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Review #8 | Not Quite Home

Title: Not Quite Home

Author: flicka103

Summary: 4/5

I think, considering the genre of your story, your summary is very well shaped. You introduce your protagonist and their dilemma, then you bring in Avery, who solves the dilemma, only to add a whole new complexity to the situation. Really well done! I think you've kept things succinct and clear, and the rhetorical question at the end is a good way to lead into the story. I just have a few small notes!

Raised on a ranch in the lone star state, Ethan is pretty much a standard cowboy. "He takes part in rodeos, has never shyed away from hard work and has a crowd of eager female fans where ever he goes.

A few things. First of all, the quotation marks are random and never close, so I would remove them. Second of all, it should be shied away, not shyed away. And, finally, 'where ever' should actually be 'wherever' in this context. Overall, it should look like:

Raised on a ranch in the lone star state, Ethan is pretty much a standard cowboy. He takes part in rodeos, has never shied away from hard work and has a crowd of eager female fans wherever he goes.

And one more thing:

The adventurous Avery with her easy smile and free-spirited nature makes his choice an easy one, but she has...

Consider changing one of the 'easy's so that there is cohesion and no awkward repetition of words.

Grammar: 2/5

Okay, so overall, your grammar could definitely use some work. That's okay – I would say this is the easiest part to fix in literature, because it's just a matter of rereading and understanding the rules. If you are wanting your story to be very polished, I would totally recommend a copy-editor. As a copy-editor myself, I tend to be a bit more observant here, so let's go through some of the things I saw.

Overall, the errors I list below aren't the only ones I found – there were a plethora of them. However, this is a review, not an edit, so I've only chosen to discuss a few of them as examples and hopefully clarify some rules.

I dragged him across the Atlantic several times a year and yet should you ask me what he does in his free time,, be it here or back in Texas...

When you use commas, you should only use one.

Through the gap in the curtains surrounding my tiny cubicle, I could see parents and grandparents all smiling as they rejoyced in the arrival...

Rejoyced is an incorrect spelling. It is actually 'rejoiced.'

The curtains parted ai Jamey breezed through.

You have a typo. 'Ai' should be 'as', I believe.

Okay, so let's talk about dialogue and punctuation for a moment. When dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'they exclaimed – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question, and an exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example: 

"I don't think he likes me." I told Jamey a few weeks later.

It should be

"I don't think he likes me," I told Jamey a few weeks later.