl' feels too much like giving a step by step view of the story, where we should be looking for more of an overview, rather than specific scenes. Structures like 'one of them being his friend' could be worded better. We could get a better understanding of who Darius is, and why/how he is friends with a little girl, given that it sounds like he's a killer. Perhaps looking at other blurbs of similar genre stories would help. I'd recommend an update to the blurb to really strengthen it, as it sounds like an interesting story and could do with a blurb that better supports it.

Chapter:

Regarding the author note, if this story is not for under 18s and features profanity and other adult content, then it should be marked as Mature for Wattpad.

The first chapter worked well to set up the story, it gave a good sense of the world and the main character. There were no lengthy info dumps, even though there was a lot to explain with this world, so handling the world building was handled well. It gave a good impression of the city, and the tone of the world. Him seeing ghosts in peoples bodies is interesting and was shown well.

One minor nit-pick with one of the scenes, when the main character comes across junkies who are currently possessed by ghosts, we don't find out until the very end of the scene that the junkies are women. Feels like it would help paint a picture of the moment if the junkies were described better earlier on, rather than giving us a piece of information right when we no longer needed it.

There wasn't a strong sense of the main character or his background. I first thought he was a grown man but then when he met with the girl Yuki it seemed like maybe he was a young man/teenager. If it's a grown man befriending a young girl, then this could be explained a little clearer (even if it's somewhat mentioned in the blurb).

Yuki was meant to be born in winter, but wasn't? Sounds like a big difference, whereas people are usually born within a few weeks of their expected date, not in different seasons, so this was a little unclear.

The dialogue between Books and Yuki felt a bit too expositiony and convenient, that she happened to be asking the specific questions out of nowhere that'll explain more about them to us. Also their conversation never really went anywhere, but mostly just asked questions which weren't answered. Maybe you could make it feel a bit more organic and natural.

I wondered about all the detail with Vito's pizza place, as the characters only went in for two seconds and then left. Maybe we don't need any information and you can just have them go in, get the pizza, and leave? Unless all the descriptions of the pizza place and of Vito are important to know in that scene?

I was surprised to hear that it was 3:00AM, and that a nine year old was up, and that her mum let her leave the house with a grown man to get pizza. It all felt very strange without being given any context. Books leaving her because he was suddenly tired seemed to come out of nowhere, and could have done with some more internal dialogue and explanation

The chapter worked well to set things up and introduce us to this world, and the noir aspect was a suitable and welcomed element to the tone. The streets were well visualised with a nice and gritty feel. Generally it felt like things were progressing to something but never going anywhere, and it ended up with not much happening. Books was walking home from having killed someone, stops off at a young girls house to go get pizza with her, but then goes home tired. It felt like the moments were leading up to something, at the girls house, getting the pizza, getting home, some kind of inciting incident or hints at something larger to come. Having a slow start is fine, but generally there needs to be some larger elements at play too, like ending with something big to hook the reader or give clues to a big part of the story. It works well as a first chapter, but could be strengthened in places to make it even more effective. The main character and his world sounds interesting, and his relationship with the little girl is intriguing, so there are definitely a lot of good elements to this story. Good luck with it!