Free Book Reviews - 2023

1 • You Must Remember This

Book:
You Must Remember This

Author:
@FranklinBarnes

Chapters read: 3

Title: Actually, plenty of Wattpad books have the word 'remember' in them. But this title gives a mysterious promise-thats what intrigued me.

Cover: The watercolor effect is nice. The building in the middle looks like the college. Fitting, since the story takes place in a college.

But I have one problem. It's too colorful. To the point that it subtracts from the most important thing about a cover: the title. This could be remedied by enlarging the text, adding shadow drop to said enlarged text, adding a vignette to the edges, or simply changing the picture.

Blurb: The blurb intrigued me, but I found myself going back to re-read sentences. Too many fancy words, too much wordiness, and lastly, just about too long. Only a handful of people would read a long blurb. Most skim through at best. Try compressing the blurb to a minimum 150 words. (In your case, fashion your blurb to fit the first paragraph.)

Address the protagonist, main conflict, goal, and a question at the end to intrigue the reader. That's really all you need. And take out all those fancy words!

First Impression: The blurb struck my interest. Enough to drop that book into my library.

•••

Inciting Incident: None, in the entire duration of three chapters. My patience wore thin waiting for it.

General plot: In those three chapters, none of the plot promised to me in the blurb was revealed. The introduction drags out too long, and consists of description and setting A huge no-no especially in the beginning. Although the setting plays a big part in the story, this should still be carefully woven with action, and reduced to the few key points.

The introduction-the first chapter, paragraph, and line, this is where you as a writer must shine. This is the deciding factor of wether or not readers will continue reading.

Main + Other Characters: Frank is the main guy here. But he isn't introduced fast enough to create an emotional bond with the reader. Also, too many main and sub characters are introduced right in the begining. I am seriously confused. There are some flaws and personality traits to differentiate these characters, but the differences are not strong enough.

Some characters could be merged into one and have the exact same effect on the plot, as far as these three chapters tell me. If they each have an important role, consider spreading out their first appearances within the first act of the plot.

Grammar: Not bad.

A couple adverbs used, which weaken the writing. Cut them out or replace them with strong verbs instead. Rephrase the sentence if needed to accommodate the new verb.

I've come across the word 'thus' one time too many, as well as some other fancy words. You generally want to avoid these for easier reading.

Most sentences are rough and uneven. What you must do is read your story aloud and make sure it's smooth like butter. If you stumble or pause, go back and rewrite the awkward sentence. Remove it if it's not working.

Writing Technique: Sentence structure is confusing at points. The omniscient point of view is even more confusing. Not often used, so when I do come across it, it's a bit startling. Normally, you would assign a chapter or scene to a separate character when writing in different points of views, in order to make things clear. Jumping around from character to character is confusing may not add to the plot in any way.

What to improve:
-Cut out a lot of description. Limit yourself to describing a few, most important key features. Use the five senses to do this. Most importantly, mix the description with action! Otherwise it's just telling and very, very boring. (The first three chapters could be boiled down to one. Easy.) Ask yourself. Does this scene, chapter, paragraph, line add to my plot in any way?

-Read your story aloud. Restructure bumpy sentences.

-Define each character's personality traits until they stand out from each other right from the beginning.

-Make the inciting incident happen in the second or third chapter.

-Strengthen/input cliffhangers at the end of each chapter to create intrigue.

-Remove those adverbs!

Final Impression: This book is promising and certainly worth a read. There were some peculiar moments which I rather liked. I'm sure it gets better as you read on, but for now I'll just stick around and wait for the polished version.

Rating:

You passed!