Congratulations to all the winners!

Keep in mind it might take me 5-10 minutes to copy paste all the YouTube playlist links in here, so if you read this chapter really early, please wait a good ten minutes before asking where the links are since I'm probably just pasting them in still.

There will be three placements and two honorable mentions, so five overall winners. The reviews for non-placements will be after the honorable mentions and labeled as "REVIEWS".

Questions are welcome, though rudeness and disrespect are not tolerated. My reviews are honest but not harsh, and I spent a lot of time on your books, so please be respectful. Not even nice, just respectful.

If I make a suggestion you do not want to use, simply ignore it. You don't need to go out of your way to tell me how much you dislike and disagree with the suggestion. That's a slap in the face to all the time I spent making it. I won't be offended if you don't use the suggestion and/or ignore it, but blatantly disrespecting it is rude. I get it; every writer has their own style, and my suggestions won't work for everyone and that's 100% okay, but please just ignore them if you don't want to use them instead of arguing with me about them.

For an additional prize of 10 votes on any story of your choosing, guess the word count of the reviews (intro + outro not included)! Anyone can participate, whether you're a participant of this category or not! Even those not signed up for the contest can make a guess.

Leave your guesses here --->

Any guess not left as an inline comment there ^^ will not be counted. Please use whole numbers, not ranges. So do not guess 15,000 - 16,000, guess 15k or 16k. No ranges allowed.

Winners will be announced in the next results.

Speaking of, the next categories I will be judging are experimental, rock, and AOTY. More to come soon. Likely AOTY first since I did a lot for that category already.

3rd Place

Saving Satyavan by romance_lover16

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8.5/10. This section is split into two parts: the pacing leading into the story, and the overall pacing within the narrative (which makes up most of this category). When it comes to the introduction to the story, you don't dilly dally and instead get into it very quickly with an author's note and an awards page prior to chapter 1. The author's note makes sense to put before chapter 1, so that works well. The awards works fine but could also be moved to the end of the book, but that's just depending on personal preference. I personally prefer it when the awards are listed at the end, but again, that's personal preference and nothing I'd take off points for. Either way, the leading up to chapter one is done well with not too many chapters prior to chapter 1, so I think that's good. You don't waste our time by having a million aesthetics and notes and intros and all that, you just get the story started, so full credit for that part of the pacing.

When it comes to the story's pacing, it opens with a well-paced first chapter that works as a strong hook. It drastically changes the main character's life and establishes the main conflict immediately, wasting no time. At the same time, we learn a bit about the characters to start wanting to get invested in them and their personal stories. I always thought that the best hooks combined a solid start to the plot with a solid look at the characters, giving us not one but two reasons to want to continue reading, so I thought the first chapter's pacing was done well. Seeing as the first chapter is your hook, that's a very good thing.

Outside of the first chapter, every chapter has good pacing, and none of them felt like they could have been removed or like anything was fluffy. There's something happening every single chapter to keep the reader engaged, and normally something pretty big. There are war scenes, scenes where Suman almost dies, illusions, new obstacles in their quest, etc., but there's always something going on to keep the characters on their toes, yet at the same time, there are spaces for breaks, where the reader gets to see the characters interact and their personalities more clearly so we can care about them. So when it comes to the pacing of the entire book, it flows clearly from point A to point B, not taking any unnecessary breaks or throwing in awkward fluffy moments. There's always something happening, and every scene contributes to the plot and characters in a significant way. Nothing feels underdeveloped.

The only critique I have of the pacing is description-based, though I typed more of an explanation in the next section, so I'll let future me handle most of that explanation. Still, I'll give a brief rundown just to explain the minor deduction. Essentially, there were times where there were redundant descriptions or repetitiveness within the descriptions that made them feel unnecessary and like they could have been trimmed or removed. I'll give examples and suggestions in the next section, I'm just mentioning it briefly to explain where the deductions came from, though I already wrote an explanation in the next section prior to writing this section, so I'll let future me handle the specifics.

Overall, the pacing throughout the narrative is very strong and does a good job keeping the reader immersed in what's happening throughout the plot. I never felt bored or like the story was dragging, and at the same time, I didn't feel like it was going too fast. I felt like I understood the plot and characters well, and while I am unfamiliar with the source material, so the world was hard for me to grasp, it didn't impact my overall comprehension of the narrative either way, so that's fine. The pacing did a good job establishing character and plot information at a steady rate.

Lyrics: 6.5/10. This section is for the overall structure of the book. It includes, but is not limited to, word choice, grammar, and sentence structure. When it comes to the word choice throughout the story, I enjoyed it. There were many descriptions that I thought were nice, and I appreciate that you gave clear visuals. Establishing the world is extremely important, even if a lot of the landscapes are forests and areas we may be familiar with and already have a mental image of. So I just wanted to appreciate that you take the time to establish world and let the details-like the flowers Suman has an obsession with-matter.

The sentence structure is also pretty unique aside from one thing I'll mention later. The sentences are fresh and do a good job keeping the reader engaged. I enjoyed the experimentation and how every paragraph felt individual and different from one another while also maintaining a consistent writing style where the readers can easily identify the characters and their thought processes, so the balance was very good between experimenting and keeping consistency within the writing itself.

Grammatically, the story is pretty good with few errors and typos. When it comes to the spelling, it was overall very solid with minimal noticeable errors. One example of a minor error is black is misspelled as blck in chapter 8, about five minutes into it and in the second section. These errors are minor and no big deal, so they won't factor into the score much.

The only grammar error that happened consistently that I noticed were comma errors. For example: "The rocks under her feet were smooth and a bit damp and the dirt sifted through her toes like streams of water" (chap 2). There should be a comma after "damp" and before "and" since there's a new subject there with "the dirt." You don't always need commas before conjunctions, but in this case, the comma is needed. So it's no big deal since the comma errors didn't hurt my comprehension of the sentences, but they're still worth mentioning, especially since there were multiple per chapter (about). In chapter two, there are a few more comma errors here:

Suddenly, laughter echoed through the crooked lines of trees and Savitri froze. Her back tensed and every muscle in her body twitched, as if to prepare itself for the oncoming attack.

It should be: Suddenly, laughter echoed through the crooked lines of trees, and Savitri froze. Her back tensed, and every muscle in her body twitched [as if] to prepare itself for the oncoming attack.

I put the as if in brackets since it felt optional to include it. But that aside, those two sentences are examples of areas where commas are needed before conjunctions.

I used that first sentence to lead into my next point: redundancy. There were occasional times throughout the text where the word choice was a bit redundant, repeating the definition of words when we don't need it. For example, in chapter one, there's "Nodded her head," and here, there's "a bit damp." The "her head" and the "a bit" are unnecessary because "nodded" and "damp" already imply those two things. When you think of a nod, you know it's the head nodding unless otherwise specified, so you don't need to say the "her head" as we already know that based on the definition of nodded. As for damp, damp means slightly wet, so you're essentially saying "a bit slightly wet." See why that's redundant? So that's why the "a bit" isn't needed there. The same applies to other phrases, like shrugging her shoulders or blinking her eyes. I don't think I noticed blinking her eyes in the narrative, but shrugging her shoulders was used (i.e., in chapter 3). This redundancy doesn't happen too often and is another thing that isn't a big deal, but it's still something worth mentioning since it happens enough to be noticeable. I hope that makes sense.

Another thing is a little related but about the sentence structure instead of the word choice. There were occasional times you would overuse introductory clauses, like in chapter 4 during the fight scene, I believe there were five back-to-back (starting with the sentence "Swinging over around Kandrat..."). It's not a big deal, but in fight scenes especially, the overuse of intro clauses can drain tension since the sentences are reading the same way and therefore not giving the same sense of urgency as a variety of sentence structures would give, if that makes sense, so I would recommend diversifying any areas where you notice a bunch of intro clauses in close proximity to one another.

I appreciate the usage of comparing Savitri to animals often, but sometimes it got a little much to the point where every time she did any action, it got compared and contrasted to an animal. Her laugh is a snake, her passion is like hay for a horse, her anger is like a wolf's howl, her adrenaline buzzes in her like a bee, etc. All of these got really repetitive after a while, especially since three of those examples are in extremely close proximity to each other (chapter 6). It can make the descriptions feel repetitive and even unnecessary. That's what I mentioned in the pacing section where sometimes it felt like there were descriptions for sake of descriptions rather than focusing more on what's happening or descriptions that really move the story forward. While it didn't happen too often, I just suggest making sure each description counts and you aren't overdoing it for sake of say prettiness or having more metaphors or anything of that sort. Similes and metaphors are effective, though when figurative language is overused, the similes and metaphors begin to feel repetitive and redundant. I hope that makes sense.

Overall, the story has strong word choice and sentence structure topped with consistently good grammar. There were some comma and spelling errors here and there along with some redundancy issues, but the overall structure was engaging and held my attention throughout the entire runtime.

Dynamics & Harmony: 7/10. This is the characters and dialogue section, so let's start off with one of the most important parts of novels: the characters.

At first, I wasn't sure how to feel about the characters. I was worried their dialogue would blend together a bit and they'd all end up talking very similarly, but as time went on, the characters began to feel more distinct with more flair to their words that made them feel unique and individual. There aren't many characters in the story, so I'm glad you took the time to flesh them out. I think I really started getting onboard with the characters in late chapter 3, when Savitri had her nightmare and showed a moment of weakness that cracked her otherwise amazing facade. She had small slips here and there, such as voice cracks or tears fighting to leave her eyes while she fought to hold them back, but she otherwise did a great job trying to remain calm. Yes, her decision was rash and it can be argued that she slipped up when making the decision to leave in the first place, but I mean her overall demeanor is very calm and steady. So her nightmare where she basically goes apesh*t was a nice reminder to the reader that she's not a perfect character. In fact, quite the opposite. It's almost like her calm demeanor is her overcompensating for the storm of emotions inside her.

Suman was a good challenge for her, being her companion throughout the journey and acting as a polar opposite to her personality. While she's battling deep inner turmoil and is trying to remain serious, Suman is far more fun-loving and energetic. Like golden retriever meets black cat energy, in a way. I thought their dynamic was entertaining to read about, and I like how they were contrasts to one another and taught each other valuable lessons.

Now, let's talk about the dialogue. The dialogue itself is pretty good. I like the lines the characters say and how the dialogue branches out after a few chapters to make it feel more unique to the characters, giving the characters, like Suman, specific flairs that show their personalities through their speech style. So when it came to the words within the dialogue, I was onboard. I just have a few critiques for the presentation of the dialogue.

Due to the overuse of actions as tags, it makes it difficult to tell what you are and aren't using as a tag because sometimes you'll use actions as tags and other times you won't, so it gets confusing and hard to tell if there are capitalization errors or not. For example, in chapter two, there's this: "Your home?" She repeated. I'm guessing you meant she repeated here, though it's difficult to tell what is and isn't supposed to be a tag because it's written inconsistently, which leads me to my main point: I would suggest not using actions as tags.

Actions as tags would mean anything like she nodded, she laughed, he smiled, etc. being used in a tag way, like: "Hi," he smiled. It's unnecessary, especially when you often do: "Hi." He smiled. So you go back and forth between using them as tags and not using them as tags despite having them formatted in the same way, which is again why it's hard to tell what's a grammar error and what you're intending to use as a standalone action (not as a tag). I say this because actions as tags often come off as unnatural due to the very nature of what dialogue tags are: dialogue tags, not people tags. So when the tag is "he nodded," it can almost come off as the words nodding, not the person. I especially suggest avoiding them because they are many alternatives to them, for example:

He nodded. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue." He nodded. "More dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a nod.

"Dialogue," he said, nodding.

Those are four alternatives that keep the nod without making it the direct tag, therefore feeling more natural while also including the desired action. This does get better later in the story, dialing down a bit in the double digits of the chapters, though since it's so prominent early on for a good two hours or so worth of read time, it is still worth mentioning and explaining in detail. It still does happen in the later chapters, just not as consistently, which is good, though it occurred enough to be noticeable.

Moving more generally, there were tag errors, like "Savitri!" He said (chap 2). The he should be lowercase. Or "I know." Savitri said (chap 3). Should be: "I know," Savitri said. These errors became more prominent as the story progressed, like chapter 4 had more of these errors than chapters 1, 2, and 3, so that's why I suggest tweaking them whenever you have time to.

The last general thing I'll mention is that there were many times I felt there was an overuse of dialogue tags in general, not just actions as tags. There were many times throughout where only two people are talking but almost every line of dialogue has a tag, even when you already introduce the person speaking prior to the dialogue. I.e.: Suman smiled. "Dialogue," he said. If he's smiling, that's kinda like you introducing him to us, so you don't need the "he said" as well. The "Suman smiled" gives us all we need to know.

I'd recommend the 50-30 advice for dialogue tags, though for the purpose of this review, let's only talk about the 50. This advice states that of your dialogue, consider having 50% or less of it be tagged, preferably less, especially when there are only two people talking because the natural back and forth flow of dialogue makes it so the reader naturally knows who's speaking. When there's more than two people, it's more warranted since it can be harder to keep track of a convo with 3+ people, but with just two, I would recommend making sure less than 50% of your dialogue is tagged. This is because the tags can quickly become repetitive, not to mention dialogue tags are inherently telling over showing, and while telling isn't always a bad thing and is required in every story, downsizing wherever possible could be beneficial to keeping the flow of the story up.

Overall, I thought you had a solid protagonist in the form of Savitri, and Suman was a good deuteragonist who played off her well and acted as a solid contrast to her. The lines of dialogue themselves were solid, too, the dialogue could just use some tweaks to its presentation. I hope everything I said made sense.

Narrative: 7.5/10. The narrative is both simple and complicated at the same time, which I think is a good thing. Its core premise is simple: a wife loses her husband, and thinking it's unfair, she sets out on a journey to go find his soul and bring him back to life. The complicated side comes from the intricacies within the world and all the obstacles faced along the way, leading to multiple complications and in-depth storytelling.

When it comes to the idea, I like the narrative a lot. It's a tale about grief, and I personally love grief as a topic, so this appeals to me on a personal level as well as a more objective level where I can say the grief storyline is handled well. I'm glad that her husband doesn't come back to life and you make the decision to keep him gone, giving more meaning to Savitri as an individual while also giving a realistic depiction of what grief is.

Along with that, the pacing is solid, which means that every key moment in the plot happens naturally and at the right time. I never felt over or underwhelmed by anything happening. That applies to the general structure of the chapters, too. I thought they began and ended well, never feeling abrupt or like I was unnecessarily confused by anything.

There were many plot elements that I enjoyed throughout the story, such as how the gods played a key role, and also the whole concept of heaven and hell here. I also liked how Savitri had to go through other trials less related to her overall goal of getting her husband back, like learning how to shoot a bow, growing more accustomed to a life outside of how she was raised, getting her stubbornness in check, treating Suman more like an ally than an annoyance, etc. These may seem like minor things, but when combined, they're pretty major since they make the plot feel like it has more stakes. We care about what's going on because of these little details, and that made me more attached to the overall plot.

I only have two critiques. For one, there are some tone issues here and there, where the narrative can focus too much on the jokes to the point where it can feel Marvel-esque sometimes, or there will be humor and giggling in situations where it doesn't feel right, like the beginning of chapter nine, after witnessing death and destruction, Savitri is self-blaming and traumatized from seeing more death right in front of her, and then Suman is a bit sassy and Savitri giggles, and the tone goes from seemingly dark to much lighter because of it, which was a bit of tonal whiplash. I do enjoy seeing Suman and Savitri banter, so I'm not saying cut it all out or anything, my suggestion would just be to be careful about overdoing it and also consider the circumstances within the scene to see if the humor is warranted, if that makes sense.

However, that aside, my second critique of the narrative is about Suman and Savitri. In my personal opinion, I didn't care for them falling in love with each other. Even though I said I'd read around 4 hours, I did end up reading the full thing, and I wasn't a big fan of them loving each other romantically. When I passed chapter 11, which is about halfway through the story, I wondered if you were setting up an arc where Savitri would fall for Suman, but I hoped it wouldn't happen because halfway into the story, I felt no romantic chemistry between them, which doesn't give much time to give them said romantic chemistry, and also considering Savitri's husband died in her arms and her whole core personality was about her husband, it could have been really interesting to instead have Savitri stray away from romantic love and come into self-love, deciding her life was worth it and she didn't need to give it up for her deceased husband. Yes, she does do this, but it's also in light of romantic love with Suman, and I just personally wasn't a big fan of it. This is one of those stories where I felt it didn't need a romance, and the two could have been platonic companions to instead focus on Savitri's personal journey and Suman's backstory being fleshed out throughout the narrative. So that was something that I personally didn't care for, though others may have differing opinions on it and loved that they got together. Just for me personally, I didn't know if it was necessary, especially when I was halfway through the book and wasn't feeling any romantic chemistry between them, y'know? I hope that makes sense, though again, reviews always have a level of subjectivity to them, so a bunch of readers may love it, it just wasn't my personal cup of tea.

But those two things aside, the narrative is still solid. At its core, it's about a wife suffering from intense grief and trying to fulfill what she believes is her duty. I think that's a great core structure to have, and I like the way it's executed, showing Savitri's grief in detail while also giving time to other characters, like Suman. So I overall think this is a great narrative!

Album Presentation: 9.5/10. The title is Saving Satyavan, which sums up exactly what the story is about without dragging on too long or making the audience feel underwhelmed. Anyone familiar with the tale will be excited to see this title, and for those who were unfamiliar (like myself), it serves as a title that inspires intrigue. Who is Satyavan? Why do we need to save them? Those questions pop into a ftr's mind (AKA: my mind), so I think it does a good job inspiring curiosity. There could be benefit to adding a subtitle next to it, like Saving Satyavan: *insert words here*, though that's not a requirement, it could just potentially give the title more specification. But that's nothing I'm going to take off points for, more something that could be worth playing around with, but I think the title is fine as is, too. All in all, no critiques for the title.

Before we get into the blurb, I just have a side note about the presentation I'd like to mention. I'm a little confused by the chapter list. It's not a big deal but still something I noticed: why are the first four chapter titles written in normal font, and then it suddenly changes to a different font for the rest? It was just a little confusing to me and visually jarring, so maybe consider having them all be either normal font or specialized. Either way I think is fine, I just recommend more visual consistency there, that's all.

Back into the core of this category, let's talk about the blurb. I like the blurb. I know, I know, it's probably really silly to just be like "I like it!" considering this is supposed to be a long, detailed review, but sometimes the simplest of words can get it across best, and the truth is just that: I likey.

Okay, okay, let's get more serious: I think the blurb does an effective job establishing the stakes of the story, why readers should read it, who the characters are, and the general overview of what the plot is going to consist of. And this is all done in one paragraph that's not too long or too short, so it doesn't under or overstay its welcome. Everything is given in a concise, grammatically-sound way that makes for a good read, and I think many readers will want to read the book after seeing the blurb. So, all in all, I think you did a good job with the blurb, and on a personal level, I liked it, too.

The cover is the final piece of this category, and I think it's nice. It's very clear with no blur in sight. Not even the Wattpad blur slows you down, haha. It's overall a nice cover with a sense of elegance I think reflects the main character. At first, I wasn't sure how to feel about the cover since it is a little plain, but that's not inherently a bad thing, I was just wondering how it reflected this specific story since a bow and arrow can reflect a lot of different things, though after reading, it became clearer, and I think I like the cover. Not as much as the blurb, no, nothing can match my likey likey for the blurb, but I digress. The cover is aesthetically pleasing, very clear (I'm jealous... I want to know how it's so clear even when Wattpad blurs everything), and has clear art direction, so good job.

Total: 39/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) memories by leadwave (Not Explicit)

- This instrumental is slow and evokes a feeling of nostalgia, making the listener feel like they're reflecting on the best times of their lives that they can never have back. While it has no lyrics, I believe the instrumental speaks louder than words, and I believe it perfectly reflects the mood of the story and is a good start to the playlist.

2) Funeral by Sarah Cothran (Not Explicit)

- This slow, delicate song matches the overall vibe of the book and the previous song chosen. Along with that, I believe the lyrics where the singer reflects and attends her own funeral can allude to Savitri's mental state throughout the narrative. The powerful vocals combined with the emotional lyrics makes this song emotionally deep, and I believe that reflects your work.

3) Void by The Neighbourhood (Not Explicit)

- The Neighbourhood fits like every story, so here we are with Void, which is about feeling like you're nothing without your significant other. Considering Savitri's feelings throughout the narrative, I think this song lines up with her well. Along with that, like the other two songs chosen, it's a slower song, so the vibe of the overall playlist remains the same even with the addition of a more mainstream band like The Neighbourhood.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Awesome job! I loved reading your work, so this is a very well-deserved placement. Thank you for signing up for my awards, and congratulations on third place!

