CLN's Seasonal Reviews (CLOSED)

The Dessert called Love - by - magicallittle_writer

Review done by Taebaetae74

Cover: 03.75/05

The color scheme was beautiful. But, it's important that the cover contains your username, pen name, or name. Also, I felt that the texts' font could be improvised a tad bit more. Yes, I know you mentioned that the background doesn't belong to you- even though it would take some effort, you can make one on your own (or order one from a cover shop) & then add your watermark.

Title: 05/05

It fits the book well enough, though I feel that 'a' would be more apt than 'the'. But that's fine. You did a good job.

Synopsis: 04/10

To be honest, the first sentence doesn't make much sense to me. It might be just me, but it feels a bit off. Would've been better if you put a comma after the first 'sweets'. Then, the sentence constructions throughout the blurb were wrong. For instance, when you say 'most adorable answer', you call his answer adorable. It's more like he has plenty of answers but, Ambika is the most adorable response he's got among all answers. The same applies to the next 2 sentences following this line. Plus, there wasn't really a context to refer to when you say 'that angry look'. You should've put it in a different way.

Then, there were a lot of errors in the punctuations, too. Mainly the commas. It made it hard to interpret the ideas you were trying to convey.

Small errors in the words used were also noticed. For instance, in the last line, instead of 'jump in', you were to used 'jump into'.

Execution: 09/10

The execution was appreciable actually. The paragraphs were lengthy & with well enough details with lengthy chapters.

Plot: 17/20

It was sweet. The reason 3 scores were reduced is due to the plot's execution. When I say 'plot', it basically counts in everything in your book. Ranging from how much & what you describe, to how you execute it, to the grammar & related categories. No plot holes as such were noticed. So yeps. Good job.

Writing Style: 15/20

When I read the book, I felt like I was reading lecture notes. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, there was a lack in terms of expressions. It was like you were bringing scenes after scenes without a proper flow or explanation. Of course, it's not that you should add descriptive scenes at every point of the chapter. But, adding some details with a good way around your words would really help the readers a lot. Use your words to manipulate readers into thinking about what setup or scenario your book or characters undergo.

There was a lot of repetition of the same words within a paragraph. Instead of sticking to nouns only, use pronouns too. I mean, yes you do use them- but not in places you actually need to use them.

Then, of course, the grammatical errors made it a tad bit difficult to comprehend the tone of your writing style but other than this, it was all good.

Grammar & Vocabulary: 15/20

Starting with the grammar, the main errors I noticed lay in your tenses & punctuations. You first start with the past tense, then switch to present & then, back to past; don't do that. If you write in the past tense, you might as well stick to it as interchanging between tenses confuse readers. For instance, in the first chapter's first paragraph, you went from 'Mrs. Batra was hustling' to 'it gets too late. See the difference? 'Was' & 'gets' are two different tenses; you should've used 'got'.

Like I already mentioned above, there were a lot of instances where you missed out on commas. This made the sentences continue on and on without the required flow.

When a line of indirect speech is continued in the form of narration, make sure to use a coma before you ending double-quotes. For instance, in the sentence " . . . I have never seen a person as lazy as you." Mrs. Batra mumbled.- you were to use a comma after 'you'. And, it could be better if you used 'met' instead of 'seen'.

Then, the ellipsis. The universal value of an ellipsis is 3; nothing more, nothing less. Using 4 or 5 of them is grammatically incorrect.

Lastly, you missed out on using a period after words like 'Mr' & 'Mrs'. You got it right the first couple of times, but that changed after one-fourth of the first chapter.

Moving on to the vocabulary- it was good. Except for the fact that you used the right words in the wrong places. I already explained instances under the 'Synopsis' category. Sentence constructions could be improvised too. In short, the way you put words together (their arrangement) to form sentences- this, along with inserting commas when necessary.

Characters & Development: 08/10

Ah well, I couldn't get much of the development part since there were only 10 chapters to the book. But the characters were not so bad. I just felt that all the characters had personalities that basically branches from the same roots, you know? They mostly did not have that 'unique' characteristic to them.

Total: 76/100

Final Note: Yeah, I'm not really one to beat around the bush. I don't really know how to sugarcoat my words, but, please do keep an open mind and work towards erecting the errors. Do not be discouraged. Take this as motivation. From what I've read, it's pretty obvious that you've got the potential. You just have to present it in a more interesting way. Don't hesitate to hit me up if you have any queries regarding this review ;) Best of luck with your upcoming projects!