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The Night Fair

weasley20

1. What I got from the title, cover and blurb:

Right off the bat, I'm going to tell you the cover is amazing. I love the purple trees, the girl holding the oil lamp, the font, basically the whole thing. However, I do think the text placement could improve.

There's not much to say about the title, it's fitting. It reminds me of The Night Circus, although I haven't read that book yet. 

The blurb works to introduce the story, but kind of needs a bit more work. More on that later, though. For now, what I understand is that there's a girl named Avika who runs away to the Night Fair and ends up in a whole lot of supernatural trouble. 

2. What I understood from the story so far:

For context, I read up to Chapter Six-II.

To kick the story off, the prologue begins with Avika running away at night. She follows the trail her friend Nitara has left her, and encounters another one of her friends who has been enchanted. Along the way, she recalls her family members' reaction to her wanting to go to the fair, and how she first found out about it through her half-witch grandmother. Apparently the fair is cursed, for the adults who enter it die some time later. Avika is there because she promised her grandmother that she'd find something called 'the black comb' from the fair. 

She decides to turn back, but is then surprised by the screeching ghost of her grandmother, who insists that she go to the fair to save her town. When she reaches the fair, she meets a boy named Aditya, who is apparently also there on business of his own. 

3. What I thought of the characters:

I can't really tell much of Avika's character from the chapters I've read so far, but she's brave, I guess, to want to venture into the fair despite its terrifying reputation. She's also close to her grandmother, and perhaps her grief after the woman's death was not handled well, leading to her issues. I'm also curious about the witch part of her. 

I also immensely enjoyed the interactions between Avika and Aditya, however confusing that exchange was because of the fair's effects on them. 

4. Nitpicks and personal opinions (this will include spelling and grammar):

About the blurb, the first quarter of the blurb needs to be rewritten, or at the very least rephrased. Especially the blah blah blah part, something about it rubs me the wrong way. The last two sentences are my favourite, really gives off hints that make me want to read more. Additionally, you might want to edit the blurb for grammatical errors. 

The imagery and descriptions work really well to paint a picture of  Avika's feelings to the reader adeptly. However, I'd suggest using more action tags and dialogue tags besides 'said'. It's not inherently wrong, it would just make the narrative better if there were more variation in the dialogue tags. For example: Touching his forehead, she asked, "You okay?"

The dialogues, however, need work. There's not much dialogue, but when there is, some parts of it feel too juvenile. For example, Avika's grandmother sounds more like a spoiled child not getting her way when she reminds the girl of a promise she made when she was little. Something else that bugs me is the way the author tends to put the dialogue tag (she said, he said) in the middle of a sentence, when the dialogue is at the end of the paragraph. Now, I'm not enough of an expert to tell you whether that's wrong or not, but it's a little off-putting and you can consider rearranging the parts of the sentences around. 

I don't think the prologue needs to be called a prologue. It's definitely a part of the story that directly connects with the rest of the parts. A prologue is usually used when you want to write an introductory chapter that does not connect directly to the rest of the story but is crucial to the reader. I'd recommend Googling to find out more, there are plenty of resources out there. 

There are some minor punctuation and grammatical errors, which I can probably chalk down to typos or English not being the author's first language. I apologise in advance if I am wrong, because my assumption was made on the basis that the sentence structure differs slightly from normal, and that is common when one is learning to write in another language. 

I'm really sorry that this was so short and nitpicky, I can assure you that I really applaud you for the amazing descriptions because I struggle to write them myself, it's just that I'm not big on praise. I'd recommend longer chapters and some editing, but the story's standing well on its own at the moment.