2nd Place

The Hidden Crystal by katiegoesmew

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8.5/10. This section is split into two judging categories, with one being how you start the story and the more prominent part being how the pacing maintains itself throughout the narrative. For the first part, you don't dilly dally and get right into it with chapter one with no chapters before the first one. You don't meander with a million character aesthetics and intros and instead let us settle right into the first chapter, and while I wouldn't say the first chapter has a "hook" perse, the second chapter does, so I think that's fine since it still happens relatively quickly, so the introductory pacing is overall good.

When it comes to the pacing of the main story, it's pretty good. The core plot beats happen at their own time, and there is proper build up for them. Set up and pay off is applied here, where things are foreshadowed and given enough time to marinate before they pay off later in the story, such as the amulet Iris is given early on ends up paying off later.

Grammatically, there are few errors, making for a smooth reading experience that doesn't leave me ever having to reread sentences to try and figure out what they mean. Everything is clear, which makes it a lot easier on reviewers and readers since we don't have to slow down unnecessarily just to understand what you're saying.

When it comes to character development, the characters are fleshed out at a good rate, too, starting with Iris being fleshed out in the beginning and then letting other characters shine, too. Nothing feels rushed in that sense. In general, nothing felt rushed.

There is also an even balance between dialogue and description, making it so when there are big moments revealed in dialogue, we have time to sit on them before needing to move on to the next thing, and the same applies to descriptions. I do have one critique for paragraph length, but I thought that the overall descriptions were good and well-balanced within the text. I didn't feel you spent too long on descriptions and instead got the story moving, which was good.

The main critique I have is it does meander a bit near the beginning with Iris wandering around, especially in chapter 6. Chapter 6 did feel a bit mundane with all the directions and descriptions, almost a bit like a filler chapter that could have been combined with chapter 7 to help give it a bit extra emphasis. There were also some paragraphs that were unnecessarily long and slowed the pacing unnaturally (I'll explain this later), but other than that, I thought the pacing was good.

Overall, the pacing was solid and well-balanced. Nothing felt too rushed, the foreshadowing was good, and the main plot beats came at the right time. It was easy to read due to the clear sentence structure and lack of SPAG errors, so the writing all in all effectively carried the narrative from point A to point B.

Lyrics: 7/10. The lyrical composition-or word choice and sentence structure-is pretty solid throughout the piece. The grammar and spelling is particularly good and does a good job staying strong throughout the entire narrative, never having any chapters where it suddenly dips in quality. Like I mentioned in the previous section, it's fluid with minimal errors that are few and far between, so it's easy to read with no hitches, and that is due to the writing style and the way it was carefully edited and written to be understandable. Despite it being a fantasy story, where it's easy to confuse the audience, I didn't feel confused or lost at any points. At least not for long, and if there was confusion, it was just natural confusion since Iris was going through a lot of confusing things.

The word choice is effective and never goes over-the-top. You never risk going into purple prose territory, or what I call "Pretty for sake of being pretty" territory. All the words feel purposeful, and you have some repetition here and there with certain words that make it interesting to try and pick up on. I didn't notice you overusing cliche descriptions or phrases, so good job with that, too.

The sentence structure is also solid and never gets overused or repetitive. Overusing intro clauses is a common thing I see, but I'm happy to report I didn't notice you doing that here, so good job with that. The sentences feel purposeful, and they almost always contribute to the narrative and push the story forward in a meaningful way that I enjoyed.

The descriptions are also overall good and do a good job immersing the reader in the scene. Iris' emotions are fleshed out within her thought process, and I like how you give it a lot of physicality, not shying away from the dirty side of things, especially when she's in the cave earlier in the story, or whenever she uses her amulet and it makes her gain physical consequences from using it. The descriptions include the gritty details without going over-the-top, which I enjoyed.

When it comes to critiques, I have a few. There's a lot of crackling and sizzling in the air, which is not inherently a bad thing since I see the vision here and I know you're going for that repetition, it's more just that when you have that description of the air crackling, there's other descriptions including "air" as well, like you'll have the crackling be repeated a couple times on top of other descriptions, like things vanishing into thin air, or arrows whistling through the air (chap 5), etc. None of those descriptions as individual descriptions are wrong or bad by any means, it's more that when you have so many air descriptions back-to-back, it can get a bit repetitive, if that makes sense. It's not a big deal by any means, but still something worth mentioning.

Another thing is I felt there were some areas the paragraphs could have been broken up more. Not only in longer paragraphs but also in shorter ones. There are a lot of longer paragraphs, which isn't inherently a bad thing. The issue is that since it's written on Wattpad, audience is something to keep in mind as opposed to a paperback of a book. On Wattpad, most people read on mobile, maybe tablet, too. I'm aware I'm in the minority when I say I read on laptop, but I think it's more effective for judging. That aside, these longer paragraphs wouldn't be a big deal in paperback, but since it's on Wattpad, audience and where they're reading is important, so that's why I suggest considering breaking up your paragraphs more, especially when you have plenty of areas to do so. In other words, long paragraphs aren't inherently an issue, it's just that: A) if they're long unnecessarily, it can slow the pacing unnecessarily, and B) with most people reading on phone, it can be like walls of text (which again slows pacing unnaturally). Let's look at two examples from chapter five that show both a long paragraph and something short:

Lightning tore apart the sky, the flash of brightness illuminating her path through unfamiliar, closely packed trees. Thunder rolled across the following darkness. She used to think thunder was so loud. It was nothing compared to the roar of a dragon. Pounding rain beat the leaves down, drenching her within seconds, turning the dust to mud. Wind lifted the branches and whipped them across her face and arms. Roots rose to trip her, making her stumble, falling to her knees, catching herself, pushing herself back up to keep going. Her legs were numb now. She wasn't sure she was even breathing anymore. And then the ground fell out from under her, and she heard herself shriek as she fell through the air, fingers scrabbling to get a hold of something, anything, but there was nothing. Until there was something. She hit the ground with a solid thud, knocking the breath out of her, and she instinctively shielded her head with her arms as she tumbled helplessly down a steep decline. Another thud, this time when her body smashed into a tree trunk, and what little air she managed to suck back in was gone.

She lay still for a long time. Maybe she lost consciousness; she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about anything anymore. The rain stirred the ground to mud as she lay there, gasping for breath.

For the second one, the "The rain stirred the ground to mud..." is a completely new topic that could start its own paragraph since it doesn't relate to the previous sentences. The previous sentences are Iris' mental state and self-reflection, and then it switches to rain and physical action. So that's one example of what I mean when I say some paragraphs feel like they have multiple main ideas, and it can be a bit jarring to read without the paragraph break. I started with that since it was shorter and easier to go over, so let's look at the longer one now.

That first example is pretty long, which isn't inherently a bad thing, though I do think it could benefit from being split up since it's pretty lengthy and becomes a wall of text. There are a few places you can split it, but if you still want to keep close to the original length, you can shoot for something like this:

Lightning tore apart the sky, the flash of brightness illuminating her path through unfamiliar, closely packed trees. Thunder rolled across the following darkness. She used to think thunder was so loud. It was nothing compared to the roar of a dragon. Pounding rain beat the leaves down, drenching her within seconds, turning the dust to mud. Wind lifted the branches and whipped them across her face and arms. Roots rose to trip her, making her stumble, falling to her knees, catching herself, pushing herself back up to keep going. Her legs were numb now. She wasn't sure she was even breathing anymore. And then the ground fell out from under her, and she heard herself shriek as she fell through the air, fingers scrabbling to get a hold of something, anything, but there was nothing.

Until there was something.

She hit the ground with a solid thud, knocking the breath out of her, and she instinctively shielded her head with her arms as she tumbled helplessly down a steep decline. Another thud, this time when her body smashed into a tree trunk, and what little air she managed to suck back in was gone.

It splits it up just a bit, making it slightly more readable. There are areas to split it prior to that moment, but that's just an example of one way you can take it. I encourage you to play around with it!

Grammatically, there are only minor comma errors here and there, and a lot of them are understandable and no big deals. By that I mean there are different levels of comma errors, in my experience. There are the obvious ones and the not-as-obvious ones that make readers think, "Okay, I understand why you put the comma there." An example would be this: It was either that, or drop to her knees and probably be dragged behind him (chap 7). The comma isn't needed. I can definitely understand why you put the comma there, but since it's a correlative conjunction sentence type, the comma is unneeded, and I feel it could flow better without it since the pause is a bit unnatural. So it's no big deal, but it's still worth mentioning since it happened here and there.

Overall, the word choice and sentence structure are good, same with the SPAG. Everything flows together smoothly and enhances the narrative. Nothing feels shoved in for sake of being shoved in, and I enjoyed many of the descriptions and how physical and personal they got. Good job!

Dynamics & Harmony: 7.5/10. There is a lot of dialogue throughout the story that I enjoyed a lot, even smaller moments and casual stuff, not just the bigger, more emotional moments. For example, I liked the part in chapter 4 that goes like this: "You look a bit too young for ale," Mr. Tumes said, his gray eyes twinkling as he scratched his chin. "What would you say to whiskey?" This was a small moment and exchange between Mr. Tumes and Kayla that I found endearing. I know it's a small thing to point out, but it was a cute moment for me, and I enjoyed it. A lot of the smaller, more casual conversations were handled well and did a good job showing us that side of the characters. We need to see that side of the characters, too. It helps us grow more attached to them.

Normally I start with characters, but I just wanted to mention that about dialogue first since I take notes while reading, and that was what I noticed while reading. But moving into the core of the characters, I enjoyed them! The highlight is of course Iris, who is the protagonist of the story, though there are plenty of other characters, like the Tumes, Kayla, Char, Micah, etc. So plenty of people to talk about here, though for the purpose of this review, I'm going to focus on Kayla and Iris as they are the emotional core of the story and the duo the story starts with. As for the other characters, I have no critiques of them. They had distinct dialogue that made them feel individual, and I liked their personalities. The personalities were clear, and I didn't notice any out-of-character moments.

As for Iris, I thought she was a strong protagonist. I like seeing genuinely wholesome characters in fiction, and I loved seeing how she was so determined to push through and save lives, even when it left her physically scarred or worse. Her dedication to Kayla was fun to read about, too, and was my personal favorite part of the story.

Kayla was also fun to read about. Your heart feels for the poor girl who was thrown into this mess. All she wants is to be a kid, and that's all she should have to be, but she's trapped in a war with her primary caretaker, Iris, being wrapped up in it, too, and going through major changes at the same time. They're a good emotional core to the story, and Iris' love for Kayla was one of the best parts of the narrative for me.

I only have minor critiques, so let's get into them. First, there are occasional times you use actions as tags, and while it's a debated topic, I very strongly lean on the side that actions (he chuckled, he hissed, she laughed, etc.) being used as dialogue tags are really, really unnatural due to the nature of what a dialogue tag is. They're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so it almost implies the words are doing the actions, not the people, which is why it's [actions as tags] always been something I'd advise against doing, especially since there are so many alternatives. Like splitting off the action. "Dialogue." He chuckled. "More dialogue." Simple tweak, but it makes the action a little more natural as opposed to: "Dialogue," he chuckled. Or even just: He chuckled. "Dialogue." Two simple tweaks, but both of them feel more natural. Again, I know it's a topic that's kinda up in the air, though for me personally, I don't think they sound very natural, which is why I'm bringing it up here and why I suggest using alternatives.

Another thing is there are some times I felt there were too many tags being used. Not always, just sometimes. What I mean by that is sometimes you can have 5+ lines in a row between only two people have tags for every single line, and other times you'll spread the tags out more and it's more balanced, so it's not a huge deal, though consider keeping dialogue tags more in the back of your mind while editing to see if there are ever any times you're using a lot of them in a row, especially when only two people are talking. If three or more people are talking, sure, it's more warranted so readers don't get lost, but when only two are talking, it's not as warranted since we can naturally follow along and don't need to be told who's speaking every line, if that makes sense. If you ever are curious about tags and balancing them as a whole, my dad once gave me advice I use to this day called the 50-30 advice for tags. The 50 is the part we'll focus on, but I'll say the 30 anyway for your reference. The advice he gave me was for all your dialogue, 50% or less should be tagged, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. The 30% doesn't apply here since I think the tags you use-aside from the actions as tags-are good, and you have a great balance there, so that's why I said we can focus on the 50. I just included the 30 so you know where it comes from. But anywho, back on topic, the 50% or less is what to focus on, so if you have, say, 20 lines, consider finding ways to ensure you use, at most, 10 tags. It's not a hard set rule, and it changes depending on circumstances (i.e., more than two people talking, like I said earlier), though it could be something worth considering if you're ever curious to try it! I'm very anti-tag, if you can't tell, haha, so that's why I brought the 50-30 advice up since it helped me a lot.

But otherwise, I thought the dialogue was really good! Like I said, there were many cute interactions that made the story more interesting and engaging, and I thought each line of dialogue was unique to the person. Nothing felt out-of-character or out of place, which also made for good character building.

Overall, the character and dialogue work was solid. I particularly enjoyed the dialogue. I really, really like dialogue, so I'm glad I got a chance to talk about it here. One of my favorite movies is Prisoners (dir. Denis Villeneuve, my fave) due to the powerful dialogue, and ever since I watched it, I've been a character and dialogue girl at heart. So you did a great job with the dialogue here, and I enjoyed the character journeys, too!

Narrative: 8.5/10. The narrative is a mix of simple and complex, taking on the fantasy mantle and giving us classic fantasy elements everyone will recognize-magic, dragons, a magical object, etc. These recognizable elements keep us grounded in the narrative when the more whimsical and out-there ideas occur, mixing into the complex side of the narrative with the rising tensions between friends, the struggles of pressure being placed on the youth, and the general idea of war and how it truly impacts individuals.

I enjoyed the mix of fantasy and real life issues, like the topic of orphans and orphanages is a big one throughout due to Iris' upbringing, and it always surprises me when I remember she's not like in her 50s or something. She's on the younger side despite how she acts a bit older, and it's because she had to grow up faster than most as she basically takes care of everyone, hence why so many people are reliant on her and look for her when things go wrong. And then she has to deal with magic and getting kidnapped, too? Sheesh, she's not having a fun day, huh? Then it just keeps getting worse when she basically begs to heal an injured man only to then take on the injuries herself, and then she has to go through trials and learn magic and navigate through people using her for her abilities etc. etc.

In short: Iris cannot catch a break.

But, honestly, that's what gives the narrative a lot of tension and intrigue. You never know what's going to happen next, and that keeps the audience quite literally on the edge of their seat so they can put the phone down and take a pacing break at a moment's notice.

The only minor critiques are an accumulation of the things I've said before about the pacing in chapter 6 taking a bit of a step back, which is pretty important since it's so early on in the story that it may turn readers off about the story, same with the paragraphs being overly long unnecessarily at times, which is hard to read and could bring readers out of the narrative. I was brought out of it at times due to the walls of text, especially during action scenes (I would recommend increasing the pacing during action scenes to increase tension, though it depends on your goal with the scenes), though those aren't big deals, so I'm not going to deduct much for it. Minor deductions at most. It's a solid narrative, so it deserves a high score.

Overall, the narrative does a good job presenting interesting ideas about being an orphan with the fantasy elements blending together to make for an intriguing tale. I didn't have much in regards to critiques for it, so that goes to show it's overall a solid narrative!

Album Presentation: 8/10. The title is The Hidden Crystal, which is overall okay. I don't really have much to say about it, to be honest. It's to-the-point and captures classic fantasy elements in it. I don't have anything to say other than it works and does what it needs to to capture the fantasy charm.

As for the blurb, it's an overall good blurb. It tells the audience what to expect from the story but doesn't give too much away. It introduces the protagonist, some side characters, and the overall premise while raising questions about what will happen to Iris. The fantastical side of the story is also introduced, and we get to see the other side of the story with the dragons in a way that feels natural. The only minor, and very minor at that, critique I have is I would suggest having it be "knows and loves her" instead of "knows her and loves her." I know it's just a one word difference, but it could flow smoother that way (this is in the third sentence). Otherwise, I think the blurb is solid.

The cover is the final piece of this category and this review! The cover is pretty nice. I like the formatting and structure of it with how you have the golden borders up top and on bottom. It's a neat graphic to look at! I also enjoy the starry background that hints at wonder, giving it a sci-fi/fantastical vibe that matches in with the story. The only thing I'm not sure about is the necklace on the cover. Considering the rest of the background feels very alive, the necklace feels a little... stiff? Is that the word? Maybe having a necklace where the chain is bundled up or flowing more could give it a bit more animation, if that makes sense. But I'm also not a graphic designer, so I would recommend getting second opinions from people who know far more than I ever could about graphics before making any changes. Other than that, I enjoyed the cover.

Total: 39.5/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) Can You Hear The Music by Ludwig Goransson (Not explicit)

- Yes, I chose a track from the Oppenheimer soundtrack for this. I just feel the whimsical, magical nature of the instrumental perfectly captures Iris' journey and how she discovers who she is. It's a powerful track that honestly brings a tear to my eyes sometimes, and I think it kicks off the playlist with a memorable bang.

2) I... by Mr.Kitty (Not explicit)

- Also an instrumental, I... was created by the artist most known for his smash hit, After Dark; however, I believe much of his profound work goes unnoticed due to that song's popularity. I... is a beautifully tragic instrumental that acts as the introduction to his album, A.I., and now acts as a middle piece to The Hidden Crystal's playlist! I think the depth of the instrumental makes it such a perfect fit for the storm of emotions happening within Iris.

3) Blood Upon the Snow by Hozier (Not explicit)

- Made for the game God of War Ragnarök, Blood Upon the Snow is a fantastical song that I think fits with the darker side of your narrative, and it has such a catchy instrumental that I think it will pull anyone in. I chose this song to close off the playlist because of its powerful lyrics about nature and snow mixing with blood (as the title implies), and it's all-in-all a pretty interesting and engaging song I think reflects the story well.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Congratulations on second place! Your work was a very good time and had lots of depth to it. You did awesome!

1st Place

Morsels by SeraDrake

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8.5/10. This section is split into two parts: the pacing leading into the story, and the story's general pacing, with the pacing leading into the story making up about 2 points of the total score. You get full credit for that because there is no dilly dallying or anything of the sort. There are interesting page splashes before diving into it. It's formatted like a proper manuscript and looks very professional. So full credit for that side of the pacing.

As for the general story pacing, it's good! The Yarn chapter is particularly paced well, and I think the different sections within many of the stories made for an easier reading experience. It gave us time to digest what was happening and truly feel like we're immersed in the stories. The plot beats come at their proper times, even for the more casual stories, like the Muse one, where it was deep literature with little in terms of plot and more in terms of themes, where the themes were explored at a good, balanced rate that didn't feel too slow or too rushed.

When it comes to critiques, the only thing I would say is there were some overly long paragraphs that had a few ideas in it that could have been trimmed, but that didn't happen too often, at least not often enough to be too distracting, and it wouldn't be as big a deal in like paperback, but for Wattpad, where most people read on phone, it can be walls of text that become difficult to read and easy to lose our places when we need to scroll down to see the rest of the paragraph (if there's still a lot left after scrolling). So, again, not a big deal, but still worth mentioning.

The second thing is One Of The Girls moves a little too quickly. Like the Aphrodite scene went by very quickly, leaving little time to process what was happening. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was very well-written in terms of its word choice and structure, but maybe just a little more time to marinate in the moment, if that makes sense. For example, maybe a little more description in the moment so we can understand what's happening since that scene is very short and steams by real fast. And I'm fine with it going fast; in fact, maybe it even makes sense for it to since her life is changing in the blink of an eye. However, it could potentially be slowed down a bit so it's more understandable.

Overall, the pacing of the shorts that I read was good, often broken into sections to help readers digest it in bite-sized chunks. The blurb certainly does not lie-these stories are, in fact, quick bites. They effectively tell a tale in a small word count, never overstaying their welcomes. All in all, the pacing is solid.

Lyrics: 7/10. This section judges the word choice, sentence structure, and SPAG, along with anything else I feel is relevant (i.e., descriptions). SPAG-wise, your spelling, punctuation, and grammar is really, really solid. That makes it really fun to read for me personally since I spend a lot of time correcting grammar and talking about grammar, and by the time I'm done, I'm exhausted and don't have the stamina to talk as much about the creative side of stories, which is the whole point of stories! Of course I don't mind talking about grammar since I understand it's extremely difficult, but it's also nice to just read a story and not worry about the SPAG. So, good job! The SPAG is great.

As for the word choice, that is also great. I didn't notice you repeating any words unnecessarily or getting repetitive with the sentence structure. The word choice felt like a dance, with you giving us new words to digest while we danced to keep up, and I mean that in a good way. It's fun, it's imaginative, and it always keeps the readers on their toes. I'd say the fun word choice was one of the best parts about Morsels, so excellent job including that within the pieces.

