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Forever in your eyes

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Forever in your eyes
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Author :: _kmkxov_

Reviewer :: Chaotic_Lals

First impression :: 6/20

» Cover :: 2/10

If I were to come across this cover, not going to lie, I’d immediately skip the book. The elements of the cover do not go well with each other. The backdrop was too plain. The font choice and the effects you gave it was a poor choice too. The same goes for the author’s handle— it looks out of place. Maybe you were going for a simple-looking cover? But the result didn’t come out like that. It looked too . . . bland. The quality isn’t so good either.

» Title :: ⅗

The title could’ve been better. It may go with the book and its plot but it could’ve been better. Also, I suggest you remove the fonts in the display title of the book. Not all Wattpad users are able to view it since small caps aren’t visible in certain devices.

» Blurb :: ⅕

I don’t understand why you’d provide character descriptions in the synopsis of a book. A synopsis is supposed to give the reader an insight of the book, its plot or storyline, not a sole dive-in to the characters. As of now, the blurb is just mundane and redundant. There were plenty of errors in the punctuations too. There was no need of writing the character names and shifting to the next line for the rest of their description.

I suggest you change the synopsis into something that’d be more insightful and entrancing; something that’d catch more attention.

Beginning of a new start :: 3/10

To be completely honest, I wanted to stop reading right after the first half of the very first chapter. There are many reasons of course, and I’ve explained them throughout this review. However, one of the main reasons is because this book made me feel like I did not belong there. The frequent religious remarks the characters made, made me want to stop reading the book. There’s nothing wrong with portraying your characters like that, of course, but you went a little over the top.

Then, of course, the poor writing style, grammar and vocabulary, etc. I suggest you revamp the whole book after having taken some time to improve your writing skills?

Concept and plot :: 10/25

Before I get into the plot, I wanted to remind you something. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against religions. But please, try not to drop religious comments—character-wise, or not—every now and then. Thing is, not everyone reading your book may understand what you say (like me). Moreover, it’s just unnecessary. Again, no offense; but portraying your character as a religious person can be done through mere descriptions too.

Coming to the plot, it was not bad. It’s not something I have not read before, nor is it one I’d wow at, it was not so cliché either. Thing is, it was carried out way too slowly. Half of the book was filled with fillers and there were little to no plot building scenes. It made the book all lagged up, and the plot’s beauty couldn’t come through.

Characters and emotions :: 5/15

Rather than giving character descriptions in the ‘Cast’ chapter of your book, you should be able to convey it through your writing style— which you didn’t. All the characters seemed to have emotional characteristics that branch from the same personality, as if you portrayed the same thing in different ways. Some of their doings were unrealistic too.

As for the emotions— they weren’t conveyed properly. You provide way too less details on a character’s emotions. All I can see is them calling on God. I can’t see another insight into their feelings. And that in turn, results in readers not being able to relate to the book.

Tone and style :: 2/10

You should really pay a lot of heed to this category. First off, when I read your book, I felt like it was written by a second grader. It was just all over the place. Most of your paragraphs aren’t of the right length and you just fail to provide relevant descriptions. Sentence constructions need a hell load of improvisation too.
Thing is, you aren’t able to convey your ideas properly. Like I mentioned under ‘plot’, your concepts and ideas are not so bad. You just have to find the right way to execute it all. I suggest you try an experiment with different styles? No rushes.

There’s nothing wrong with opting for the first person perspective, but when you choose to write in it, make sure you do the narrating well. I don’t think you did a good job. There were plenty of places in the book where the descriptions--if there were any in the first place--were just off. All of them were one-liners. You know what I mean? Also, if you keep changing perspectives here and there, the book just loses its flow.

Then, I think that you provide way too many details. Like I mentioned above, this is the main reason why the plot’s beauty doesn’t come through. You lag it all up with the writing style. I’m not saying that you have to be straight to the point, I’m telling you that you need to have that ‘way’ with words, you know? You need to present it all without it getting boring.

As of now, I think that your writing style is very not-to-the-point and lagged up. You either provide too little details or you give too much. You don’t have that ‘balance’ you’re supposed to have.

Grammar :: 5/20

First off, you have to pay attention to the tenses in the book. If you decide to write in past tense, you might as well stick to it. Switching from past to present and back to past is both confusing as well as wrong in a grammatical sense. For instance, in the first chapter, the first couple of lines goes like this: ‘It’s morning and the sun is too bright. AHHH!! I hate summer that too immensely, by the way, I am a Winter person.’
Now, the next line starts like this: ‘My bedroom’s window was open . . .’

Here, in the first extract, you used present tense— ‘It’s’, ‘is’, ‘I am’— while in the second extract, you used ‘was’, which is past tense.

Plus, the sentence construction is very poor. The sentence ‘I hate summer that too immensely, by the way, I am a Winter person,’ doesn’t really make any sense to me. Why was the ‘w’ in ‘winter’ capitalized? The whole thing would’ve been better like this: ‘I hate summer immensely, being the winter person I am.’
Then, using a question mark along with an exclamation point. The right format is ‘?!’, not ‘!?’. The question mark comes first since it’s a question. The exclamation mark comes second since it’s indicating the question’s tone.

The original value of an ellipsis is three, and only three. Using more or less than the said amount is grammatically incorrect. Also, when a line in direct speech ends in an ellipsis (that is, the line within the double quotes; not the tags), you do not use a comma after or before the quotes— you just continue. And, avoid using too many ellipses. From what I’ve read so far, the ellipsis is used in the book every now and then. Use it only when needed.

Avoid using caps unnecessarily. I also noticed that you unnecessarily capitalize random words (I did give you an example above). Edit it out with your time.

You should also not use extra punctuation marks like exclamation points or question marks and unnecessary extra letters. Just one does the job well. Plus, you should stop joining sentences with commas, rather than breaking them up unnecessarily.

Then, the commas. There’re plenty of instances within the book (basically in every single sentence), where you do not use commas where they’re needed.

You need to understand the difference between the usage of a hyphen (-) and an em-dash (—). A hyphen is used to connect two words while an em-dash is used to set off extra information within a sentence, to signal an abrupt shift, and to emphasize a thought or sentence (like cutting off dialogues).

Moving onto your vocabulary; it’s poor. You need to enhance your knowledge of words a lot more. The same goes for sentence constructions, that is, the way you arrange your words and put them together. Like I already mentioned in the previous category, it’s just all over the place.

Total :: 31/100