Sapphire's Review Store 4.0

Review by Sunshine: A Beautiful Secret

Title: A Beautiful Secret

Author: Homolahra

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: 3.5/5

A good summary! I like the way you show how the two characters are individually, then show how their lives may intertwine, foreshadowing the romance to come and the character development they will have to face once they let their walls down. I do wonder, however, if you could add more perhaps – what could go wrong? Just a small line about stakes? Why should we, the reader, care and want them to love each other? How do they meet, exactly? What makes your story different?

Also watch out for a few fluency issues with punctuation. For example:

...she's cold and only cares about her work, family and close friends nothing else.

Potentially consider a punctuation mark of some sort before 'nothing else' so that it reads better. For example:

...she's cold and only cares about her work, family and close friends – nothing else.

Grammar: 2.5/5

Overall, I found that, while there were a lot of errors in your story, they were consistently to do with specific problems. That's a good thing – this means that once you know the rule, you can fix basically all of it up! So, let's talk about the issue – dialogue and punctuation.

When dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'they exclaimed – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question, and an exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"Help me, somebody please help me, please".

The punctuation should be inside the inverted commas. It should be:

"Help me, somebody please help me, please."

Another example:

"Hey, calm down". He said.

It should be:

"Hey, calm down," he said.

Also watch out for your tenses! You tend to sometimes switch from present to past, and sometimes, this occurs in a single sentence. For example:

Truthfully, I'm a bit worried about that day and Sophia was right about such events always keeping everyone on edge.

If we split that up, it looks like:

Truthfully, I'm a bit worried about that day... [I'm = I am = present tense]

...and Sophia was right about such events always keeping everyone on edge. [was = past tense]

You need to keep them consistent throughout your whole story.

Characterisation: 3.5/5

Something I really liked was that we saw two sides of Galaxia, reinforcing her complexity as a character. We saw how close she is to her family, through her cute banter with her mother, but we also see her literally firing people and having fear lurk around every corner she turns because of how quick, cold and cutting she is about it.

And yet, we can't help but want her to be happy – especially after her dreadful experience from ten years ago that literally made her stop interacting with people and become uncomfortable and wary of her environment. It really sets up some good room for character development, and I can already see this taking shape as she realises she has wealth, fame, beauty, dominance and authority but still feels something – peace with herself – missing. Really good work!

And wow, the meeting of the two protagonists – it was certainly memorable with the car crash, and her feisty and aggressive, "Is sorry supposed to fix my car?" was kind of really funny! Especially when she threatened him with a pepper spray.

I will say that the main issue I had with characterisation was that you often told instead of showed. I'll talk more about this in the next section, but for example:

They kept annoying me by doing everything I hated. I was beyond annoyed, I was very angry.

Show this to us. What are they doing? Describe it in more detail. And make us feel that simmering anger – how would we feel if we were her? Would our face be hot? Blood boiling? Fists clenching? What does she do that makes her different in response to other characters? Give us more detail and really put us in her shoes.

Writing Style: 3/5

As I mentioned before, I really feel like you could flesh out your story more! At the very start, she jolts awake from a nightmare – okay, but what was the nightmare of? What did she see? Why should that instantly hook us if we don't know what she's jolting out of?

And do we need to see her get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush her teeth, tie her hair, pick out her clothes, more than once in the book? Will it serve any significance in the story? Will it impact the plot or character development? If not, breeze right over it. Similarly, do we need to know exactly what she does in the gym, with the planks and bicycle crunches and leg raises? Will it impact the story if we miss out on seeing her take a shower, have breakfast, get water from the minifridge? If not, leave it right out or brush over it.

You tend to have very repetitive sentence structures in general. It's okay to have basic sentences, but when you have lots of sentences in a row with the exact same structure, it ends up sounding robotic and awkward to read. For example, here is a clump of sentences from your story that were all found together:

I ate my...

I waxed, washed my...

I picked my...

I headed to the...

I went into...

I was a sucker for...

I detest chick flicks...

All those sentences start with 'I [verb] [the rest]' and it becomes incredibly repetitive and awkward to read, so I suggest changing it up every now and then!

Also, when you include pictures, consider also describing the outfits too so that readers can see more idiosyncratic and descriptive writing. Images are fine, but practising describing the clothes and setting will also be great practise for future endeavours!

Plot + Originality: 3/5

It still feels a bit early in the plot, because I haven't seen a full climax and resolution, however, I do think you've got a pretty good foundation. The flashbacks work well in introducing her, and I really liked the flawed protagonist – Anna and Sophia literally have to defend Xavier and help Laxy see a new perspective. But poor Laxy, too, she sees Danny in everyone, keeps remembering the incident, has clear trust issues.

I will say that the start of your story, because of the repetitive writing and overall description of routine, did drag on the story a bit, but the moment the car accident happens, the plot finally sets in and the motion becomes more natural. It's cute to see them keep meeting up by accident, because the notion of fate suits them, and with him finding out exactly who she is and being utterly terrified – it makes the story more fun, more exciting, and good work on that part!

OVERALL SCORE: 15.5/25

Overall, a fun premise with bits of humour and complexity within the characters! Make sure you work on dialogue and punctuation, and you should be good to go. I hope this review helps!