Lastly, the sentence structure. As I mentioned above, I didn't notice any repetitive sentence structures. Everything felt entertaining to read since you weren't repeating anything for sake of repeating things, making it more unique, and I think the sentence structure was diverse enough that I didn't notice any of the same sentence types more than twice in a row. Truly great work.

I only have a couple of minor critiques. For one, sometimes you overuse commas to the point where there are awkward sentences (or sentences with incorrect commas). For most of them, I can understand why commas were used, and they're not necessarily grammatically wrong, they're just not needed. For example: Like the others, it has long strings attached, to make it easier to tie it on to a crossbow. The second comma isn't needed and makes the sentence a little awkward. This is an example where I understand why you used the comma, though I don't feel it's necessary, and it made the sentence a little clunky for me. I read it both in my head and out loud first with the pause then without it, and I felt it flowed smoother without it.

The same applies for semicolons. Like this sentence: Just when it looked like the day might finally reach a climax and there would be some rest, somebody came in through the door five dollars lighter than they'd been previously; and it was time to put another dollar in the jukebox and get up on stage again. And this one as well: When she got up onto the stage, she was not the best dancer in the world - but she had beautiful long golden-blonde hair that went nearly down to her knees; and eyes to match. I felt the semicolons were a bit awkward in those sentences.

The last critique I have is something that I'm not entirely sure how to explain, so I'll try my best. The writing style is good, though it does lead to the first person POVs feeling very similar if not identical, which takes away a bit from the individuality of the characters. By that I mean, each POV is written almost identically in terms of thought process. For example, there is a lot of parenthetical information written in the same... quirky? style, same with how the general character thought process is. I'm not sure if "quirky" is the right word for it, but something along those lines. Like I said, it's a good writing style that hooks me in, but for the individual narrations, it could be interesting to experiment a little more since these are all pretty different stories, so consider changing up the narration and presentation of the characters here and there, if that makes sense.

Overall, the lyrical composition-the SPAG, word choice, and sentence structure-is very good. The word choice is playful and imaginative and does a good job keeping the reader engaged throughout the short runtimes of each... well, short! I only had minor critiques but otherwise thought it was good.

Dynamics & Harmony: 8/10. There are a bunch of characters to unpack due to there being a lot of characters throughout the narrative, with each new story sporting new characters and narrators to get attached to. Many of the stories are more like just-so narratives with relatively simple premises presented in unique ways, and there isn't too too much dialogue. However, the dialogue is formatted correctly, with no errors in the tags or formatting. That is excellent. It is one of the most common errors on Wattpad to the point where I believe you are one of only two participants in this category where I will not have any critiques for the SPAG of the dialogue, that is how often I see tag errors.

So, when it comes to the dialogue, I think it's great. The overall SPAG being good means that all the lines flow together, making for fluid dialogue that I feel was very interesting to read. There wasn't a single time I was bored by the dialogue or thought it was over-the-top, unrealistic, off-putting, etc. I enjoyed every line and thought it was great to read!

The characters all vary from narrative to narrative, though I think Wildfire was probably one of my favorites... and, no, it wasn't because she's a redhead...

Though that did NOT hurt...

Anyway! Back on topic!

I'd say Wildfire because I enjoyed that overall narrative a lot, and I thought the names and themes of identity were super interesting and well-explored through Wildfire's eyes, though the narrator of the Yarn chapter was another character that I enjoyed, and the opening of that chapter was well-written and hooking.

There were also quite a few lines of dialogue throughout the narrative that I enjoyed. I don't mean to back track to dialogue, but my mind cannot work chronologically to save its life. Speaking of the Wildfire chapter, I liked the line "Oh God. Not another girl with a thing for weird names. How do you spell that?" It was a funny moment that also highlights how identity is viewed through these girls, and also, as a bonus, it establishes how long the bar has been in business for them to see this pattern so much, doing a minor, subtle part of worldbuilding without being too on-the-nose about it. I know it's probably strange that I'm saying this much over three short sentences, but I enjoyed that line very much and wanted to point it out since the dialogue in that chapter in particular was great!

The only critiques are what I mentioned before about the POVs being so similar that all the characters feel very similar if not the same (in terms of narration style), but it's clear they are different characters and not the same person experiencing all these different events. But I'm not gonna talk your ear off about it when I mentioned it in the previous section already, but I still wanted to mention it so you know where deductions came from, though I'm only going to make them minor deductions since this section deserves a high score. Overall, the character and dialogue work throughout Morsels was great.

Narrative: 8.5/10. Before I delve into the various narratives present throughout the anthology, I want to make clear which ones I am judging. I read and judged all the ones without graphic sexual content, so every one without the * in front of the chapter title. I don't mind reading explicit content for judging and reviews, though if there's an option where I can avoid it, I take it, so that's why I stuck with the non-graphic ones, and I hope that is okay. There were enough of them that I feel I got a pretty good sample of the writing style within Morsels either way.

The narratives change depending on the story you're reading, with some dealing with an artist and a muse and others dealing with a dance bar (not kid-friendly dancing!). But either way, all of them are engaging and do a good job hooking the reader in, with each of them having solid openings and thought-provoking endings that make the reader think hmm, now I gotta analyze this for a while...

All of these ideas are unique and not something I think I've seen many stories on before (aside from the nude bar for probably obvious reasons). That makes each chapter feel unique from the last in terms of its plot structure and how the narrative unfolds. The themes are all different per story, making them feel engaging and hooking each time, and you give us just enough detail sprinkled throughout to make us get a clear visual without overdoing it, making for a great balance.

Critique-wise, the only minor deductions are an accumulation of everything I've said before about about the pacing and how it could use some tweaks here and there and some things with the POV, but other than those two minor things, I thought the narratives present throughout Morsels were solid and deserving of a high score.

Album Presentation: 9/10. The title is Morsels: Tales of Love and Passion, and I think that title works well for the short story compilation. It rolls off the tongue well and gives the reader something satisfying to look at. Is that weird to say? I don't know, the title just looks satisfying. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I like it, so no critiques for the title.

The blurb is simple and to-the-point, offering readers a glimpse of the kind of stories you write along with a warning about some of them being on the spicier side of things. It's how a blurb for a short story compilation should be since it gives a general rundown of what to expect without being over-the-top. Or on the other side of things, it's not too vague. It strikes a good balance, in that sense. I didn't notice any SPAG errors, and the blurb does what it needs to to tell readers about what the stories are going to be about. No critiques.

The cover, like everything else, is very pretty. It does a good job keeping it general since the cover is reflecting a general series of stories rather than just one or two specific stories, but at the same time it does a good job giving the readers a clue of what the overall tone of the anthology is going to be. The background image chosen is very nice and visually satisfying to look at, and I also like the font choice. The text is neither too big or too small, and I also liked the choice to have blocks of dark red behind the text. The blocks aren't distracting in any way since they aren't too visible but also not invisible enough to make readers ask "Why even include them?" They do their job to make the text stand out without becoming over-reliant on them.

The only very minor thing I'm sure is just a personal thing (I am far from a graphic designer, after all) is that I wasn't sure about the placement of the title and author's name and thought it could be interesting to see the title slightly a bit higher and the author's name a bit lower. Mostly the author's name and the title not as much. But that was just a minor personal thing and nothing crazy. The cover is very pretty and does a good job setting the tone for the stories we're going to read.

Total: 41/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) Uninvited by Alanis Morissette (Not explicit)

- Alanis fits a lot of stories, though I think Uninvited fits Morsels well due to the elegant instrumental that makes you feel like you're ascending. The message of the song being quite literally about uninvited individuals entering Alanis' life is really, really interesting, and I think it matches in with the overall intriguing ideas presented throughout Morsels.

2) In Cold Light by Vanbur (Not explicit)

- I feel like violin fits Morsels, don't you think? Well, that's why I chose In Cold Light. I think it's a wonderful song that's mostly instrumental with light vocals here and there, though it's hard to distinguish what the voices are saying. It's a beautiful blend of music that I think matches the vibe of Morsels quite well, seeing as Morsels has a blend of quite a few things, too.

3) You Jane by Cinerama (Not explicit)

- You Jane has a beat that immediately made me want to put it on the playlist for Morsels. It's a fun song that touches on some deeper topics while maintaining an interesting beat. I think the beat is the highlight here and the whole reason I put it here in the first place, as it's funky and unique while also not dominating over the vocals and giving the singers a chance to shine, too. I think it's a great song to close out the Morsels playlist.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Congratulations on first place! Morsels is an engaging read that I was entertained by. Great job, and thank you for signing up!

Honorable Mention

Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right by CarmenJohnson599

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8/10. This is a oneshot story, so there is no dilly-dallying and you get right into the story. It has two story parts, with the first part giving credit to the story prompt, and then it jumps right in, so when it comes to the flow into the oneshot, it works well. You don't have unnecessary chapter parts and everything flows smoothly in that regard.

As for the pacing, it's overall good. You don't dilly dally, like I mentioned before, and you waste no time getting to the point and keeping the readers involved in what's going on. The pacing is consistent throughout the narrative itself and flows from beginning to end very smoothly.

I only have one critique regarding the knife and considering slowing down to flesh that part out more, though I will be more specific about it in the narrative section. I wrote that part before writing this part, so I already explained myself there. I just thought I'd bring it up here to explain why there were deductions, though I will explain myself in more detail later.

But that aside, I overall thought the pacing and structure of the book was well-done. It's formatted well, doesn't ever get hard to read (in a literal sense: like I struggle to read it because the font is wrong or something; there's none of that here), and it does a good job keeping my attention throughout every core narrative beat. So, all in all, you did a good job with making the book feel cohesive and like every scene connects to the last without unnecessary stops.

Lyrics: 6.5/10. The lyrical composition of the book overall works for the story, though I do have some recommendations. Before I get into the recommendations, though, I'd like to point out a few things I enjoyed about the language you used throughout the book. For starters, I liked Andrea never looking up and always having her head buried in something. That consistent character trait made me learn a bit about her to give her more individuality before she got a knife to the throat. It's a small thing, but I liked that part of it, and I liked how you kept that consistent with short and clear word choice to establish that part of her.

Another thing I liked was how you went about writing Andrea's death scene. I liked the word choice there and how, again, it was short and clear, adding to the shock factor. Even though it's written so clearly, the audience is left asking "What just happened?" over and over, which juxtaposes the clear language. We're being shown so clearly what's happening, but we still don't believe it, and I mean that in the best way possible since it creates natural juxtaposition. I love that part of the story a lot, and I think that's where your cool word choice shines through.

When it comes to my recommendations, the first thing I'll say is there are a lot of sentences starting with "I," which can get a bit repetitive to read at times. It's a really unique story idea, which I'll talk about more in the narrative section, so it's not really a huge deal when you have such a cool idea to balance it out, though I do recommend playing around with your sentence structure, especially when writing in first person. It can be challenging to really play around and start more sentences without I when writing in first person, but I encourage you to experiment since it's always fun to see new sentence structures and ways an author writes. So, to summarize that point, I suggest playing around with it.

Another thing is a minor thing, so I won't spend too much time on it, but you have very frequent spacing errors where you'll have extra spaces in between words where they aren't needed, like: Andrea sat at the kitchen table, studying, with her back to me. I softly crept.... There's an extra space between the full stop/period and the "I." Spacing errors aren't a big deal, though I'm bringing it up because they're very frequent to the point where they even happen in the blurb (which I'll go over in the presentation section). I won't take off points from it in the blurb section since that's minor, though since it happens really frequently in the text, I thought I would bring it up here and point it out.

Also be careful with commas after introductory clauses. In most cases, not all but a lot, introductory clauses need commas, like this line: "After a few deep breaths I opened my eyes...". I'd recommend a comma after the "breaths" to help with flow. That's what I mean by commas after intro clauses. I hope that makes sense.

The last thing I'll mention is similar to the first recommendation I had, but this time instead of sentence structure, it's word choice. Your overall word choice fits the narrative, though since it's a short story, it is more noticeable than it would be in a longer story when words are repeated as we have a smaller sample size. What I mean by that is you repeat words like "look" and "softly" a lot throughout the text. I'd recommend considering diversifying this list. You don't need to go over-the-top with it or anything (in fact, I strongly recommend against doing that), though consider diversifying the word choice a little more since it can also add to the horror factor since the sentences will have more uniqueness to them. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the lyrics throughout the story do their job in keeping the story entertaining and intriguing to read about, as I will detail more in the narrative section since you have a really strong narrative here.

Dynamics & Harmony: 8/10. There isn't much dialogue in the story, but there doesn't need to be. What's there is short and gets the plot moving, so that means there's not too much to say about the dialogue other than you did a good job keeping it short and moving the narrative along instead of dilly dallying, like I mentioned earlier. The part of this category I can describe in more detail is the character part, so let's get into that.

The characters are vessels for the plot and themes present throughout, so they aren't really fully-fleshed out characters per se, but that's a good thing since it gives us the time we need to focus on the concept and what's going on in the narrative itself. You don't force character development where it isn't needed, and you give us enough character traits so we know things about them, but not so much that it starts distracting from the core plot, so good job with the balance there.

I liked the narrator's POV and how she went about her daily life. Not even a shower is peaceful for her. I really like how she thinks to herself and has such a chaotic POV. That made it even more fun to read about, and I think that was my favorite part of the story. You never knew what was going to happen next since her mind was jumping around a lot, and you did a good job making the readers stay on their toes and ask new questions about what's going on (in a good way, not a confused way; like in a way where we want to know more, not in a way where we wonder what the heck is happening). I really loved the suspense you built here.

The only deductions come from some dialogue errors with how it's formatted. At the beginning, you do it great, but about a quarter in, the dialogue switches and you start bunching it together in one paragraph, so like this: "Hi," I said. "Hi," she said. I recommend this:

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," she said.

I say this because it's a lot easier for readers to, well, read that dialogue format. When multiple different people are speaking in the same paragraph, it can get hard to tell who's who and things like that, so that's why I suggest giving every new character speaking their own space to talk. It can also shorten paragraph length.

The second thing about dialogue is when you're continuing dialogue using a comma, the second part needs to be lowercase unless it's a proper noun. From the text: "Not that I know of," she answered with a funny look on her face, "We don't share a bedroom..." It should be: "Not that I know of," she answered with a funny look on her face, "we don't share a bedroom...". If you were using a full stop/period after "face," then capitalizing the "We" would be fine, but it's because you're using a comma that it needs to be lowercase. The comma makes it a continuation of the dialogue, not new dialogue, so that's why it's lowercase. I hope that makes sense.

That being said, you do dialogue tags correctly with lowercasing them and putting them where they need to be, so good job there since a lot of people get dialogue tags wrong. They're the most common error I see, so you have an advantage in that sense!

Overall, you did a good job with the dialogue and characters here. The narrator's POV was the most fascinating part, and I really loved reading about her daily life and how she was being watched by a mysterious figure/being we never got to see, which made it 10x more interesting to leave it open to interpretation and let our imaginations run wild. Good job!

Narrative: 9/10. By far the best part of this story is the story itself, which is very obviously an amazing thing. I was not expecting the twist, and the ending line was very, very good and wrapped up the narrative really well. I was engaged throughout the entire runtime and was interested to know more about the "I" and what the beef was with Andrea. What did Andrea know about? What would the narrator do about it? Well, the narrator certainly didn't let it slide, and not in the way I was expecting. When I saw that it was a horror story based on the presentation of the book, I thought it would be something against the protagonist, not the protagonist herself being... well, what she is. But I mean that in a good way since it subverts my expectations massively and made me a huge fan of the story.

It's a short story that's a great length with overall good pacing, as I mentioned in the beginning of this review. It doesn't overstay its welcome and instead delivers a fun, interesting narrative that I think people are going to find really fascinating. Following the protagonist is like going on our own little journey, and I think you all in all did a great job with it.

The only question/suggestion I have about the narrative is about the knife, and maybe consider adding a little more detail about its role in the story and how it got dodged by the police since there wasn't much mention of it after the protagonist commits the murder. I reread that segment three times just to keep track of it, but it was a little hard to keep track of the knife. So maybe consider fleshing that part out a bit more so the audience has a more clear understanding of what happened to the knife since a murder weapon is a pretty big part of the investigation, regardless of if there are any fingerprints or anything on it or not. So it could just be interesting to see more of what happens to the knife since it's a key part of the investigation, if that makes sense.

That being said, it's nothing I'm going to take off much for since the overall narrative is very, very good. I was hooked the whole way through and found a lot of enjoyment, shock, and intrigue, so all in all, you did great!

Album Presentation: 7/10. The title relates to the story perfectly and foreshadows what's to come. It's a general saying, "Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right," and people know what it means, so they can immediately start theorizing what the story will be about, which is good since it gets readers thinking. It's overall a good title.

As for the blurb, it's short, with it only being "Andrea did it. Or did she? Paranoia and murder, where can you go wrong?" The main thing I'd say is there are two spacing errors here where you have excess spacing between the "it." and "Or," and an extra space between the ? and Paranoia. It's no big deal, and I honestly didn't notice the second spacing error until I copy pasted it into my grammar checker to look for additional errors, so it's not very noticeable on Wattpad. For that reason, and also because I explained it in the Lyrics section, I won't take off points for something so minor here; however, I do suggest deleting the extra spaces. As for the blurb itself, the contents are fine. Some may argue it's too short, though I think it's fine and works for the context of the book. It's vague and mysterious, which fits the creepypasta vibe of the book and what the narrative is about. It's a five-minute read, really, so there's no need to have an extravagant blurb. I think the short but to-the-point blurb works fine for this piece.

The deductions come from the cover, which could use some improvements. I would recommend a darker cover. Maybe if you want to keep the theme of the face, consider having a close-up of an eye and have a small shade of red in it that people paying close attention to the cover can see, and maybe consider changing up the font since the current font is pretty simplistic and one of the core ones. I can't tell exactly what it is. Maybe Sans? I'm not entirely sure, but it looks similar to that. So I recommend playing around with it and making it represent the contents of the book more since, as is, I don't see much relation even after reading the full story. Violent imagery typically isn't allowed on Wattpad (depends on what it is, so I recommend looking at the content guidelines for image rules), but maybe consider having a darker image that reflects the darkness present in the book. I hope those suggestions and my critique made sense, and I encourage you to play around with the cover!

Total: 38.5/50.

Songs chosen to reflect this story:

1) SAINT by DPR Ian (Not Explicit)

- SAINT is a beautiful dark EDM song where the singer (in this case, Ian himself) sings about mental health and the time before insanity where the narrator goes back and forth between mentalities before eventually accepting that he is no saint, which I believe fits the narrator of your story quite well.

2) Dopamine by Siiickbrain and Maggie Lindemann (Explicit)

- It's a song about something not feeling right on the inside, and the singer spends the song questioning what's going on and why they're burning out like a cigarette, often feeling like they "sold their soul," and like they can't escape the past no matter how they try, which I believe ties in with your final line of the story, when the past comes back to haunt the narrator. The unhinged end of the song I believe fits in really well with the overall narrative.

3) Love Surrounds You by Ramsey (Not Explicit)

- A song about an unknown individual watching the singer through all the most intimate moments in her life. It's about "love" surrounding you wherever you go, though I doubt the singer actually means "love," and more like "eyes," which fits in perfectly with the plot of this book being about someone watching the narrator while the narrator is simultaneously watching her roommate. It also fits in with the dark feel the other two songs have.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Thank you for participating, and congratulations!

Honorable Mention

Nice To Meet You by saylradeth

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8/10. You get right into the story without dilly-dallying. There are no preludes or really long chapters prior to chapter 1 that makes it feel like I'm reading an introduction rather than a story. So no critiques when it comes to how you introduce the story or how you present it to us.

When it comes to the pacing of the story itself, as you can tell by the high score, I thought that was good, too. The pacing of the development of Mia and Neil in particular was good. It doesn't feel like they fall for each other too fast and they instead get plenty of time together to have a wholesome relationship that doesn't overstep in any way for the time period they really get to know each other. With this only being nine short chapters, that also means it didn't take too long for them to get closer to the romance, which made the "they always get interrupted before the big moment" trope easier to read since we knew it wouldn't be too long until they ended up saying what they wanted to say, or at least implying it with the ending.

The only critique I have of the pacing is chapter 4 where Neil and Mia are doing the ring toss game. It's a little hard to understand what's going on there since as soon as the game starts, this is the only paragraph we get in regards to what happens in the game: My turn ended, his turn began and ended and it went on for two more times. The owner went inside to bring the prize while I was still processing what had just happened. The owner's footsteps brought me out of my thoughts.

We don't get to see any of the game, and it's over before it even starts for us. Even if you don't want to show the game (which I think could work fine to maintain the quicker pace), I'd suggest slowing down and saying what Mia's thoughts are since it goes really fast and we don't have a chance to process what's happening before the scene's over, so that was an area I felt you could have slowed down and fleshed out since it felt very abrupt and brought me out of the moment because I thought I missed something.

