Seesaw Review Shop 2.0

Meet the Mins

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Meet the Mins
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Author :: kookgitaebae

Reviewer :: Jiminandhisjams9

First Impression :: 8/20

» Cover :: 2/10

I feel like the cover suits the concept and story, but if we speak of its aesthetics… It's awful. I also think Yoongi’s and Taehyung’s faces make it look like some kind of comedy, though I believe this story is far from comedy (which is not a bad thing). Also, the fonts are just terrible. The fonts are so “old” and typical that I don’t even know what adjective would suit them best. I really hope you follow the suggestion of changing the cover. 

» Title :: 3/5

The title somewhat suits the story, yet, it’s a typical format: “Meet The (Name)”. There isn’t anything else to say about it, I gave you a half-score because I found this title quite average. 

» Blurb :: 3/5

Overall, the blurb is okay, however, I do think you have misportrayed something. In your blurb, it sounds like Yoongi and Taehyung are trying to get out of the marriage, but in the actual story, Taehyung says that he has thought of divorce only twice. I think this misportrayal is something that you should note. I also lowered a mark because you had some grammatical errors in your blurb. But otherwise, the blurb is fine, except for the last sentence. The last sentence is not just fine, it’s great, it’s very interesting! It caught me off guard.

Beginning of a new start :: 8/10

Personally, I don’t think the prologue was much of a prologue, it just felt like the first chapter, just like I felt like I needed to mention this. The mystery was done very well, I was curious about what job did Yoongi have. I also liked the way you introduced the characters as well as their relationship. However, I have one complaint, I have no idea how hacking works, but honestly, it sounds a bit unrealistic—how Jimin can just casually hack the cameras. 

Overall, I think you had a good start!

Concept and plot :: 21/25

To be honest, I relished the story more than I thought I would at the beginning. The plot twist of Taehyung and Yoongi being both killers is damn hard-hitting and surprising, though the hints were kind of obvious. However, which I’ll elaborate on later, I felt like it was all a little too uneventful. 

Plus, you created a lot of tension—which is spectacular. Having tension in a story is one of the things that makes readers stay—that wants to make them keep reading—and you had that! Some of your chapters had real good cliff-endings that made me instantly press the “next” button. I think your story had an appropriate pacing as well, so overall the concept and plot, the idea, though not the most original ever (and I believe it was inspired by something—that I don’t know), I still enjoyed the story very much.  

Characters and emotions :: 10/15

I feel like you need to work on expressing emotions sometimes. Yoongi and Taehyung would have been more shocked to find out that they were both killers, yet their reaction seemed kind of mild in your story. Plus, when they realized one of them had to die (I am talking about before the two began conversing and realizing they still had feelings for each other), their reactions were, once again, way too mild. I know they indulged in further sadness and realization later on, but still. I think you could’ve expressed these parts way better.

Also, let me say that I love Yoongi’s and Jin’s personalities. Jin, though a side character, was memorable to me with his ‘loud’ and sassy personality. I also liked Yoongi’s calm personality, and my heart melted when he decided to give up. I was honestly quite touched when Yoongi gave up and decided that he couldn’t kill Taehyung, but that Taehyung should kill him instead. 

However, what I found annoying was how Taehyung didn’t acknowledge that he is a killer too, that he lied too. It’s not really that he didn’t acknowledge it, but when the story was focused on his thoughts, he thought stuff like: he lied and etc. He lied too. It would have been nicer (and would’ve brought more justice to Taehyung’s character) if he realized “Oh, we are the same.” but he barely mentions the fact that he, too, lied to Yoongi. He seemed quite selfish… not that he was an awful character, he just simply didn’t stand out to me too much. 

Tone and style :: 7/10

I would have actually given you a higher score for your writing style, but I honestly think you could have done better. You have potential. I think your writing could have been way way better. It sounded kind of bland and simple; I wish you had added more interesting words (though your vocabulary was good, I think you could have showcased it more) and used more literary devices. Also, your writing style could have had a better impact on your manifestation of the characters’ emotions.

Nonetheless, I felt like you’ve described surroundings (even though not really poetically) very well, as well as fight scenes. As I said earlier, I just wished you would have gone out of your way and applied more devices and interesting aspects to your writing. Plus, it would have been good if you used more diverse sentences. Lastly, I wanted to praise you for your tense consistency which is quite hard to keep up whilst writing. I haven’t noticed you getting off track with it at all.

Grammar :: 16/20

Frankly, your grammar was mostly great, however, I thought that the mistakes you made really didn’t make it any justice. Because, honestly, I feel like you started out great, but somehow you became more inconstant throughout the chapters. I wished you kept up the same “energy” throughout your whole story. The major mistakes that I have noticed in your writing relate to punctuation.

Firstly “cause” means reason, something is the cause of something else. However, in your writing, it was meant to be used as an abbreviation of “because”, so an apostrophe was needed, thus: ‘cause. Apart from that, I have also noticed some typos.
 
“That if it has to be done it should be done by someone who cares about Yoongi” - you also had quite a bit of missing commas. A comma needs to be put after a dependent clause which is followed by a dependent one. “That if it has to be done, it should be done by someone who cares about Yoongi”. Also, “Number one; you don’t cook” a semicolon is used when joining two independent clauses, so in this case, it would have been better to use a colon.

Now, let’s talk about dialogue. If your characters ask a question during dialogue it’s only logical to put a question mark before closing the quotation marks. Additionally, at first, you have been using dialogue tags and action tags correctly, but then just suddenly started doing whatever you wanted with them for some reason. Ergo, I am going to explain how they work, just in case.

A dialogue tag is when a character’s way of speech is described after the dialogue, for example: he said, she asked, I stuttered, etc. Meanwhile, action tags are when something else is described after the dialogue, for example: he closed the curtains, she opened the door, I sighed, etc.

When using dialogue tags, the dialogue will be closed with a comma even if the sentence is completed. However, if an action tag is used, the dialogue will be closed with a full stop. To make it clearer, here are other examples:

“It’s so hot,” I mumbled. (dialogue tag)
“It’s so hot.” I fanned myself with my black fan. (action tag)

Total :: 70/100