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The Truth Untold

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The Truth Untold

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Author :: neozonique

Reviewer :: Jiminandhisjams9

First Impression :: 16/20

» Cover :: 9/10
The cover is stunning, that is needless to say. And I do think it, in an inexplicable manner, suits the story’s vibe. However, I do think something darker and angsty-er would have been better. Nevertheless, this cover does its job stupendously as well.

» Title :: 4/5
I had to—just really had to—lower a mark for how overused this title is. However, I must admit it’s pretty much perfect for the storyline, though that doesn’t change the fact that I’d still at least recommend you to change it. Otherwise, I really appreciate the somewhat acronym you made out of the word ‘truth’. I didn’t notice, but that’s even better because it only surprised me at the end.

» Blurb :: 3/5
The blurb is quite short, and I think that it gives away too little information. It’s just too vague and generic. I hope you can reveal a little more about, perhaps, Jeno’s circumstances. Plus, you had some grammatical errors which encouraged me to steal some marks.

Beginning of a new start :: 9/10

The beginning of the story was very interesting. I liked the flashback about Jeno and Kyungmin, plus, I relished your beautiful writing. The storyline commenced with nice pacing, introducing us to some of the characters of the story along with the mystery of who on Earth sent those letters to Jeno.

And I have to admit that even though I wasn’t exactly interested in the book at first, mainly because it wasn’t a BTS book (yep, that’s just how bluntly honest I am), I found myself being very engaged to find out what was next. Hence, I genuinely believe your book has a very good start that would manage to pull the readers in.

Concept and plot :: 22/25

What can I say? The plot is spectacular. I would’ve given you a full score, but I had to take note of your grammatical errors as well as the mild confusion that chapter 14 caused me (which of course was more or less cleared up thanks to the epilogue). Otherwise, this plot was amazing, heart-wrenching and just so enthralling! From the pacing to the angst and the mystery of it, I loved everything.

I liked the way you unfolded the story honestly. But I’d say that I still have some uncertainty about the ending—and I don’t know if that was something you wanted for the readers, but I don’t think it’s a great thing. Jaemin was Kyungmin which is a great plot twist, but I don’t really get it at the same time. Why did he lie about being Kyungmin?—that’s exactly my question.

Because of that, I feel like you didn’t really explain everything in the story, or well, I might be wrong. Regardless of this, I still feel bitter about the story—as in that’s what it left me with. That’s just how heartfelt it was. And I am absolutely up for the ending along with the message, the way that everyone had their own way of moving on (as you said). I relished reading the story so much!

Characters and emotions :: 13/15

I found that you didn’t explore too much of the ‘other’ characters’ personalities. Like for example, Jisung’s, so it would have been good if you made his personality a little more obvious. Otherwise, I thought that the feelings were described very well, just like the relationships. I thought that the interaction between Jaemin and his cousin was lovely, just like the one between Kyungmin/Jaemin and Jeno.

Tone and style :: 8/10

I loved your writing style! You had some beautiful descriptions and made use of a few literary devices. Overall, it sounded very lyrical and made me enjoy the way the characters’ feelings were intertwined with your writing. Notwithstanding, as I have mentioned and will mention again, I found grammatical errors in your story, including some poor phrasing. Also, some of your paragraphs were way too long.

One thing that I find a little nonsensical about your writing style is when you say stuff like ‘a Korean by the name of Lee Jeno’. Firstly, the readers are already well aware that Lee Jeno is Korean. Secondly, it just sounds weird. I get that you are trying to say something like ‘the man’ and etc, but it’s just not working. You are too fixated on this description, and I really advise you to stop. The same thing goes for ‘the Chinese’ and etc.

Grammar :: 11/20

I have found quite a bit of typos, poor word choice, wrong use of em dash run-ons or too long sentences. Firstly, let me mention some past tenses that you messed up: forgived and hurted. Both of these are incorrect as they should be: forgave and hurt. Yes, hurt remains the same (I am saying this in case you didn’t know, but I am well aware it could have been just a typo).

“His unwanted pasts” - I’ve seen you doing this with a few words—putting words unnecessarily in plural. It’s not like the person in question has had many pasts, people just have a past. Thus, it’d be better to just write: “his unwanted past”. Another very common error in your writing is making wrong use of prepositions: “would suddenly appear on the back of his head” - it’s not ‘on’ the back of his head, but ‘in’.

“Thanks, and you don’t want keep that park waiting right? So yeah bye!” - here there is a typo - you forgot to add ‘to’. But that’s not the main point, here we can see that you have a lot of missing commas, and just like many other mistakes in your writing, this one is repeated. If you don’t add commas, the meaning of the sentence might turn out differently. In this case, I would have punctuated the sentence like this: “Thanks, and don’t want to keep that park waiting, right? So, yeah, bye!”

Cause VS ‘cause. ‘Cause’ without an apostrophe before it means ‘reason’, like this is the cause to that. Something happened because of that, - that’s the cause. However, if you add an apostrophe before the word ‘cause’ it acts as an abbreviation for the word ‘because’ (once again, the ones I have seen could have been typos, but I am mentioning this just in case).

Total :: 79/100