Overall, the story is well-paced and starts with a hook about Alice, Neil, and Mia, and it does a good job maintaining that pace by developing the core relationship at a good rate, not going too fast or too slow except in chapter 4. So, all in all, you did a good job with this.

Lyrics: 6.5/10. The lyrics present throughout the story do their job keeping the reader's interest and getting them invested in the narrative. You don't overcomplicate it or risk having purple prose at any point, which is a very good thing (and it also wouldn't have fit the story). The language fits the tone/overall vibe of the short, which is why I think it does a good job keeping our interest.

For example, the sentence structure is pretty dynamic and does a good job changing it up so we're not reading the same sentence type over and over again. I didn't notice any or feel like any sentence types were overused, so good job with that.

When it comes to word choice, the main critique I have is there's a lot of smiling. Consider synonyms, like grin, or alternative ways to describe happiness. Like "I passed them a smile" is used a lot. "Looked" and "nodded" are also used a lot. For look in particular, there are a lot of synonyms (gaze, peer, glance, stare, peek, etc.), so I recommend diversifying that a bit.

While on the topic of word choice, be careful with redundancy within the text. It may seem like a small thing, but it can add up when there are lines like this: I shrugged my shoulders (chap 4). I say this because the definition of a shrug is to move one's shoulders, so you're technically saying "I moved my shoulders my shoulders." I hope that makes it clear why I'm pointing it out: you don't need the "my shoulders" since everyone knows a shrug refers to the shoulders, so it makes it a bit redundant in that regard. It's a small thing, but still worth mentioning since it can help tighten the word choice. Really anything related to that can be avoided, like "blinked my eyes" or "nodded my head," which are similar to shrugged my shoulders due to the definitions of the verbs blinked and nodded.

As for the grammar and spelling, the spelling is pretty solid throughout the piece, so I have no critiques for that. As for grammar, the grammar is also pretty good, though there are minor errors here and there. For example, be careful with commas since sometimes you'll have an -ing verb and need a comma in front of it but you're missing it. For example, let's look at this excerpt from the text: There were stalls of different types of snacks and desserts on set up on both sides of the path. The night had become darker allowing the white paper lanterns to glow brighter and more beautifully (chap 5).

There are two errors here. One per sentence. The first sentence has a preposition error. The "...snacks and desserts on set up on both sides" is the issue. The first "on" isn't needed, so I would recommend removing it. As for the second sentence, there needs to be a comma after "darker" and before "allowing." You don't always need a comma when you have -ing verbs, so if you are ever unsure, I would recommend reading out loud first without a comma and then with one to see which is more natural (and grammar checkers can always help confirm if commas are needed or not). Chapter 5 in particular had the most comma errors I noticed, so I would recommend plugging some of it into a grammar checker to fast-check for comma errors. Sometimes you'll also not have commas in front of conjunctions, like "I didn't know why he feared them but right now he needed me" (chap 6). A comma is needed before "but" and after "them." Like the -ing verbs, you don't always need a comma before conjunctions (depending on context), though you, more often than not, will need one when connecting two clauses with different subjects (the "I" is the subject in the first clause, and the "he" is the subject in the second clause, so you need a comma to show this).

Overall, the lyrics throughout the story are good and fit in with the tone of the short. The grammar and spelling are also solid, aside from a few grammatical errors (particularly with commas) here and there. I had a few critiques for the word choice but all in all thought you did good in this category.

Dynamics & Harmony: 7/10. This is the characters and dialogue section, and I'd like to start with the characters. The main duo are Mia and Neil, so I will focus on them, though I will say that all the other characters throughout the narrative didn't overstay their welcome or do anything that made them feel forced in or anything of the sort. They played their roles exactly as needed without becoming over-the-top at any time. Since it's a short story with the core romance in the spotlight, I think it was a smart decision to keep the cast more limited and instead focus on Mia and Neil.

I liked Neil in particular, as I said in one of my comments. He was a cute character, and I enjoyed seeing him deal with the modeling industry and how it impacts the body, and also his mental dilemma about eating sweets because of his strict diet and modeling schedule. It made for a cute scene between him and Mia. Him and Mia overall had good chemistry, and I liked the choices you made for what events you had them do together, a lot of which being unfamiliar to Neil as a model that made for funny moments and a classic fish-out-of-water scenario that was entertaining to read. I liked how they were sweet to one another. It was very wholesome, and I appreciate wholesome love stories.

I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed Alice's involvement in the story. This is a trope-driven narrative, and I expected Alice to play a particular role for said trope, but she broke free from the stereotypes later in the narrative, and I was surprised by Neil's motivation. I was expecting him to just be Mr. Nice Guy, but his reasoning for doing what he did to Alice gave him more complexity and, again, broke free from the stereotypes, which was great to see!

The only critiques I have are for the dialogue and how it's presented. There's also some overuse of telling over showing in terms of character emotions that got distracting at times, though I will get into that later and instead want to focus on the dialogue. The first thing is actions as tags. By that I mean using words like "smile," "laugh," and "chuckle" as tags. I.e., "Dialogue," I smiled.

While this is a debated topic, I recommend not using actions as dialogue tags. The main reason is because of the very nature of what a dialogue tag is: it tags dialogue, not people. It refers to how the words are spoken, like if they're whispered or shouted or simply said normally. So if you're saying "I smiled," you're almost implying the words are smiling, which doesn't make sense. So that's why I always advise against using actions as tags, especially when there are a lot of alternatives you can use. Here are two alternatives:

I smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," I said with a smile.

Both of those still include the action without making it the tag. I hope that makes sense!

Another thing is sometimes dialogue is unnecessarily put together instead of separate, like "Hi," Mia said. "Hi," Neil said. Instead of:

"Hi," Mia said.

"Hi," Neil said.

I would recommend making sure they're mostly split. There are some cases it's okay to put them together, like if two characters are speaking at the same time or you're trying to portray a scene that happens so quickly characters are talking over one another, but for standard scenes that have a natural conversation flow, I would recommend making sure new lines of dialogue spoken by new people are separated so it's easier to tell who's saying what.

Dialogue tags are overall done right, though sometimes you'll have moments where you'll end the dialogue with a period/full stop despite using a tag, like "Let's go." I said (chapter 2). Should be: "Let's go," I said. And also sometimes you'll capitalize a non-proper noun when it's being used as a tag, like this from chapter 3: "Doesn't Alice do any work?" He asked. Should be: "Doesn't Alice do any work?" he asked. So that's a minor thing, but since it happened a few times throughout the text, I figured I'd mention it, though I'm not going to take off much for something so minor, especially when tags are mostly done correctly.

Overall, the dialogue and characters do their job for the story, keeping it interesting and dynamic throughout the runtime. Good job!

Narrative: 8/10. The narrative shows Neil and Mia on their little adventure after Neil is seemingly a no-show to their event (with Neil being a model). From there, they develop a friendship that teeters on the line of something deeper throughout the short.

This premise is simple but works exactly as it needs to for readers to understand what's going on, and it leaves more room for character development. Like I mentioned earlier, the pacing of the relationship is good, and I really liked the ending and how it ended without a giant kiss or some grand romantic gesture but rather a subtle, nice moment between the two that implies so much without needing those extravagant gestures of love. It was a solid ending that I enjoyed very much. The narrative flowed from point A to point B clearly, and other than that moment in chapter 4 I mentioned earlier, the pacing was good and allowed for me to get attached to the narrative easier.

The plot is simple, like I said, so I do not have too much to say about it other than it works and gives us room to see the characters to their fullest potential, and it works for the length of the story, too!

The only critique about narrative I have other than the pacing thing I mentioned is that there is a lot of telling over showing, and while telling over showing isn't inherently a bad thing, consider downsizing on it. You'll often tell us exactly what characters are thinking or feeling without giving us a chance to figure it out on our own through showing over telling methods. Like we know when they're happy, sad, excited, nervous, etc., and while it's not inherently a bad thing to know these things by directly telling us, especially in a short story (telling over showing is fine to use at times and sometimes even recommended, depending on the circumstance), consider playing around with the descriptions and utilizing more showing over telling methods to show these emotions at times instead of overusing telling. For example, consider showing using more subtext within dialogue, body language, positioning in the room (i.e., characters who distance themselves can be seen as fearful or embarrassed while those who stand close can come off as more confident), facial expressions, actions, etc. I'm not saying you never do those things because that's not true, it's more consider doing this more since there are many moments of telling over showing where we're directly told character emotions that could have been cut down on.

However, with that being said, I think the narrative is overall good and does a good job showing us all we need to know about Neil and Mia and their blossoming relationship.

Album Presentation: 8.5/10. The title is Nice To Meet You, which is fine and works for the story. It's not an incredibly unique and out-there title, but I don't think it needs to be. This is a short story literally about two characters meeting, so the title quite literally sums up the story exactly, and I think it works in that regard.

When it comes to the blurb, I thought it was, like the title, good and worked for the story. The spelling is perfect in the blurb, and there's only one minor comma error there. And, honestly, I didn't even notice the comma error upon first reading and only noticed it after running it through a checker, so that goes to show it's unnoticeable and not a big deal. The error is this: For the first time, Neil is captivated not by the lights and cameras, but by the hidden magic that Mia has always known. The second comma before "but" is an example of one of the times you don't need a comma before a conjunction. This is a compound predicate sentence type where Neil is doing the action in both clauses, and compound predicate sentences do not need commas, so that's why I recommend removing the comma. But other than that one comma, everything else looks great. Creatively, the blurb describes exactly what we need to know about the book in a brief two paragraphs that don't overstay their welcome or overcomplicate it. You give us reasons to read in a clear way, so I think you did a great job with this blurb.

As for the cover, it's aesthetically pleasing with a dark color scheme and lights that are cool to look at. I don't really notice anything wrong with the cover in terms of its design, though one thing I recommend is consider having it relate to the story more specifically since, even after reading the story, I'm a little confused by its relevance to the narrative and how it reflects the book inside. It's a very general cover that could apply to many stories, so that's why my one recommendation would be to consider having it be more book-specific, if that makes sense. For example, maybe the cover depicts two people playing ring toss, or at a festival, or something to do with modeling, etc. There are many ways you can take it, so that's why I recommend considering looking into ways to make it more book-specific. With that being said, the cover as is is aesthetic and looks nice, it could just maybe benefit from being more story-specific, if that makes sense. But all in all, you did a great job with this section!

Total: 38/50.

Songs chosen to reflect this story:

1) Eclipse by Josh Makazo (Not Explicit)

- Not only is this a beautiful song I think everyone should listen to, but I feel it perfectly captures Mia's feelings for the majority of the story: wanting Neil but believing he has feelings for Alice. She believes Neil has someone else inside his heart when Mia would choose him over anyone else. Along with that, I feel the elegance of the song fits the vibe of the modeling career Neil has.

2) Sanctuary by Joji (Not Explicit)

- This is just such a cute song made by an amazing artist. The beat matches the vibes of the story, and the lyrics are great for Neil and Mia's story. I can never recommend Joji enough, especially when he makes a song that I feel matches the story! I will also include the slowed and reverb version in the playlist since that goes hard too.

3) Mrs. Magic by Strawberry Guy (Not Explicit)

- Yet another adorable song that matches in with the vibes of the rest of the songs I chose. It describes the relationship between Neil and Mia perfectly, and it has a soothing, relaxing beat that's easy to listen to and almost gives me Tame Impala vibes (can't go wrong with Tame Impala). I think the overall theme of this playlist would be like this song: cute, soothing, and fun to listen to!

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Once again, you did great! Thank you for signing up, and congrats on getting an honorable mention!

ALL REVIEWS:

Can I call it a love story? by Inao357

Review:

Album Cohesion: 7.5/10. This category is split into two sections: the way the story starts, and the overall pacing of the narrative. As for how the story starts, you don't dilly dally and instead start right off the bat with chapter one, introducing us to Aina and what's up with her as a character. So that side of the pacing is good and does a good job getting right into it instead of wasting the readers' time with a million introductions and things like that.

When it comes to the story's overall pacing, it is all in all okay; however, there is a lot of exposition dumping throughout the story, particularly in chapter one. In case you don't know, exposition dumping refers to when you give the audience a lot of information all at once. You often do this throughout the story to tell us everything happening, like the first chapter is a lot of information all at once, telling us about Aina, her disorder, Jasie, Adena, and more. A lot of the story is told, not shown, so that often leads to exposition problems where we're told all the information instead of shown it.

Another example is when Henry confesses his feelings, it's told to us instead of shown to us in a cinematic scene. We're told "Then he confessed me right away and tell me to forgive him if he bothered me today." I want to see him confess. Instead of telling us he confessed, show it is what I'm saying. This is the climax of the story, so I feel you could have benefitted from slowing down here. I think the fast pace works for the story, though this is a moment where you really could have benefitted from slowing down to flesh out this moment. For example, describe how Henry looks in this scene. Describe his eyes and facial expression. Describe his voice as he tells Aina that he has feelings for her, and show us the line of dialogue where he confesses to her. What does he say? I want to know exactly what he says to confess to her. So that's what I mean when I say you could benefit from doing a lot more showing over telling and giving the reader more moments to see the moments as they're happening instead of the moments being summarized.

But like I said, I overall like the fast pacing this book has. I think it works for the narrative you're trying to tell. I like the short chapters and think the chapters don't overstay their welcome or drag it out. So I think the overall pacing is good, and I like how you get right into the story without dilly dallying in any way, so good job with that. I hope my suggestions in the previous paragraph made sense!

Lyrics: 6/10. There are a few times throughout the story where I thought you did a great job with the scenes and what was going on in the text. For example, the wedding was very cute, and I like how you described it. I also liked the aunt and uncle who took care of Henry after the incident. They seemed very sweet, and I love wholesome moments and people.

I also liked the way Aina's socialphobia was integrated into the plot. I thought you did a good job including it, and that's only possible because you describe the ways Aina shuts down and doesn't talk to people, and it's a serious thing she has to try to overcome. But she still struggles with it even after she becomes more comfortable and starts talking to more people. I liked how she still had struggles with it throughout the whole story and it didn't just fully go away after she started getting more comfortable. That made it more realistic, and I appreciated that element of the narrative!

As for critiques, the deductions primarily come from the grammar. There are frequent SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) errors throughout. Let's start with spelling since that's the easiest thing to start with. There are frequent spelling errors, such as quiet often being spelled as quite. A more specific example would be awkward is spelled as akward in chapter two (second paragraph). There are frequent spelling errors. I believe there are spelling errors at least once per chapter, and while none of them made the sentences impossible to understand, I would still recommend fixing spelling errors in your future stories (I will give general suggestions for improving SPAG later in this section).

As for the general grammar errors, there are a few. For starters, there are never any spaces between periods/full stops and the start of the next sentence. For example: "These questions roam around my head when I think of confessing my feelings to him.It will take an..." You need a space between the period/full stop and the "It," so the sentences would become: "These questions roam around my head when I think of confessing my feelings to him. It will take an...". I only bring this up because it happened for every sentence, so it got a bit distracting at times, and I would recommend adding spaces between the ends of sentences and the starts of the next sentences.

This is a minor thing, but I would recommend spelling out numbers from 1-10 if not 1-99. So instead of 5, spell out five. I say this because it looks far more natural in the text. 5 stands out, but five is more natural to read and looks more fluid with the rest of the text. Most authors recommend spelling out at least 1-10, though I personally recommend spelling out 1-99.

Going more generally about word choice, you use "quite" a lot in the first few chapters, which isn't a big deal, but it was noticeable since it was the same word being used quite (pun intended) a lot. That's no big deal, like I said, but still worth mentioning since I did notice it during my read.

While on the topic of general things, I'll give some general tips for grammar and improving it. There are a few ways to improve SPAG over time, so I'll give a few ways. The first way is you can use a free online grammar editing software, such as Grammarly, QuillBot, and/or ProWritingAid. Grammarly is good for things like punctuation, QuillBot is the most aggressive grammar checker that will overanalyze your text but can provide good suggestions, and ProWritingAid is okay but is best for identifying when you're using the same word a lot.

You can also read sentences out loud and/or use a text-to-speech (TTS) generator. I personally use TTS and have the text read back to me while I listen and follow along. Hearing the words out loud instead of only reading in your head helps a lot with catching errors. My editing skills got so much better once I started using TTS, so I strongly recommend it. You can find these online by Googling them. A million will pop up if you Google TTS generator. But if TTS doesn't appeal to you, manually reading out loud is just as good since it's still you reading and hearing the words.

The last general suggestion I have is to look online for grammar guides to improve grammar over time. For example, watching YouTube videos breaking down things like sentence structures and the different types of sentences you can use (compound predicate, introductory clauses, etc.). You can also look at online resources such as the Grammarly blog, which breaks down certain aspects of grammar. I also have a Writing Errors book on my profile, if you're interested in looking into additional resources.

Overall, there were great moments throughout the text that did a good job hooking the reader in and getting them invested in Aina's story and what was going on in the world around them. The deductions came from frequent SPAG errors and a minor word choice thing (quite). But I otherwise thought the wording of the narrative portrayed Aina's story nicely.

Dynamics & Harmony: 7.5/10. This is the characters and dialogue category, so I will start with the dialogue since there wasn't much of it in the story. I don't have too much to say about the dialogue because there wasn't much of it, and of what there is, it didn't come until far later in the narrative, so it's a bit hard to judge. For that reason, the characters will take up 90% of the score of this category. I have a couple of critiques for the dialogue, so let's start with them, and then I'll get into the characters.

First, in chapter 15, it's tough to tell what is dialogue and what isn't since there are many lines that seem like dialogue but they don't have quotation marks. Like: Janie! Janie!! Is not a dream, right? Based on the context of this scene, it seems like those lines are meant to be dialogue, but there are no " " around them, so it's hard to tell. Whenever you have dialogue, I would suggest always making sure you have " " around whatever is spoken words, that way the readers know what's going on.

The second critique is when you have dialogue, you bunch it up instead of separating it. By that I mean, you'll have more than one character talking in the same paragraph. So like this: "Hi," Aina said. "Hi," Henry said. Instead of:

"Hi," Aina said.

"Hi," Henry said.

When a new character speaks a new line of dialogue, make sure it's separated so readers can clearly see it, and it's also more grammatically correct. For example, the end of chapter 19. The second-to-last paragraph has Aina and Henry speaking in the same paragraph, so I would recommend separating the dialogue out so it flows a bit stronger.

Moving into the characters, the main characters are Henry and Aina, though there are others, like Danish and Jasie along with other friends, as well. I'm going to focus on Henry, Aina, Danish, and Jasie for this review since they had the most prominent roles.

I really like Aina throughout the entire story and how her emotions seem to get the most focus. How she feels is one of the highlights of the story since you put a lot of focus and attention to detail into it, and part of that is because of her unique socialphobia that I've mentioned before and will continue to mention throughout the review because I like that concept so much.

I also like Henry and thought he was pretty smart throughout the narrative by doing things like rejecting Jasie and clearing up misunderstandings, going into photography (takes a lot more brain power than most may think-I'm a film major, I would know), his emotional maturity, etc. So I overall liked Henry, too.

Danish worked as a side character that supported Henry. I thought Danish's place in the story was great and not overwhelming. In general, I think it was great how you kept a limited cast size, that way we're really focused on Henry and Aina. I didn't feel overwhelmed at any point by the number of characters there were, which is awesome since a lot of authors tend to have too many characters.

The last person I'll talk about is Jasie, and I liked her, too. Well, she was rude for most of the book, so when I say "like" I mean I like how she was written, not like her as a person, haha, though I did warm up to her later when she got more apologetic and emotionally mature. But from a writing perspective, I like how she wanted to win over Henry just to prove to herself that she could. That was really cool to see and interesting to read about, and I enjoyed her point of view a lot. I wasn't expecting to get a Jasie POV, so that was a nice surprise!

Moving into critiques, I only have a couple. The score is high, so most of what I have to say is more minor, though there is one major thing.

Starting with the minor, two minor things. For one, I would have liked to see more scene over summary (AKA showing over telling), like I mentioned in the pacing section. I put this in the characters section because after reading the story and reflecting, I don't know if I can remember what Aina, Henry, Danish, and Jasie look like. I don't recall if there were ever any consistent descriptions given to us, so I would recommend more scene over summary so we can remember more of what they look like, how they react to receiving information, more dialogue (since dialogue is a big part of character work), etc.

The next minor thing is probably just a personal thing, but I found it a bit creepy, not cute, that Henry was taking pictures of Aina at the beginning of the story (without her knowledge or consent). They were strangers by that point, and even though Henry acknowledges that it's illegal to do that, that doesn't make it better. Characters acknowledging problems in the text do not make the problems go away, essentially. So that just felt like something that could have been removed. Or maybe if you want to do it more ethically, consider having Henry taking random shots when he notices he accidentally took a picture of Aina, but he can't bring himself to delete it. It's a little better ethically since he didn't knowingly take pictures of a stranger without her knowledge or consent, but it still makes sense for him to have the picture to print it out later since he naturally took it as a photographer instead of as someone who was kinda stalking her at that moment. That's really the only moment where Henry gave me major red flags, but I still thought it was worth mentioning since it impacted my view of Henry early in the story.

The major thing has to do with Jasie, and it ties into the first minor thing I said about scene over summary. It's chapter 14. In chapter 14, it is said that Jasie is apologizing for her misdeeds and letting go of Henry despite just two chapters prior, Jasie was very determined to win Henry to the point where we got our first and I believe only Jasie point of view, where we were told about how much she wanted to get Henry to prove she can get him, and that she was embarrassed when Henry rejected her in front of everyone. Now, in chapter 14, she's apologetic because apparently Danish risked his life for Jasie, and that clearly changed her perspective on things. I like that idea of Jasie going from a mean girl to much kinder and more reserved because of one act of kindness. I think that's a powerful idea and storyline, but the issue is that we're told it, not shown it. We're told Danish risked his life for her, but we don't see him actually doing it. I want to see that scene of Danish risking his life for Jasie.

So that was a major character change that felt like it happened out of nowhere, and we need to see why she wants to change, otherwise the audience isn't going to believe it. The last we saw of Jasie, she was determined to win over Henry and interfere with his love life with Aina. And now she's done a 180 because of something that we didn't get to see. Do you see why that can be conflicting for the audience? The last thing we saw was Jasie being determined to win Henry, but the next thing we're told is that she's changed. So that's why I recommend showing that scene of Danish saving her life, that way the audience can empathize with the change more and it doesn't feel so out of the blue. I thought I missed something when I read it the first time since it was such a drastic character change in only two chapters. So that's why I suggest showing us the Danish and Jasie scene, not telling it to us. I hope that makes sense!

Overall, the characters throughout the story are entertaining to read about, particularly Aina with her socialphobia storyline. It's unique and fun, and I thought it was great. I had a few critiques for the dialogue and some character critiques for Jasie, but I otherwise thought the characters were good.

Narrative: 6/10. The story follows main characters Henry and Aina, two characters pining for one another without the other knowing it. They think it is unrequited love, even though they both want to talk to one another and get into a relationship. Henry is a photographer, and Aina is reluctantly in the science stream and has socialphobia.

There are a lot of things about the narrative that I like. First and foremost, like I mentioned in the last section, Aina's socialphobia is really unique and well-handled. I enjoyed that part of the narrative a lot and thought it was entertaining, hooking, and honestly educational, too. It was cool to see this kind of phobia described in media since I feel we don't talk about it enough. In the era of technology where everyone can talk to everyone with just a few buttons, that can enhance the social pressure, so I think the choice to have Aina be scared of social interaction was a good decision that made me more interested in the book.

Another thing I liked was how there were times you really broke free from stereotypes and tropes. For example, Henry rejects Jasie's advances. In a lot of stories, the guy will be "clueless" to the other woman's advances, leading to miscommunication between the two leads and the first girl getting mad at him for it. While Aina still gets jealous and upset, her mood is understandable, and it isn't because Henry is just being stupid and not seeing Jasie's advances as advances. Instead, he rejects her advances and becomes active by hunting down the source of the rumor that says the two of them are dating, and then he clarifies that he isn't dating her for the entire school to hear, which I thought was interesting. That was a great way to break free from the stereotypes and give another unique spin to the narrative, so good job with that!

When it comes to critiques, most of them are things I already said, like Henry's confession being skipped over. That's a major plot thing because it's the climax of the story. All the exposition and rising action have been leading to that moment, so that's why I recommend fleshing it out more so it feels more like the true climax. Another thing is the Jasie moment where she switched from wanting to have Henry to no longer wanting him and being apologetic. That also impacts the narrative, so my recommendations for that still apply here.

As for new critiques, one minor thing that stood out to me was how in chapter 6, it says at the end that Aina searched all over the school and found out Henry is an arts student. This is a small thing, but how did she find out? Did she see him painting? Did she see him taking pictures? Is his name somewhere on an art award displayed on campus? It's just a little vague how she found out, so consider adding a line or two in there just for a quick explanation as to how since that confused me a bit.

The main critique I have of the narrative is the ending. I like the concept of saying hello again and relearning to love, but I was very confused by Harry's "death." Of course he doesn't actually die and ends up in a coma, though I feel the circumstances leading to it could have been a bit stronger, and I also felt it was a little unnecessary. The book started as a school drama on a small scale, dealing with mental health and an unrequited crush. Then in the end it feels more like a crime drama for the last I'd say eight chapters, which I thought was a bit sudden and unneeded. I feel Henry's job needed to be made more clear since I was under the impression this was a news agency and Henry was big into photojournalism considering his introduction was him being a photographer and consistently throughout the story he was interested in photography and the arts. So him being directly involved in a serious investigation, AKA human trafficking, felt like a huge stretch to me. Unless there's something I'm missing. Is he a cop? If so, then why did it say that Aina and him work for the same company and she was working for a news agency? News agencies do investigations, sure, but with the assistance of the police, and normally not for such serious crimes like human trafficking. That's way too dangerous, so I'm surprised this evidence they found that they think is where the trafficking business occurs (the most dangerous part) wasn't turned into the police immediately. Instead of them investigating, I feel it'd be far more realistic for the police to do that.

But all that aside, I still am not sure how to feel about Henry's fake death to begin with. It felt a little unnecessary to me and like that's where the pacing began to get a bit out of whack since we spent so long with these characters, and now, for just a handful of chapters, Henry has amnesia. It feels very sudden and at the very least feels like it needed more chapters to flesh this idea out. It also ends with Henry and Aina getting married anyway, so that's why it felt like an unnecessary plot point to me.

So Henry's fake death was the main critique I had where I felt it wasn't needed and the story felt complete without it, though I overall thought the narrative was good and did a good job portraying socialphobia. It also was very unique and did a good job breaking free from stereotypes and giving the characters more depth and interesting choices that go against what you'd expect from Wattpad stories, so all in all, good job with the narrative.

Album Presentation: 6/10. The title works for the story. The title is Can I call it a love story?, spelled and capitalized exactly like that, which leads to curiosity since it strays from the normal title capitalization rules and has almost everything lowercase, which is an interesting choice. The fact that love stories are typically seen as sweet, and then there's this with the lowercase and the darker cover makes for an interesting contrast to the idea of love that I like, so I think the title works.

The blurb could use some tweaks to help with readability and clarity. The blurb is:

It's a story about a girl who've never experienced a lovelife. She is quite and shy so she doesn't like social interactions, a little bit sociophobic.When she meets her first ever crush she starts to change her life a bit but never says she likes him.But she always end up meeting him again and again in her way of life.The story shows the youthlife she spends with her friend while struggling their dreams.Will she be able to express her feeling or end up unconfessed?Let's check it out together by reading the story.Hope you all enjoy it👍.

What I'd suggest: This is a story about a girl who's never experienced love. Aina is quiet and shy, doesn't like social interaction, and is a bit sociophobic. When she meets her first-ever crush, her life changes, but she never says she likes him out of fear of rejection. But fate has other plans. Somehow, she always ends up meeting him again and again.

This story shows the youthful life of Aina, who spends her time with her friends while struggling with her dreams. Will she be able to express her feelings or end up unconfessed?

I hope you all enjoy it.

I personally would say you can remove the "enjoy it" part altogether and instead move it to author's notes in the actual book itself instead of in the blurb, but that's up to you. I made grammar tweaks to the blurb but tried to keep it as close to the original as possible, so I didn't make drastic changes but did tweak the sentences to help them flow better. I'm not saying it's perfect or what you 100% have to go with, though the grammar is worth considering tweaking.

The blurb tells the reader what the story is about in a short way, which is good, it could just use some fixes to the grammar to make it easier to read and make the story idea clearer. I hope that makes sense.

The cover is overall okay. I like the aesthetic of the cover with the blue/black colors with the sunrise acting as the only beacon of light surrounding the figure on the cover that's mostly a shadow. My only suggestion would be to consider playing around with this cover to make it more book-specific since this cover feels general and like it can apply to a lot of books. Upon looking at the cover, I can't guess what the story is about, it's only the title and blurb that give me a real clue. After reading the story, the only thing I can maybe say is the cover might be about Henry and how he fell into the water, though it's still a little vague in that sense. So maybe consider a woman experiencing socialphobia as the cover, or a man completely submerged in water if you want to go the Henry route, or something entirely different that has to do with school since school is a big location in this story. Those are just a couple of suggestions, but I encourage you to play around with it. The overall cover is okay and I like the aesthetic, it could just use some tweaks to make it more book-specific and make it so the audience has a solid guess of what the story will be about just by looking at the cover.

Total: 33/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) My Blood by Ellie Goulding (Not Explicit)

- Ellie is an absolute queen and makes fire songs, and I think this one is a perfect fit for the narrative and Aina's character arc. My Blood can be interpreted quite a few ways, but in my interpretation, I see it as a song about overcoming the negative events in your life, which I think reflects Aina growing from her school days and battling her disorder. It can also relate to the end of the story with the coma and Henry and all he had to do to overcome that. I also feel like the airy, almost ethereal feel of this song matches the overall tone of the book.

2) School Rooftop (Intro) (Slowed Down) by Hisohkah (Not Explicit)

- Moving into the sadder side of the playlist, I believe this song reflects Aina in the last few chapters of the story, following Henry's "death." Considering school was a major part of the plot and where the Henry-Aina connection really began, I believe this track is a perfect encapsulation of all the feelings Aina is going through. It's a slow instrumental that gives the listener time to reflect.

3) Nervous by The Neighbourhood (Not Explicit)

- The Neighbourhood seems to fit every story. They're icons, I suppose. As for why I chose Nervous in particular, it's because the song talks about someone making the singer "too nervous to speak," which I feel sums up Aina and Henry pretty well. It's about the fear of rejection, and again, I think that lines up with Aina and Henry's story well. I also think it fits in with the overall vibe of this playlist being on the slower side, focused on powerful instrumentals and meanings rather than anything upbeat and energetic.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Thank you for participating! I hope you like your playlist!

The Lycan Legend by QueridoEve

Review:

Album Cohesion: 6.5/10. This section is broken into two sections, with some of it being dedicated to how the story starts in regards to how many chapters come before chapter 1, and the main part of this section being the general pacing of the book. Your story only has two chapters that come before chapter one, and both of them are pretty standard and what you'd expect from a book, so no criticisms there. You get into the first chapter pretty quickly with the only two chapters coming before it being an introduction and a glossary, so neither of those are unnecessary or something I felt could have been removed. That means you get full credit for that portion of the pacing, so good job there and I have no criticisms.

As for the story pacing, it could be tightened to get to the conflict faster. I will explain later in the narrative section, but there is a lot of exposition in the beginning, such as in chapter 3, that is unnecessary and could have been saved for later in favor of conflict. The reason there is no hook is because of the overuse of exposition and spending time on things we do not need to see. For example, the entire section of Aiden's POV in chapter 4 could be removed. In Aurelia's POV, the grandmother already explains what happens in Aiden's POV, so us seeing it from Aiden's POV is just us seeing the same events again, meaning we're essentially reading the same thing twice, only the Aiden POV is the longer version of it, so it's not needed and slows the pacing unnecessarily. I think it's great to introduce the king's character, though I don't feel that's the way to do it since we're already told all this information, so we're reading it for the second time only in a much longer way when you already summarized it in a short way in the beginning. The goal of creative writing is to do as much as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible without overwhelming the reader, which is just a long way of saying giving the reader as much as realistically possible in the shortest time possible. Again, without overwhelming them. So that's why I recommend considering reworking Aiden's POV there to make it fit in more with the narrative. There is some new information in that section, but like with the exposition I'll talk about later, that can easily be moved to another part of the story since there are 34 chapters in the story.

It isn't until the very end of chapter 10, but mostly chapter 11, that there's a main conflict. That's more than 25% into the story to wait until the inciting incident. I think you can tighten the pacing by moving the bonfire scene to later and instead focusing on getting us to the core plot before slowing down even further to give character moments. I'm a character writer, so I'm all for character writing and having scenes dedicated to character building, though we need a plot working at the same time so we have more reason to keep reading. Another way you can tighten the pacing is by eliminating unnecessary descriptions. While I do have a critique about considering including more environmental descriptions, there were times you had paragraphs of actions we didn't need described. For example, in chapter 10, it takes seven paragraphs for Aurelia to get to work. You describe the entire process of her getting ready down to her turning the keys to start her car. We don't need to know that. So my suggestion would be to have a quick paragraph or two of her realizing she has work and then summarizing the get ready process, omitting the car descriptions altogether and simply having her get to work faster. We don't need to know how she parks, drives, how much traffic she faces, etc., so that's why I suggest downsizing. For future stories, I would suggest omitting those kinds of details in most cases as well since we simply don't need to see her driving to work.

After the beginning segments of the story, the pacing does improve, though. I'd say after chapter 11 when the inciting incident happens and we start getting into the meat of the story, the pacing smoothens out more and gives plot and character information at a much more natural rate. I'd say the pacing gets to its strongest in the late twenty chapter range, like 24 onwards. That's when Aurelia becomes very active and puts a plan into motion to discover the culprit's motivation for herself, and she makes the wise decision to postpone her research until she can figure it out. That's a big sacrifice to make, considering she was much closer to cracking the code than before thanks to the fae's help, but I think it was a good decision on her end to do so, just in case the culprits end up using her research against her. This is the point in the story where there's a stronger balance of slower character moments with plot development. Like we get to really see the uncle for the first time in the story and start developing that relationship in more detail, but there's also plot development going on at the same time, so it's tightly paced and does a good job maintaining its overall slower pacing in a way where it works stronger by keeping a tighter-bound narrative, if that makes sense. So, for me, I'd say the 20 chapter range is where the story hits its peak and does a great job bringing a lot of tension to the table, particularly with Aurelia's traveling storyline.

Overall, you do a good job getting right into the story instead of dilly dallying with a million chapters before the first chapter, and you also have strong pacing in the latter half of the story, particularly in the 20 chapter range onwards. I had some critiques for the pacing at the beginning with a lot of exposition, though I think it's more important that the pacing showed improvement, showing you found your footing and really started getting into it, which is great! I can tell you have a lot of passion for the story, and I hope you keep updating it (at the time of writing this review, 34 chapters are out).

Lyrics: 6/10. This category goes over the technical and creative side of the writing itself, like the word choice and sentence structures, so let's start with the creative side, and then we'll get into the technical side since I'm sure you'd rather hear about the creative side first.

When it comes to the creative side of the writing, I think it does a good job propelling the story forward, particularly when it comes to describing the various worldbuilding elements. One thing that stood out to me was chapter 14 with the party and how the palace was described. I love fairy lights, so to see them used here was great, and I also like how this chapter really introduced the fae on a more personal level. They were around previously and we got many details about them, but this is really the first up-close look at them. I liked how the royals can read minds. It's a nice power dynamic where weres normally feel safe hiding in their minds, but now they can't, changing the dynamic between Aiden and Aurelia now. They can't really mind link without having someone spying on their conversation, so I thought that was an interesting writing decision.

I also found it interesting how the blood samples for the various supernatural creatures were described when Aurelia received them from the fae. That probably seems like a weird thing to point out, especially coming from someone like me who knows nothing about science other than astronomy, but I enjoyed reading about Aurelia's mental plan for continuing her research. I think this ties back into the pacing and how I said the pacing got stronger around this time, and that's because you're doing multiple things at once where you're making significant character and plot developments at the same time without it feeling overwhelming, so the plot is moving along smoothly. You're giving us more information about the plot this way, but you're also giving us a chance to see Aurelia's thought process up close and personal (when it comes to her research). That when mixed with the beast's dynamic with her makes for an entertaining read, so I especially appreciated that whole aspect of the story with the blood and trying to find solutions. I enjoyed reading Aurelia's science-y mind, which is weird for me since I normally skip anything deep into science, but you wrote it in an enjoyable way, which boils down to the creative writing in those moments being strong.

I'll mention it in far more detail in the next section since that's the characters section, but the last thing I'll say before moving into critiques is I enjoyed the creativity you applied to the beast inside Aurelia. Like I said, I'll go into far more detail next section and point out specific things I liked about it, but a lot of why I liked it is also because of the creative writing practices used with the word choice to make the beast seem a certain way. Even though I explain my liking for the beast in the next section, I just thought I'd bring it up again here because, like I said, a lot of it comes down to the creative writing choices and word choice you used to make the beast come to life, so I wanted to take a moment and appreciate that.

Moving into critiques, most of my critiques are for the technical writing. I'll start with SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar). The overall SPAG is okay, it could just use some tweaks. Starting with spelling since that's the easiest, there are frequent spelling errors throughout the text. While I didn't notice any specific words consistently misspelled, there were frequent general spelling errors. For example, chapter 13 in particular had quite a few typos, like Adrian spelled as Adrain, blood spelled as blod, and he is used instead of she to describe Aurelia's female beast (all three of those errors happen within two paragraphs of each other about 25% of the way into the chapter, so near the beginning). Spelling errors aren't huge deals, but I would still recommend tweaking them whenever you get a chance.

This is very minor and nothing I'm going to take off much for, but there were frequent spacing errors throughout the story where you don't have a space between the period/full stop and the next sentence. For example, from chapter 4: However, I am distracted by huge men wearing black.It was then that I realized.... There needs to be a space between the . and the It. This happens frequently throughout the text and even in the blurb, so that's why I recommend for future stories making sure the spacing all checks out. No big deal, though it can make sentences get bundled together at times. Another minor thing is the capitalization was confusing. Sometimes you'd capitalize words like weres, alphas, betas, lunas, etc., and other times you wouldn't even when they're being used in the same context, so it was a little confusing and I would recommend more consistency with the capitalization. I bring that up because there was also a capitalization error in the blurb, so this seems to be a consistent error. Those are minor, so for those two things I'll only take off one point, but they're still worth mentioning since they do contribute to how a sentence flows. I hope both of those critiques made sense.

Moving more into the deeper side of the analysis, the story could benefit from being more specific at times with its descriptions. For example, in chapter 5, you tell us the palace and the hallways are spectacular and grandeur, but there is very little in terms of specific description. Werewolves have enhanced senses, so I feel these are great opportunities to show that off by having Aurelia pick up more of the subtle details, especially when it comes to sound and smell, though even taste could be implemented where needed. All of that is to say consider implementing more of the five senses into your descriptions. You don't need to give paragraphs upon paragraphs of descriptions, but instead of general descriptions saying things are spectacular, show us how they are spectacular. AKA: Stray away from general descriptions and consider implementing more specific ones about the look and feel of an environment. Specific descriptions will almost always be far more memorable than general ones, so that's why I recommend it. That's not to say you never describe things specifically because you do, like the scent of that security guard in that same chapter, though consider extending that to the physical locations more as well. I hope that makes sense.

Sometimes sentences were split up unnecessarily. I appreciate that you experimented with your style, and I encourage you to do more of that, so I'm not saying every sentence that you split up and turned more into fragments didn't work. Some worked very effectively, in fact. Though there were some that felt a bit unnatural and hard to read, like they would've been stronger when combined with the sentences they were split from. For example, in chapter 6:

Each Alpha pair took the chance and joined the floor one by one. The couples emitted love. peaceful atmosphere prevailed. Some vampires asked a few were ladies to dance. The treaty that the king had brokered would bring peace to the entire supernatural realm. Even a few fae were in attendance.

I pasted the entire excerpt, but really I'm just talking about "The couples emitted love. peaceful atmosphere prevailed." That's an example of the capitalization errors I mentioned before where peaceful isn't capitalized but should be, but either way, I feel these sentences could be connected with an "and," so like "and a peaceful atmosphere prevailed," or something of the sort. The two sentences feel a little disjointed and like they can benefit from being put together, if that makes sense. Or, probably a better example, from chapter 8: Just then. Aiden sighed and looked at me. There could be a comma instead of a period/full stop between the "then" and "Aiden."

This is a minor thing but something I noticed as the story went on, but you use "strode/stride" a lot. Sometimes multiple times per chapter, and since the chapters aren't too long, it does get noticeable. Since there are so many synonyms, I would suggest playing around with the word choice for strode and considering using something else here and there to diversify the word choice. I hope that makes sense.

The last thing I'll mention is avoid being vague about locations since it immediately pulls readers out of the story. What I mean is in chapter 13, you have the text "xx street, Red deer." My recommendation is to omit the xx and instead be specific, even if it's just making up a street name, or maybe instead have her write down coordinates to give Aiden and you don't need to say what the coordinates are (or you can even just have it be Red Deer by itself, I think that could work, too, since the characters refer to it simply as Red Deer for the rest of the story).

There are a couple reasons why I recommend never using xx to omit a location. One is, like I said, it immediately pulls the reader out of the story. Another is because xx or any combination of more than one x can... well, it can mean something else, and that too can draw the reader out of the story. The last reason is the simplest, and it's because it's vague and can hurt the worldbuilding. You put a lot of time crafting this world, and I can tell you love it so much, which I appreciate! I love that you love your world, and I think you have awesome ideas, like about the fae and also the secret magazine weres subscribe to. There were lots of intricate details that I really liked. So that's why I recommend not losing that attention to detail when it comes to location. The conceptual worldbuilding is interesting, so what I recommend is having that apply to the physical locations, too. I hope that makes sense!

Dynamics & Harmony: 6/10. This is the dialogue and characters category. I'll start with the characters since there are quite a few to go over, and I'd like to do so first since I have a lot to say about them.

Let's start with probably my favorite part of the story: Aurelia's dynamic with her beast. It kind of gave me Venom vibes where the "human side" would speak with the beast. I liked how the beast didn't like human hair and thought it should be all fur instead, finding human hair annoying and a hinderance. I mean, I love my hair and make it 90% of my personality, but the beast has a point: it's annoying. It gets in the way of everything. But hair problems aside, I overall just like the concept of the beast and how she's described, often giving her more animalistic word choice than you do the other wolves, even Aiden, who is the king and likely should be seen as the most "animalistic," or at least brutal, but I found that Aurelia's beast was given more brutal descriptions, and that's something I liked. I see the beast as her own form of character separate from Aurelia yet so similar, almost like a reflection of Aurelia's inner desires to cause chaos due to how boxed up she had been her whole life, needing to hide her true self from others. So I really liked the dynamic between Aurelia and the beast, and considering this category is literally called dynamics and harmony, that's a big plus.

The next one I'll talk about is Aiden, who I liked more than I expected to. I tend to lean more toward tritagonists more than the two central leads (who, in this case, are Aurelia and Aiden), so I was expecting to lean more toward Adrian, but I actually think I liked Aiden the most for a variety of reasons. But, most prominently, the reason I liked him was because he was far from a cliche king in a werewolf story. He's strong and smart, so he's not the cliche over-the-top king or overbearing in any way. He's actually respectful to Aurelia and those around him, but Aurelia especially, and he has flaws that make it so he isn't a monarch and he looks to others for advice, like Adrian and even Aurelia at times. So I liked Aiden and was invested in his side of the story.

But let's also look at the general character writing instead of focusing strictly on one or two characters. What I liked about the overall character writing was how it was pretty easy to identify flaws for most of the characters, such as Aiden getting hot-tempered and sometimes jumping to conclusions when he can benefit from being less rash, especially as a king. Or Abigail being too quick to judge and, in general, being judgmental. I think that's a very good thing because it humanizes these characters and makes them feel more down-to-earth and relatable, and audiences love relatable characters (in most cases). I enjoyed seeing how these character shortcomings held them back at times and influenced their decisions.

Another thing is something I commented on in the story, and it's how Nana remembers her husband and how we're told about her husband's impact on their lives. It was really wholesome to read about the reason Nana doesn't allow Aurelia to help out in the kitchen and things like that, albeit sad, of course. But it's moments like those that again really humanize the characters and show them in a raw, gritty light. In life, people lose the ones around them. We lose some of the most important people in our lives, unfortunately, and Nana had to go through that and now has lifestyle changes as a result, which I think is great. Well, I don't mean "great" as in I want to see her suffer. Lord no, I don't ever want to see Nana suffer, but I mean "great" from a writing perspective, haha. You probably get what I mean. What I mean is the writing allows me to see that unfiltered side of Nana in a way that gives important character backstory while also providing something wholesome and sad at the same time for the readers to get invested in, and I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that.

When it comes to the dialogue, there are frequent dialogue errors. Sometimes you have capitalization issues with the dialogue. For example, in chapter four, twice almost in a row you don't capitalize the first letter of new dialogue. " but, why?" and "oops!" Should be: "But why?" and "Oops!" This was a frequent error both in the dialogue and the general text where there would be times the first letter of a new sentence wasn't capitalized.

There are other errors where sometimes you'll use more quotation marks than needed. Also from chapter 4: "You were correct. He was charming and chivalrous. "He then invited us. It should be: "You were correct. He was charming and chivalrous. He then invited us." The "He then invited us" is still attached to the same dialogue as the "He was charming and chivalrous," so the end quote should come after "us."

When it comes to dialogue tags, sometimes you'll do them incorrectly. Like this: "Do I know you, dear?" She asks. It should be: "Do I know you, dear?" she asks. Whenever using a tag, unless the tag is a proper noun, it needs to be lowercase, even if the dialogue ends in special punctuation like ? or !. On the other hand, sometimes you'll have a tag but use a period/full stop, but when using a tag, you can end the dialogue in anything other than a period/full stop. Periods/full stops are used when you do not have a tag after the dialogue. So, for example: "Oh! I do not belong to a pack, sweetheart. Well, not anymore." she said. It should be: "Oh! I do not belong to a pack, sweetheart. Well, not anymore," she said. The period/full stop would be fine if the "she said" wasn't there, but since it is, the dialogue needs to end with anything other than a period/full stop, so in this case, a comma.

My last suggestion when it comes to dialogue is to try to avoid using semicolons in dialogue. It's extremely unnatural. We don't really speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, so that's why I suggest downsizing it, especially when semicolons are the most complicated punctuation mark, so it can be easy to use them incorrectly, and there were some incorrect semicolon usages as a result because of how often they were used in dialogue and in the links. That led to many awkward sentences that don't sound like sentences people would speak. For example, from chapter 6: "Oh, you must have thought so; looking at the pictures, she is twenty-three years old," Nana replied." The extra quotation mark error is also here, with an extra quotation after the "replied." But let's focus on the dialogue and the semicolon. The dialogue is a bit awkward and I'm unsure of the sentence's purpose. Are you trying to say that while the king was looking at the pictures, he must have mistaken her for 16? There are no pictures present in the scene, so that seems like the only explanation that would make sense. In that case, the semicolon doesn't make sense, and it should be: "Oh, you must have thought so from looking at her pictures. She's twenty-three years old." That's one alternative that's a bit more natural (I naturally add contractions to a lot of things, so that's why I changed she is to she's).

Some authors recommend never using semicolons because they tend to overcomplicate sentences, and while I don't really agree with that, there is some merit to it where semicolons, in my opinion, should be used sparingly since they can easily overcomplicate things, and I am of the opinion they should almost never be used in dialogue. Like I said, we don't really speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage, so I suggest downsizing on semicolons to avoid potentially awkward sentences, especially in dialogue.

As for character critiques, most of them are just about the dialogue and making the dialogue smoother with the suggestions I said above since the dialogue massively impacts how we view the characters. I have one other minor critique, though. This is probably going to sound stupid to say as a critique, so bear with me while I explain, though consider not having as many A names. I know, I know, that probably sounds really stupid, so hear me out. I say this because there are sometimes four A names at a time, two of which being so similarly-sounding that they can be mistaken with one another, so that's why I recommend diversifying the names a bit. I say this because the four names I'm talking about are Aiden, Adrian, Abigail, and Aurelia. Aurelia is a great name, so I think you should keep that. I think Aiden works, too. But as we get to Adrian, it started getting confusing for me since I naturally read Adrian as Aiden many times due to how similar they sound and how similarly they're spelled. Like I said, a really small thing that's not gonna factor into the score much, but still worth mentioning since too many names with the same starting letter can start to get repetitive, especially if they sound similar like Adrian and Aiden do.

Another minor critique is in chapter 6, when Aiden says he has a PhD in genome sciences, and then Aurelia and him nerd out over it. The only issue is this is told to us in a short summary, not shown. I absolutely understand not wanting to get too over-the-top with the science stuff and show the full conversation, and that's fine, but this is the first real moment where Aurelia and Aiden find they have something in common, which is a pretty big deal for the two leads who are going to end up together romantically (and this conversation is also the reason Aurelia gets her internship, so it's a really big deal for the plot, too). So consider showing just a bit of it since it's a chance to show their personalities as scientists. I hope that makes sense.

Narrative: 7/10. Once the narrative gets moving around the chapter 11 mark and we get to see the Blood Mafia and the extended world of fae, mers, and vampires, it becomes stronger and more gripping, giving the reader an intriguing tale that intertwines a plot of murder with Aurelia's research and inner beast that is ironically seemingly as bloodthirsty as the vampires.

The narrative is pretty solid. Like I mentioned in the pacing section, it's especially solid later in the story when the puzzle pieces start falling into place. I think most readers will be wondering when the secret about Aurelia will come out, and that's a major point of tension because of course characters like Aiden are going to find out eventually, and that's what keeps us wanting to read. We want to see at least Aiden's reaction to it since he's one of two central characters and someone we care about. But that's just one side of the narrative. There are plenty of other moving parts here that make us want to read, and I'll get into a couple of them below.

Probably the most obvious plot element to talk about is the Blood Mafia and their involvement in trying to track down Aurelia's research. The more you think about it, the more perplexing it becomes, but I mean that in a good way. They're vampires, so why do vampires want the research of a werewolf? They're clearly talking about her "personal" research about her inner beast, and it raises a lot of questions about why they would want this research if it has nothing to do with vampires. Some questions that could be raised are are they building a secret vampire weapon that involves werewolves? Do they want to make an abnormal wolf for their own benefit? Do they want to find the research so they can exterminate any "threats" to the vampire world AKA abnormal wolves? Those are just a few questions raised while reading, and they're good questions to have since they keep us reading. So I think the core idea behind the plot is interesting and makes for an entertaining read.

Another thing about the narrative I like is the world. While not inherently plot-related, I do think it's still a major part in the narrative since the world impacts how the plot unfolds. The example I keep using is the fae and how they advance Aurelia's research, and even though it's an example I've used a lot now, it is one of the most interesting parts of the book, seeing the fae shift their attitude toward Aurelia and even give her a gift. It does a good job raising more questions while including another supernatural creature in a natural way. The fae, in general, were depicted in an interesting way here, and I liked how you made them.

But moving away from the fae since I've talked a lot about them throughout the review, let's look at the general world. I think you put a lot of love and care into this world, and I appreciate that a lot. Worldbuilding is an overlooked element of storytelling. I've read stories that are longer than yours where I couldn't even tell you where it took place because the authors don't give locations or care about the worldbuilding that much. So I wanted to say I really enjoyed how you put a lot of care and detail into the supernatural side of the world, especially since it impacts the plot so much. I really enjoyed learning all the new things about the supernatural since you take them in an interesting way, with each of the main supernatural creatures getting different abilities and intriguing aspects to their characteristics to make them entertaining and unique from other supernatural stories, so great job with that!

Moving into critiques, like I mentioned earlier, you have a lot of exposition in the beginning. Remember that you have the entire narrative to tell us this exposition. The reason you don't have a hook at the beginning is because you're spending too much time expositing and not enough time focusing on the current predicament. For example, chapter 3. Chapter 3 starts off strong with a philosophical question posed to us and a hint of conflict with the words "current predicament." It looks like this chapter might get dark and introduce a major conflict, but it quickly loses that intrigue and starts giving a lot of exposition, like all the backstory about the grandmother, the uncle, Aurelia's research, Aurelia's autonomy, etc. We don't need to know even half of that right now. Stick to just what we absolutely need to know to understand the chapters and reveal more information over time as that information becomes more important. You have 34 chapters to tell us all this information, so don't feel pressured to put it all in the first few chapters, is essentially what I'm saying. Chapter 3 could have potentially been your chapter one with a solid hook if you focused more on what Aurelia's current predicament was rather than the exposition. To put this into perspective, in chapter 3, starting with the paragraph that starts with "Many Alphas, Lunas, and Betas...", there are 14 paragraphs in a row that are all exposition. Every paragraph after that paragraph is exposition. That's almost half the chapter. I hope when I put it into perspective like that, it makes sense why the exposition got too much and slowed the pacing unnecessarily. I also say that because, as readers, we're not going to remember it. When you put that much information on someone all at once in a story that already has a lot of terms (it has a glossary for all its terms), it's natural they're going to get overloaded with information and forget much of it, which is why it's recommended to spread the exposition out throughout the story instead of all at once.

Another thing is I was a little confused by chapters 5 and 6. Not because of the content but because of the choice to go into third-person POV just for those two chapters and never again. It was first-person up until that point and I believe third-person never makes another appearance again after that (though I could be wrong since I just reskimmed the chapters to look for another POV). So I was a bit confused by the choice to go into a completely different POV. I would advise against switching between third and first person unless it's for very specific reason, so that's why I was a bit confused by the choice to only have it in two chapters and not elsewhere. Though, with that being said, in chapter 7, there are times you slip POVs. It's Aurelia's first-person POV, but sometimes you'll change from "I" to "she/her" pronouns and then back to the first person pronouns, so I would recommend tweaking that chapter so it's consistently in first person.

So overall, the narrative is strong and likely the strongest part of the story, along with other things like the world and the dynamic between the beast and Aurelia, so I think you did a good job with it. Other than the pacing issues and the POV slips, I think the narrative was solid!

Album Presentation: 6/10. The title of the book is The Lycan Legend, which repeats the "l" sound and sounds satisfying to say out loud. I mean, really, everyone reading this, say it out loud. It's fun to say, right? I had fun saying it. Or maybe I'm just too easily entertained, I don't know. Either way, I think the title works well and sums up what the book is going to be about without needing a lot of words to do so, but it's also more unique at the same time and keeps it short but not too short that I can't draw any conclusions. So good job with the title. No criticisms for it.

The blurb overall tells us what the story is about, though it could use some tweaks to the clarity and length to make it easier to understand. For starters, it's a little confusing. You don't need the pitch and logline there, you only need the blurb. Because the logline is formatted like it is, I thought the entire thing was the logline, but that doesn't make sense since the logline repeats exactly what the core blurb is. But as readers, we read it as if the entire thing is the blurb, not like it's a pitch, then a logline, then a blurb. You don't need all that. You only need the blurb and the rest can be removed.

So that whole logline can be removed, and the important bits of information (like the dream internship) can be moved to the second paragraph that I believe starts the blurb, though like I said, it's hard to tell since it's not sectioned off and labeled like everything else is, so it's easy to misinterpret it as part of the logline.

I say the logline can be removed because the point of the logling is to introduce the Blood Mafia, though in the second paragraph, or the start of the blurb, you re-introduce the Blood Mafia as if this is the first time the readers are learning who they are, so you're introducing them to us twice when you only need to do so once. The official blurb provides a little more detail about them, describing exactly what they are (vampires) and giving more detail, so that's why I say the first paragraph can be removed and/or merged with paragraph two to make one solid paragraph.

Grammatically, there could be some tweaks, too, and consider more specific details. Instead of saying her "dream internship," consider being more specific. Where is this dream internship? What is she doing? For example, let's say she's a NASA intern. You can say "When Aurelia Connor starts her dream internship as a data analyst at NASA, she is...". It only adds a few extra words but gives so much more detail. Now we learn exactly what her profession is, her dream is, and what company she's working at. Now instead of having a million different images in our head (since a "dream internship" can mean any field on earth), we have a very specific image of what Aurelia is doing with her life, and that's accomplished with just six words.

Moving into the creative side of the blurb, let's focus on what I believe is the core of the blurb, or the two paragraphs after the logline. The first paragraph could benefit from being rearranged. Let's look at these two sentences, or the first two sentences: All Aurelia Connor (this is lowercase in the blurb, so I capitalized it-Connor is a proper noun, so it needs to be capitalized) cares about is her family and her research. She needs to find out about her abnormality. These two sentences are very disjointed. We go from introducing Aurelia and telling us what she cares about to suddenly now there's a new thing she cares about: finding her abnormality. It's just very sudden and could benefit from being integrated in a smoother way that feels like it flows from point A to point B more naturally. In general, the blurb could benefit from being a lot more precise/specific about what exactly you're trying to say. What is her internship? What is her research? What is a weird wolf and abnormality, and why should I as a reader care about it?

So, to summarize, my main points are the following:

- Minor grammar tweaks are needed as there are a couple capitalization and punctuation errors (missing commas and spacing errors)

- Consider removing the logline and pitch sections as they are unneeded and could lead to confusion about what is and is not the official blurb

- Consider adding more specific details instead of general ones; i.e., what is Aurelia's internship? What is her research? How does her family factor into this? They were mentioned as one of two things she cares about and then not mentioned again for the rest of the blurb, so how are they important here? You don't have to answer all of those questions, but those are some questions to consider answering in the blurb.

If we're talking strictly grammar, these are the tweaks that would make it grammatically correct:

All Aurelia Connor cares about is her family and her research. She needs to find out about her abnormality. Her weird wolf. She needs major funding and lab equipment to carry out her research. In a strange turn of events, her attending a ball at the royal palace leads to a great internship opportunity that would aid her research. She starts her new job, excited about the opportunity, only to be targeted by the Blood Mafia, a ruthless vampire group that treats humans like blood cattle.

Now, she has to set out on a journey to find out why she is targeted, but things become more complex when the werewolf king gets involved. As she walks the fine line between science and magic, she understands that sometimes science and magic are not always mutually exclusive but are intertwined in such a way that the beginnings of the supernatural creatures will be put into question.

I made very minor tweaks, like a comma after "targeted" in the last paragraph. Also a space between "research" and "She" in the first because there was no space there originally. So, grammatically, it was overall fine, it just needed minor tweaks.

Overall, the blurb does give us a vague idea of what the story is about, it could just use some tweaks to give it a bit more clarity so the reader more clearly knows what story they're about to read. I hope that makes sense!

The cover has nice details to it, like the red moon in the background is a great touch and is my favorite part of the cover. I think that space background is overall cool and does a good job providing good aesthetics to the cover. With that being said, I do have a critique, and it's that the cover feels very... glossy? I don't know if that's the right word I'm looking for, but for a story that's very visceral and opens with a brutal murder, the cover feels the complete opposite of that. Very clean and slick, I think are two better words to describe it. For a story so brutal with very serious topics, a darker cover may be able to reflect that tone and plot a bit stronger, if that makes sense. I still really like the red moon and think that should absolutely be kept, but are there any ways to capture the dark tone of the narrative while keeping that moon? I'm far from a cover designer, hence why the cover weighs far less into the total score than it does for a lot of other contests, so I encourage you to play around with it and get second opinions before making any concrete changes!

Total: 31.5/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) Me and the Devil by Soap&Skin (Not explicit)

- I think the title of the song pretty much sums up why I chose it! Aurelia's inner conflict and her battle with the beast is what made me choose this song. She is, quite literally, walking with her own devil, so that's why I think the song makes sense. Along with that, the instrumental matches the story's narrative and tone, in my opinion, so I think it's cool!

2) Disease by Lady Gaga (Not explicit)

- One of Lady Gaga's most recent songs, Disease is a powerful track that I think represents the height of the story, whenever Aurelia feels powerful and one with her beast. That's why I chose it for the middle of the playlist. Also, the whole "I can cure your disease" part of the song being the chorus just kinda maybe sorta matches Aurelia. Maybe just a little...

3) Fatal Attraction by Reed Wonder (Not explicit)

- Matching the overall dark tone of the playlist, Fatal Attraction closes out the playlist with a passionate track that I believe reflects Aurelia and Aiden. They have a fatal attraction to one another. And maybe in her own strange way, Aurelia has a fatal attraction to her beast (just a different kind of attraction), and I think that's another layer that makes this song a strong choice for this narrative.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Thank you for participating! I hope the review is helpful and that you enjoy the playlist!

Fallen by QuinceArchFortes

This story was super close to an honorable mention, therefore I will be giving you a follow and some votes to show my appreciation for your hard work!

Review:

Album Cohesion: 8.5/10. You quite literally get right into the story with chapter 1 without dilly dallying and spending a lot of time on a million different aesthetics and introductions, which I appreciate. But literally you get right to the point with chapter 1. I was half-heartily reading it at 12 a.m. when I was drunk on tiredness just to get a sneak peek and then planned to reread it the next day to really process it, and oh boy, lemme tell ya, reading that first chapter while drunk on tiredness was quite the experience. I didn't know if I was hallucinating or if what was happening was actually happening, and it was an interesting ride. I mean that in the best way possible. Upon rereading in my actual stable thoughts, I can confirm it was just as crazy on the second read as it was on the first.

But before I get into the overall story, I just want to emphasize that you don't waste any time and get into it right away, making for solid entry pacing, and that makes up part of this category, so you will receive full credit for that part. Next is the pacing of the story itself, so let's get into that.

The pacing of the story itself is very good, as you can probably tell by the very high score this category received. Getting above an 8 is not exactly easy, so that shows how much I enjoyed the pacing. While I was reading, I think it was around the chapter 10 or 11 mark where I had to pause and verbally talk to myself about my thoughts on the story so far (because I'm literally insane and need to verbally talk to myself about it, for some reason), and one of the things I brought up to my audience of stuffed animals was how in every single chapter that I had read thus far, there was something happening, and normally something big. We have betrayal, secrets being discovered (like Ash's big secret in chapter 2), there's some big revelation, etc. There's always something going on to keep the reader entertained, and I don't think there are any chapters from this that can be deleted and there'd make no difference. That's why the pacing is so good. The goal of creative writing is to do as much as possible in the least amount of time as possible without overwhelming the audience, and that's what you do.

Everything is so tightly wound so it feels coherent and like it flows well. Plot and character development is given to us at a great rate to keep us engaged throughout the entire storyline. So, as you can tell, I really liked the pacing and thought you did a wonderful job giving us what we needed to stay invested without overwhelming us.

The only minor critique I have was there were a handful of moments where it felt it got a little too focused on the sexual stuff instead of plot development. Like the epilogue had a major focus on the sexual stuff and it could have benefitted from being more focused on the plot's ending, or chapter 12.5 being almost exclusively sexual content, which is a lot since it clocked in at 15 minutes to tie with one other chapter for the longest chapter in the book, and there were many sexual references and moments afterward. I'm not saying delete all the sexual stuff because that's what the story was eventually leading to, though consider downsizing in some areas to keep the focus on the really interesting plot you have going on here. But other than that, I thought the pacing was excellent throughout the story, particularly for the first 12 chapters where there was something major happening every chapter, but also not to the point that it got overwhelming, by any means. So, all in all, fantastic job with the pacing!

Lyrics: 6.5/10. This is the word choice and sentence structure category, so the two things this category will be judged on is the technical and creative side. Let's start with the creative side since it's far more interesting to talk about.

For the creative side of the word choice, I enjoyed it. Like I commented on in the story, there were a few moments of really cool word choice I enjoyed, like the crunching of leaves, but, more notably, when Atticus bites Ash and she felt all the pain and suffering. I thought that was a really cool moment that stood out to me as powerful word choice to amplify the feelings Ash went through.

Another thing I enjoyed was the overall handle of Ash's emotions and how you described her inner thoughts. It's all from her POV, so we get an intimate connection with her, and I thought you did a good job bringing that to life with the word choice and sentences used to create diverse emotions within Ash that didn't boil down to just one or two things but rather a whole bunch. She was complex, and that was thanks to how she was written with the word choice.

I have a few suggestions for the word choice and sentence structure of the story. First and foremost, I would recommend using less introductory clauses. You use a lot of them, sometimes to the point where you'll have almost every sentence in a paragraph have introductory clauses, so I would strongly suggest diversifying the sentence structures you use as I noticed an overuse of introductory clauses.

As for word choice, there were a handful of words I felt you overused, like clad and undulate. Both of those words were used quite a few times throughout the novella, and since they're more advanced words, it's easier to notice when they're overused. Undulate is the one that I noticed overused the soonest since it seemed to be present in almost every chapter I read by the time I noticed (chapter 6), so it was very noticeable. I believe I noticed it was used in at least chapters 4, 5, and 6 at least once, if not more in the earlier chapters (though I was not keeping track by that point). It may not seem like a big deal, and it isn't, though it is still something worth considering since that word, undulate, in particular is very advanced and really easy to remember when you see it, so readers will likely notice you using it so frequently. After reading chapter 7, it was also used in that chapter.

Now let's get away from that and more into the SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) side of things. Let's start with semicolons. You sometimes use semicolons incorrectly. Some authors recommend never using semicolons, which I don't agree with, but I do agree to consider limiting their usage since they tend to overcomplicate sentences, and it's normally a good idea to at least avoid them in dialogue since we don't really speak in a way that warrants semicolon usage. But to explain what I mean more clearly, let's look at an example from the text. From chapter 5: Light began to recede from the edges of my vision as I stood bare; feeling naked and exposed. The semicolon there should be a comma. So sometimes you use semicolons in places where there should be commas. It's not a big deal since it didn't happen too often, but it's still worth mentioning.

While on the topic of punctuation, there were some comma errors, too. Often when you use a conjunction. You don't always need commas when you use a conjunction, though there are many times when you do need it. For example: Escapism went against my beliefs but I needed to understand his perspective to help him properly. There should be a comma before "but" and after "beliefs."

That being said, the spelling was overall good with only minor typos here and there, like "it" is misspelled as "in" in the second sentence of chapter 8, but that's really minor and nothing I'm going to take off points for. The overall spelling was good, and I don't think I noticed any typos until chapter 8, which means that's 7 whole chapters where either there were no typos, or they were minor enough that I didn't notice them and naturally read them correctly, so good job with the spelling.

All in all, the word choice does what it needs to for the story to propel it forward, and there were many interesting moments of word choice throughout that I enjoyed. I just had a few recommendations for the technical side of the story with sentence structures and SPAG errors. I hope everything I said makes sense!

Dynamics & Harmony: 6/10. This is the characters and dialogue section, so let's get into the characters, and then I'll get into the dialogue.

Starting with the characters, I thought they were interesting throughout the story, particularly in the beginning with chapter 2 and how it's revealed that Ash killed a human. That was one of the most interesting parts of the story for me, and I was instantly hooked on what you were giving us. I thought it was a wonderful moment that got me invested in Ash right off the bat. An angel? Killed someone? Even if she says they were bad (and we later find out she killed the man to protect children, so I honestly can't blame her), it still adds a new layer to her character that got me interested in seeing what would come next.

But even beyond that, I admired Ash's strength throughout the story. It started with me being curious to see how she would develop since she seemed to take her falling all the way to the plane incredibly well with her wondering why it didn't hurt, which was fantastic. She's the protagonist, after all. If I'm this invested in the protagonist, then I can get invested in the story.

I wasn't sure how to feel about Atticus for the entirety of the narrative, even by the end, so I won't comment much on him since I'm honestly not entirely sure what to say. I don't have critiques, exactly, but I'm not really sure what to say since he started off so aggressive and then changed over time, so I'll just say I'm passive about him, which is neither a good nor bad thing, more just that I think he makes for a good addition to the story and a good way to test Ash's strength.

But going outside of Atticus, I enjoyed the personification of death and how you showed it through the cat, and also Atticus' emotions with the cat. I thought that was a nice detail that made me want to see more of the cat and more of what you were going to do with the concept, and I think you did a good job executing it.

When it comes to the dialogue, there were some errors throughout. Let's start with tags, and then we'll move into some other stuff. Firstly, I would suggest not using actions as tags. By actions, I mean things like smiled, laughed, chuckled, smirked, etc., so anything like "he smirked," "he smiled," "she chuckled," etc. I say this because using actions as tags goes against a dialogue tag's definition. It's a dialogue tag, not a people tag, so that means that by using actions as tags, it's almost implying the words are smiling/laughing/chuckling/smirking/etc., not the person speaking. That's why tags are speech-related, like said, asked, whispered, etc., because words can do those things, but not actions. So I would recommend avoiding actions as tags since they're very unnatural and aren't proper tags.

The second thing is that sometimes dialogue is capitalized incorrectly. For example, from chapter 3, "It was like you had your fingers deep in me," he smirked, "And not in the fun way." I used this example since it highlights both the actions as tags thing I mentioned above and the capitalization error. When you're continuing dialogue with a comma, the second part of the dialogue needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun because it is not new dialogue but rather a continuation of the same dialogue, so it's implied to be part of the same sentence, essentially. If it were a period/full stop, then yes it's capitalized, but when you're connecting two pieces of dialogue with a comma, then it needs to be lowercase. So, for example, here's a potential rewrite: "It was like you had your fingers deep in me," he said with a smirk, "and not in the fun way." Or you can simply do something like this: "It was like you had your fingers deep in me." He smirked. "And not in the fun way." Both still include the smirk but not as the direct tag, making it more natural, and both tweak the capitalization error. I hope that makes sense.

Another thing is there were times the dialogue got a little confusing since it got hard to tell who was speaking, and this is because of the way it was formatted at times. From chapter 4:

My own gaze narrowed. "You're trying again to get me to sleep with you," I guessed.

A smile spread over Atticus' lips. "I mean, I'm not wrong. You literally can't tell me I'm wrong." Standing, he moved around the counter to approach me. "What if this is our last night together?" he pouted.

The "I mean, I'm not wrong. You literally can't tell me I'm wrong" is the part that's a little confusing. Is that Ash or Atticus speaking? It's split from Ash's line, which implies Atticus is speaking, but if that were the case, it would be "I mean, you're not wrong" and use second-person since he should be referring to Ash, which leads me to believe Ash is still speaking even though it's split up from her past dialogue and Atticus speaks in that same paragraph with the "What if this is our last night together" line. So I would recommend making parts like those a little clearer, if that makes sense.

The last thing dialogue-related that I'll mention is sometimes you overuse dialogue tags. Not always, but sometimes you'll have long stretches where every line has a tag, or sometimes the same person speaking will get two tags unnecessarily (like in chapter 5 in the beginning, you use "he said" twice for Atticus in the paragraph that starts with "Atticus brushed past me...," and I didn't feel the second one was necessary).

The only character critique is something I'll mention in the next section since it's also plot-related. I'd say it's more plot related but it does impact the character of Ash as well. But I like Ash a lot, as you can tell, so it's not a big deal. I'll explain in the next section since I already wrote a detailed explanation there, but it has to do with her build up and how her personal storyline develops up until Atticus reveals he had a major part to play with Bill. So, I'll explain next section.

Overall, the character work is solid, and Ash in particular had a lot of intrigue set up as early as chapter 2 to get the readers invested. I just had a few suggestions for the dialogue, and I hope those suggestions made sense.

Narrative: 8/10. The narrative follows Ash after she is put in a mysterious plane in a house that she later finds out is the house of Bill, the human she killed in order to protect children. She's stuck with a violent demon named Atticus, who manipulates her around every turn and takes advantage of her faith in him many times. This leads to Ash trying to fix him and give him a chance to become better, but along the way, many secrets are unveiled that make it much harder than it seemed on the surface.

The narrative is focused on Ash and Atticus, which I think was a great choice. It meant that we got to see the characters on a personal level instead of having to focus on a million other things. That ties in to the good pacing. A narrative idea is good and all, but if it's not executed well, then it's hard to follow. The pacing is fantastic, like I mentioned before, so everything flows smoothly, making it so the narrative is executed well. The ideas are there, the characters are there, and the pacing is there, so you really have a well-rounded narrative here that does a good job getting the readers wanting to read more.

This is both a praise and a critique since there's two layers to this. I like the twist of Atticus' involvement with Bill and how it impacts Ash. I think that was unexpected and a good twist that did a good job keeping the audience on their toes. I audibly said "oh" when it was revealed, which goes to show it was quite shocking. So I think that moment and the concept was great, and the critique comes from I wish it was set up a little more on Ash's end. Atticus' end was great. It was a constant point where Atticus was being questioned on why he was there, so that's good. When I say Ash's side, I mean I wish there was a little more build up about the human she killed. Like I said before, Ash killing a human as an angel is extremely interesting, shocking, and keeps readers engaged. I was super engaged when I read that and thought that moment was wonderful, though I wish it was a little more prominent in the narrative between chapters 3 and 10, when the truth is revealed. I remember thinking around the chapter 6 to 7 range "What about the human Ash killed? I don't think the human has been brought up at all since it was first mentioned." So it just could have been interesting to see a little more of that, like some quiet moments with Ash with no Atticus present reflecting on what she did. She doesn't have to be obvious and say what happened and you can save that reveal for later, but since there were so many hints and details for Atticus and why he was there, it could have been interesting to see a little more on Ash's side, too, if that makes sense. So just a little more build up on Ash's side so the human she killed feels more prominent in the narrative could have been interesting to see, but I still really like the twist and think the concept of an angel killing a human, even for the right reasons (to protect children), is awesome and unique. The overall narrative was well done.

Album Presentation: 8.5/10. The title is "Fallen," which could be a little stronger since while it does say a bit about the story, it is a title that's been done many times before, so it could benefit from being played around with to help it stand out in the Wattpad algorithm. If you look up Fallen, you'll find literally thousands of stories with the same name; however, that being said, I'm not one to write something off just because it's been done before. I think it's about how it reflects the story instead, so while it could be interesting to play around with the title and make it stand out more, it does reflect the story, so that's what I think matters most, and I like the title based on that aspect of it.

As for the blurb, it tells the reader exactly what to expect from the story. It tells us who the characters are, the basic plot premise, and why we should read the book, so it checks all the boxes when it comes to what readers want to see in a blurb. Great job with the blurb.

The only deductions are minimal, seeing as, like I said earlier, getting above an 8 is extremely difficult. So the only minor deductions come from two comma errors in this line: Bonds twist and grow, like a thorny vine, as black and white fade to gray in this paranormal romance full of mystery and legend. I understand why you put the commas there, though the commas around like a thorny vine are not needed and I would recommend removing them. But again, I understand why you put them there (I see the vision!). Other than that, the blurb is great! It's short and to-the-point, providing enough information to get us invested but not enough that it starts spoiling too much, so great job with the balance in the blurb.

The cover is really great. I love the color scheme and how it reflects the story, the placement of the two figures, and the chosen font being the way it is. It feels like it symbolizes Ash's journey with the way the font looks like it's scratched on, which I found interesting. I overall like the cover a lot and have no critiques for it.

Total: 37.5/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) Dark Fur Elise by Lucas King (Not explicit)

- This instrumental is the perfect opening for Fallen's playlist. This is a dark instrumental that I fell in love with when I first listened to it. It sets the tone for your narrative, warning of the dark vibes ahead while making you feel like you're ascending due to the beautiful composition of the piece.

2) Chills - Dark Version by Mickey Valen (Not explicit)

- This dark song (as implied by the title) is steamy and reflects the relationship present in the narrative. It has an awesome instrumental that hooks you right from the start... hey, kinda like your story! See? It allll connects. But even aside from that, the vibe of the song fits well with the atmosphere of the story, and it connects to the other two songs on this playlist!

3) High by Sivik (Not explicit)

- Ah, back in the good old days when this song was used for more edits than I could count, but it's kinda fallen (pun intended) off in the past decade. I chose this song to close off the playlist since I think the instrumental and overall vibes of the song are perfect for the narrative. It feels like a proper conclusion that ends on a unique note. I also included the slowed down version on the playlist since I personally think it's better, but both the original and slowed versions will be on the playlist.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

I hope the playlist is appealing to you, and thank you for participating! I can't wait to see more of your work!

Good Luck, Bug by SojourningGhosts

Review:

Album Cohesion: 7.5/10. When it comes to the transition to chapter 1, there's only a playlist prior to the first chapter, which means you don't waste time dilly dallying and instead get right into it, which is good. The organization of the book is good, with four clear "before" parts that are establishing the four main characters, and the chapters themselves are an even 11 minutes long, which I'm guessing is around 2.8k - 3.2k words, likely a little over 3k since 10-minute reads are about 3k words on the dot. Word count doesn't really matter as long as the chapters themselves include good content, but it's nice to see consistency.

The chapters ended when they needed to and included enough content to feel like the runtime of each chapter was justified. It's the average chapter length across Wattpad, with many chapters being within the 7 - 12 minute read time, and you use that time well, and it will also look good in the algorithm, which is a nice bonus.

In terms of pacing, consider establishing the immediate location earlier because sometimes you'll have the location feel really vague for the first bit, or you'll describe everything except the location. For example, other than the car horns blaring, I didn't feel like the first chapter was in New York City. I was just there one week prior to reading this story (I live in New York currently), and there's so much to describe about it that I recommend adding more. The same applies to giving a specific location, because sometimes it takes a while to see it. For example, we don't know the couple in chapter 2, completely new characters to chapter 1, are in a beach house until 9 minutes into the 11 minute chapter. Do you see why that can be an issue? It doesn't matter how many descriptions you give before that because this whole time I'm thinking they're in the girl's house, which gives me a completely different image of the scene than if it were a beach house. That's why I started with New York City not really feeling like New York City (especially when the first paragraph romanticizes it a lot, which I felt didn't really fit in with the gloomy mood and felt like an unnecessary juxtaposition): chapter 2 is the same way where there was nothing in the descriptions that made it feel like I was at a beach despite the characters being at a beach house. So to ground the narrative a bit more, I recommend making sure the location is clear as early as possible, if that makes sense.

Overall, the cohesion within the album was good and did a good job flowing from point A to point B, and the transition into the first chapter wasn't bogged down by a million unnecessary things. You had a playlist and then introduced us to the first chapter, which was good. For stronger flow and reader comprehension, I would suggest more specific and clear descriptions about the environments themselves, but otherwise thought the cohesion was good.

Lyrics: 6/10. The composition/word choice present throughout the story is a definite improvement over past works, where you have a much better balance between the prose-y like descriptions and plot progression, as well as dialing it back when needed and not getting too metaphorical about things. You still have advanced vocab without it feeling as over-the-top as some past works I've read, which is a great improvement that I really enjoyed to see.

The only thing I'll say is chap 2 is a little over-the-top in terms of its language. Whereas chapter 1 has a stronger balance between the pretty and the simplistic so readers can stay engaged, chapter 2 more often than not goes really metaphorical and has unneeded descriptions, like She looked like an old painting of anguish, which is unnecessary because all the description before and after this line already shows that anguish, so there's no need to tell it. A lot of the descriptions are long and pretty but end up being telling over showing, where you'll tell us someone's sad, or feeling sorrow, or feeling anguished, feeling rage/fury, etc., just in longer ways. So I suggest diversifying that and focusing on showing more than telling since it can make the descriptions feel redundant. If you're going to spend that much time on them, having a lot of telling feels almost counterproductive, if that makes sense, so that's why I suggest it.

The next thing I'll mention is there were comma errors throughout the text. Here's an example from chapter 1: Purple hyacinths to say goodbye and black roses, to say she was sorry and a single pink peony that symbolized good luck. What I recommend: Purple hyacinths to say goodbye, black roses to say she was sorry, and a single pink peony that symbolized good luck. So that's a smaller thing since the comma errors weren't too too noticeable, but I still recommend tweaking them wherever possible.

While on the topic of grammar, you have some possessive issues throughout the text. For example, in the first chapter, the opening paragraph has God's in it, but the God's should be gods. You also spell its as it's in the opening of chapter 2 as well, so I just recommend making sure all the possessives make sense. The sentence I'm referring to is this: A clock ticked on, moving it's hand over it's face, sighing out reminders of the passing time. It's = it is, so you're saying "moving it is hand over it is face," which is why both of them should be its instead of it's. I hope that makes sense.

In general, there were quite a few errors throughout the story in terms of grammar and spelling. In chapter two, you have this: Charle furrowed his brows..., and it should be Charlie. Also in chapter 2: He stared as the twists floating up..., and the "floating" should be "floated." One last example that applies to the whole book is you often don't use hyphens when you're using a compound adjective, like this (also from chapter 2): Sickness crept up his throat like a long legged insect..., which should have a hyphen between long and legged, so long-legged since you're using those two words as a compound adjective to describe insect, and this is a consistent error throughout the text.

The last thing I'll mention is there were quite a few adverbs throughout the narrative. Adverbs aren't inherently a bad thing and can be useful in some cases, though be careful with overusing them, like you use "barely" a lot. Just be careful the adverbs being placed are placed for specific purposes and not put in to sound better or to lengthen the sentences artificially, like demurely is in chapter 2, and I didn't feel it was necessary. In a lot of cases, the best way to remove adverbs is to just delete them and the sentences will still make sense without them, though sometimes you may have to rearrange sentences to help the flow, but those are two ways to get rid of adverbs. I'd recommend plugging the text into Docs or Word if you haven't already and searching up ly. From there, you can consider deleting or rewording some of the words ending with -ly.

Overall, the lyrics do a better job finding balance between the more metaphorical and pretty language, and there is clear improvement. There were some suggestions I had, but I overall thought the lyrics did a good job presenting the story.

Dynamics & Harmony: 7/10. This is the dialogue & characters category, and so far, I think the characters have interesting backstories that will serve as solid foundation for the rest of the book. I don't have a favorite character yet, but that's because they all interest me the same, which is a good thing since that means they all have equally intriguing backstories and traits that make me want to see more from them in the future.

I think you did a good job introducing us to the main cast by giving time to each core character, but also not so much that it started to get boring or drag in any areas. There are quite a few characters, but not so many that it's like Shakespeare-level and we're gonna get mad about it or anything. It's a good balance between amount of characters versus overall quality, so good job there.

The area points were taken off was from dialogue. But before I get into that, the first I want to say is the dialogue itself is fine and I have no critiques to your spoken dialogue in terms of the content within it. The lines of dialogue are pretty interesting throughout and overall work for the story, so I just wanted to make that clear before moving into critiques that it won't be about the dialogue lines but rather how they're presented.

Moving into critiques, there were times you did dialogue tags incorrectly, and other things like sometimes the dialogue could benefit from being split from big paragraphs, and I recommend not using actions as tags. Let's start with that since it's the easiest to explain.

I recommend not using actions as tags. While this is a debated topic, I personally think actions as tags look a little goofy and don't make sense considering what a dialogue tag is. What I mean by that is sometimes you'll use things like "he laughed" or "she smiled" as a dialogue tag, but I suggest not using that for a few reasons. One, tags are called dialogue tags, not people tags, so it can almost imply that the words are smiling/laughing when you use actions like smile and laugh as a tag. Secondly, there are so many alternatives that look more natural. Here are just two ways, but there are many others:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

Those two alternatives still include the action while also not having the action be the tag, that way you're getting the best of both worlds. So that's why I recommend avoiding actions as tags.

As for the other things, there were occasional times tags were done incorrectly, where you'd have something like He asked instead of he asked, or you'd have a dialogue but end the sentence in a period/full stop instead of a comma when you need a comma when using a tag. They were occasional errors, but nothing too consistent. For example, in chapter 3 you have this a little less than halfway through the chapter: "Does that mean you've met someone?" She asked. Should be she asked there. So not a big deal, but still worth mentioning.

The last thing is there were some times where you would have a big paragraph and then dialogue at the end of it, and while that isn't inherently a bad thing, sometimes it got distracting and made the dialogue feel not as impactful as it could be if it were standing on its own. For example, in chapter 2, there were many paragraphs where you'd have a line of dialogue and then a really long paragraph after it connected to it, or vice versa where you'll have a really long paragraph and then dialogue right at the end. So that's just to say consider splitting the paragraph off from the dialogue to give the dialogue more weight. It's not inherently a bad thing to have a long paragraph attached to dialogue, but it could be beneficial to split it sometimes because it gives the dialogue more space to stand on its own, especially since most readers read on phone, so it can make the dialogue feel lost at times when it's connected to long paragraphs. I hope that makes sense.

Overall, the characters are what shine through here as one of the highlights of the story. They all have their own unique backstories that make them stand out from one another. Each chapter is like its own little anthology building to an eventually larger narrative, and I think that approach is very interesting and made for an entertaining read.

Narrative: 8/10. It's a little hard to judge the narrative since we're still in the "before" stage, where all the characters are being introduced. That being said, of what's published so far, there are quite a few things to like. For example, I like how you start and end chapters with one lines, specifically the chapter endings with them all being on October 10th, 1994, and they reflect something core to the character that I imagine will play in very majorly with the plot in the future. So far, we've done character introductions, so it's difficult to tell what the plot is, but that's no problem since what matters most is that so far, the characters are interesting, and I think they all have unique stories that pique my interest to see what will come next for them. I'd say my favorite chapter so far was probably three, though I also liked chapter one (considering it's your hook, I'd say that shows you're off to a great start).

The only deductions come from what I mentioned before about the environmental descriptions and the overall lyrical (word) flow. Some tweaks to those could help the narrative flow better and feel more well-rounded. Otherwise, I enjoyed the narrative that has been published so far and think you did a good job with it.

Overall, the book shows promise in terms of its narrative with strong, unique character backstories, interesting themes, and a cool plot so far (from what I can tell based on the character backstories). I think it will grow into an even stronger narrative as more updates are given to the book.

Album Presentation: 8.5/10. The title of the book is Good Luck, Bug, which is a pretty dang good title. It's unique and calls attention to itself right off the bat. It's not over-the-top, the grammar of the title is good, and it has creative structure to make it stand out. It rolls off the tongue well, and it will make the audience curious about what this story could possibly be about. I overall like the title and have no critiques for it.

The blurb is overall okay, and I only have two critiques for it. One is this line: "These visceral emotions are bleeding anthropology; cut the wrist of humanity and watch them seep out." This is a very minor thing, but I'd just recommend an "a" in front of "bleeding," simply because you're using "bleeding anthropology" as a noun here.

The second critique is about the last line: Only time can tell, and she's the most ravenous of all... tragically, she already knows all their secrets. I'm not a huge fan of ellipses (...) in blurbs, though don't mind them in most cases. In this case, it's okay, though I feel there may be a stronger way to word this last part to really leave it on a cliffhanger that has readers raising their brows. Maybe: Only time can tell, and she's the most ravenous of all. After all, she already knows all their secrets (and maybe have this as a line break so it's under the "ravenous" sentence, giving it more weight on its own). I only made a minor tweak, but it's a potential alternative. The reason why is because I don't feel the "tragically" works here. It feels a little forced in and like it doesn't make the final clause relate to the previous two clauses of only time can tell and she's the most ravenous of all. So that's why I recommended it.

However, overall, the blurb is otherwise good. Only two minor critiques is pretty good, so you did a great job with the blurb!

The cover, like the title, is really good. It's an unconventional cover with a unique artistic style that still manages to have conventional attractiveness, in my opinion. I like the colors chosen and the way the faces morph together to almost create an optical illusion of sorts that I really enjoyed. The cover quality looks pretty good and only gets blurry when you zoom in, but that's expected from Wattpad, so that's no big deal. I overall like the cover and have no critiques for it.

Total: 37/50.

Well done! It's been an honor being able to read your works over the years. You've improved a lot, and this is my favorite work by you so far!

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) The Ghost by Trevor Something (Not Explicit)

- A song about grief that is not necessarily about grief itself but rather what the meaning of death is. It's mourning the loss of life while still living, through powerful lines like "They say you're gone when you die, but are you here when you're alive?". I believe this song reflects the mental turmoil of the first chapter.

2) Buffalo Replaced by Mitski (Not Explicit)

- A song about searching for meaning in a changing world, Buffalo Replaced using soft acoustics to take the listener on a journey. The language within the song having metaphors and emphasis on description I believe matches your writing style, and I also believe the whole theme of the song about trying to find your place in a world that never stops moving fits the themes present throughout the narrative as well.

3) rises the moon by Liana Flores (Not Explicit)

- I chose this song since it matches the vibe of the other two songs: slower, more introspective, and softer. It is a song about change, hence the "rising" of the moon, and it talks about the sun as a metaphor, which I find interesting considering Good Luck, Bug opens with the sunlight on a gloomy day, and then the chapter after that opens with moonlight, similar to how the song is structured. I believe rises the moon is the perfect song to reflect the opening of the story as well as the overall themes.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Thank you, as always, for signing up. I had a lot of fun reading Good Luck, Bug!

Imagine by AprilJester

Review:

Album Cohesion: 7.5/10. This is a short story that wastes no time getting started. There's a prologue for anyone unfamiliar with the world, and then it jumps right into chapter one without any dilly dallying or a hundred chapters prior to chapter one to tell us character aesthetics, give us a bunch of introductions, and all that kind of stuff that I associate with the Wattpad-ification of stories, so you did a good job keeping the story clean and structured, which factors into the score, and you'll get full credit for that part of the pacing.

When it comes to the overall story's pacing, it's okay and gets the job done. The prologue doesn't drag, and for someone who is unfamiliar with the world and fandom, it is appreciated. So I thought the pacing of the opening prologue was good, and the pacing of the first chapter was good, too, giving us a glimpse at the chaos before giving us the general plot idea and who the characters are so we have a general clue where the story is heading. It makes us want to click on the "continue" button when we have the information about the stakes and we can see how the main character's life might change (or already has changed). So, good job with the first chapter and prologue.

The general story pacing is okay, too, but my critique is that this feels like it got extended a bit longer than needed. I appreciate the attention to detail with including all the training and everything, but to start with a heavy action scene and intense prologue to then transition to a story that has much slower pacing was a bit jarring to me. If it were like 5-6 chapters instead of nine, it might feel a bit more cohesive and engaging since it did start to feel a little long in the last few chapters with all the training and slower pacing. I don't mind slower pacing. I almost exclusively write slow-paced novels, so that's not the issue. Slow pacing is just a pacing choice, and slow/fast pacing are not inherently good or bad things, they're just choices. It was just that for this narrative, I felt it could have been trimmed a little to maybe more like 5-6 chapters, though it may be better to get a second opinion about that before thinking of making any definitive changes as it could just be me and a personal thing, who knows. As much as I try to remain as objective as possible, subjective opinions are always going to be present in all my reviews, so maybe the pacing wasn't for me but is for someone else, so that's why I suggest really pondering it before considering making any changes.

That being said, I did like the ending chapter and how it ended with Clover revealing the big secret. I thought that was cute and a clever way to wrap up the narrative. I was curious enough to read the bonus chapter and thought that was cute, too, though even without the bonus chapter, I felt like the story concluded well and wrapped up the needed plot lines well. So, overall, the pacing was good and deserves a high score.

Lyrics: 7.5/10. This category covers the technical side of the story and how it's presented to us via word choice, SPAG, and sentence structure. Let's begin with the SPAG. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar present throughout the story is very good. I do not believe I noticed any errors while I was reading, but honestly, I stopped looking about halfway through since I just wanted to enjoy the story, and if I didn't find anything obvious by the halfway mark, then you were obviously doing something right. So when it comes to the SPAG, you did very well on it, which is amazing.

Moving more into the word choice and sentence structure, they work for the narrative and keep it simple. The language never goes over-the-top or risk hitting purple prose territory, yet it uses its language to effectively set the stage for the world. Going into this, I was unfamiliar with the fandom, but based on what I know about the general genre, I can say all the terms were integrated well both within the context of the storyline and within the contexts of the individual sentences. That made the world feel more interesting to learn about and also more realistic, so I think you did a great job with that.

I have three critiques. I'll start with the smaller thing, and it's that there's an overuse of the word "just," especially in chapter 3 where there are multiple times you'll have short paragraphs but will use "just" 1-3 times in just (pun intended) a short paragraph. It wouldn't be a big deal if this didn't happen multiple times in chapter 3 alone, so I would recommend downsizing on the usages of the word "just" wherever possible, and considering it's an adverb, it doesn't hurt to downsize. It'll make the word have more impact the less we see it. But that's a small thing, so it's no big deal or anything to panic over, but eliminating the overuse can help with the word choice and, like I said, give more impact to the times we do see it used (since "just" can be a very impactful word when used sparingly).

The second thing is I wasn't a huge fan of the overuse of exclamation marks. It happened a lot in the beginning, didn't happen as much in the middle, and then picked up again toward the end. It's a little more forgivable since Clover is younger, so I'm okay with seeing more exclamation marks here and there, though be careful with overusing them. Not only are they inherently telling over showing, but they're also emphasis marks, so the more you use them, the less impact they have to the point where they can become meaningless if used too often. They can also take away tension from the moment depending on how they're used. For example, if it's a tense moment and the character thinks to themselves oh no!, it can come off as unserious and almost sarcastic. So that's why I'd recommend considering downsizing on them.

The third is something I'll explain in the narrative section since it impacts the narrative more (but also impacts the word choice), but it's the telling over showing. I won't take off much for it here since I'm already going to go over it in the narrative section, though there were many times where the emotions were told to us, and while this isn't inherently a bad thing (telling is needed in every story, after all), it did make the sentences not feel as engaging as they otherwise could be. I'll go over it more later, but I wanted to mention it here so you know where all the deductions come from.

Overall, this story's strong point is its amazing grammar and spelling, which is a rarity on Wattpad. It makes the sentences easy to read and comprehend, making it far easier to actually enjoy the story. The worldbuilding terms are integrated well within the story and make for an added layer of intrigue. There could be some tweaks to the telling over showing aspects to potentially strengthen it further, but it's still overall solid.

Dynamics & Harmony: 7.5/10. This is the characters and dialogue section, so let's start off with the characters and then get into the dialogue. Clover is our protagonist, so the main focus is on her, though there are side characters, like Tasha, as well. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on Clover.

I liked Clover. I thought she made for a great protagonist. I loved reading her thought process. What I really loved was how she didn't let her family hold her back from doing what she wanted, even though she knew they would disapprove. There are a lot of storylines where the family has such a big influence that it starts to get frustrating, and while that happens in real life and absolutely should be talked about in storytelling, it can get overplayed really fast, and I'm glad you had Clover stand on her own two feet... or, err, four paws... hooves? Claws? Meh, you catch my drift. I'm glad she stood her ground and decided to keep strong in the face of danger and obstacles. That made her really fun to read about, and I was happy to see her and her family on happy terms by the end, and I liked how as much as they didn't like the idea at first, they trusted her to make the right decision for herself.

The other characters are mostly side characters, but I didn't have any issue with them. Tasha, for example, made for an intriguing inciting incident with the whole kidnapping at the start and the others not knowing what to do. I liked how you showed people shunning Tasha after her return, and how it planted the first seeds of doubt in young Clover's mind. That small seed grew over time until Clover ultimately made her choice, and I liked that a lot. I overall thought the character progression was good, and Clover's arc was clear and made sense, and I liked how she was open-minded and not scared to criticize her friends and family for shunning Tasha.

The main critique I have is about dialogue, and I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but I'll try my best: everyone kinda talks the same, which makes the dialogue feel repetitive at times and not as unique to the characters. They all use very similar language and speech styles, so it's hard to differentiate, even between different species where the aliens talk the same as the dragonets despite being vastly different species. They all speak relatively formally, or at least slightly formally, which is fine and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, though it does make the dialogue blend together at times, making it difficult to tell who's speaking based on speech style. This isn't 100% necessary, and even with distinct speech styles it can be difficult to tell who is speaking without tags to assist, but it's just something to consider for future stories: adding more flairs to how they speak. Giving them more individual speech patterns, is what I mean. Everyone speaks differently in real life, so it could be interesting to see some more diversity. Like Tasha and Clover spoke very similarly, and Clover and everyone else spoke very similarly. I hope that makes sense.

With that being said, the dialogue is formatted correctly with proper dialogue tags, which is rare. The most common error I see has to do with tags being incorrect, so you immediately have an advantage over most other people in that regard. Along with that, you don't overuse dialogue tags and instead sprinkle them where needed, only using more when there are unknown people in a scene and it can be easy to lose track of who's speaking, so that's good. In simpler terms: when it comes to the grammar of the dialogue, it's great!

Overall, the characters are the highlight here, with Clover being the main strength of the book. I have no critiques for Clover's arc as I thought it was entertaining to read about, and I liked seeing all of her thoughts. The dialogue could use some tweaks, but the overall dynamics & harmony throughout the narrative was good.

Narrative: 7.5/10. The narrative is pretty straightforward: it's a fanfic for Upon Wings Of Change, and it follows Clover through a journey to find a handler after what appears to be a tragedy with Tasha turns out to be not what it seems. After that, young Clover stands up for Tasha and makes decisions on her own that her family, at first, doesn't agree with but later comes around to.

So it's a pretty straightforward premise following Clover on her journey to essentially find a new home. It's nothing complicated, and it doesn't need to be. The world is fascinating, which helps elevate the narrative, and Clover's journey is the highlight here, so I would say it's more world and character focused than plot focused, and that's fine. Clover self-reflecting and trying to get a handler works well and makes me want to keep reading. I thought it also had wholesome moments that made for an entertaining read, and I liked the ending (not the bonus chapter but the official ending) with Clover talking to her handler. I thought that was a cute, nice touch that really wrapped it all in a neat bow, so you really stuck the landing there.

My main critique is that there's a lot of telling over showing, and while telling isn't inherently a bad thing (it's needed in stories, so I don't agree with the whole you always have to show over tell trend that some people push), I would say there is an overuse of it here. For example, let's take a look at this part of the text from chapter 3:

"Look at her flank. Whoever broke through the garden door also cut her tracker bead out. When I get my hands on him, he will pay," her handler said.

I had NEVER heard that much anger coming from a Kymari.

In this excerpt, there's not much to indicate that the handler is that angry. We can guess he's angry based on the last sentence he says, but otherwise, there's not much in the text to show this anger. So when Clover had that thought that there was so much anger, I thought "Oh, really?" There wasn't much to show it, so there could be some tweaks here and there to help with doing more showing and less telling since a lot of the emotions and plot elements in the story are told rather than shown. Like I said before, telling isn't inherently a bad thing. Every story needs telling at least to a tiny degree, if not quite a bit, but I'd recommend downsizing on telling, like moments like that where you're telling us about the anger instead of showing it. You can still have the line about Clover never hearing that much anger coming from a Kymari since Clover's thoughts on it are fine, but also coincide that with some showing. Maybe have a line before the dialogue showing the handler getting angrier, or have something in the tag itself. So that's just one example of some of the telling over showing prominent throughout the narrative, and I encourage you to play around with it in future works and find what works best for you.

Like I mentioned earlier, the story does go on a little too long as well and could have benefitted from being a bit shorter to focus on Clover's emotions, though I otherwise enjoyed the narrative. Overall, I think it was straightforward and provided room for Clover to shine as the protagonist, and I all in all liked the narrative.

Album Presentation: 7/10. The title is Imagine, which is a one-word title that I don't see any problem with. It's capitalized as needed and fits in with the world this fanfic is based on. While it won't necessarily stand out in the Wattpad algorithm, and it isn't something that personally appeals to me, I don't think either of those things makes it a bad title by any means. It fits in with Clover's mental state and the imaginative side of the fantastical world. For those reasons, I think the title works and fits in well with the main character.

The blurb is overall okay but could use some tweaks. Grammatically, it's pretty good aside from this one line: Clover's thoughts and decisions on how to spend the rest of her life will shock the flock, and put her on a path that will now be available to others. I understand why you put the comma, though since this is a compound predicate sentence, I would recommend not using the comma here. I definitely understand why you put the comma there, though I believe it would flow a bit stronger without the comma due to it being a compound predicate sentence type. Other than that, the SPAG is good, just like it is throughout the narrative.

As for the creative side of the blurb, I would say it could benefit from being a little more cinematic. It feels like we're being directly told everything, leaving not much room for wonder or for us to want to know more about the book. It feels more like a plot synopsis/matter-of-fact description rather than a back-of-the-book blurb that really pulls readers in, and the last line is a bit vague and feels like it ends a bit abruptly. So I would recommend considering tweaking the last line to perhaps end on a cliffhanger about what could happen in the story, and throughout the blurb, consider having it be more cinematic with more of the stakes (i.e., consider exploring more of how Clover's thoughts and decisions will impact the flock without giving away too much in terms of spoilers) shown. So it could just benefit from some more detail and for it to be more cinematic instead of told, if that makes sense.

I really like how your little hat is on the cover. I think that's absolutely adorable and fits with the vibe you have going on on the cover. I don't think I've ever seen an author do that before with their name, having a hat be associated with them (or any symbol, really), so to see that included on the cover was really cute and creative, and it was a pleasant surprise for me. I also liked the dragon. The dragon itself is pretty stinking cute.

When it comes to critiques, I would say there's a bit of an overuse of green here, where it could be toned down a bit, especially with the text. I wasn't a huge fan of the text font and color. I understand that's probably more subjective, it just didn't personally stand out to me, and I felt it could potentially be played around with to be more imaginative and fantastical (the font and color, I mean, but especially the font). But I'm no graphic designer, so I can only give you mostly subjective thoughts. I would recommend going to someone more accustomed with cover design before making any drastic changes.

Total: 37/50.

Songs chosen to reflect the story:

1) Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saens (forgive me, I don't have accents on my keyboard) (Not explicit)

- Starting off with an instrumental, I think Aquarium sets the tone for Imagine well, being soft but also curious, almost like Clover. I believe this lighter opening makes for a strong introduction to the playlist, and I think it sets the atmosphere for anyone reading Imagine.

2) Stronger Than Me by Sarah Cothran (Not explicit)

- As the title implies, this song speaks about strength and the shadows hiding within one's mind. Clover faces many difficulties throughout the narrative and struggles to find her place, going back and forth between her options and wondering what her family will think of her if she goes through with what she really wants. But she pushes through that and accomplishes her journey, which is exactly what Stronger Than Me is about.

3) That I Would Be Good by Alanis Morissette (Not explicit)

- Alanis is a legend, and there were a few songs by her I considered adding to the Imagine playlist (as I feel her voice and style fit the vibe of Imagine), though I settled on That I Would Be Good due to its message about feeling whole and independent in the face of life's changes. I think that fits Clover's journey pretty well. She self-reflects a lot and goes through major life changes at a relatively young age, so I think Alanis as a whole fits her well, but particularly That I Would Be Good.

Link to playlist --->

Album Scorecard:

Thank you for participating! I've already read quite a few of your works and have enjoyed each one, so I can't wait to post more reviews soon!

~End~

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...are you still here?

Why did you read this far?

No, wait, you didn't. The read time is longer than all my ex boyfriends combined, no way you read all that. Brother, I could barely read allat and I was the one who wrote it.

You skipped to the end to see what I'd say, didn't you?

Maybe, if you're familiar with me, you're wondering if I'll say something about Jimin?

Okay, here it goes...

Jimin is HAWT 😍😍😍😍

Yep, that's all, thanks for reading.

See y'all in AOTY!

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Ahem.

DNVKJDNVJKSNJKDS

Anyway.

See you later!!!!!