You've wandered for too long. . .
Searching. . .
Then you see it, a garden standing in its utmost glory. The gates are open, beckoning you into its celestial beauty.
Fear not wanderer. . .walk into the garden, for you have found what you have been...
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/Review/
The Cover: I love how it has all the elements of your story in it. The dark theme, the Muslim girl in the background (though I'll suggest you brighten her up a little, she is almost invisible) and the hand, which all give a mysterious feel to the entire concept.
Now I have to ask, Girl, do you have a degree in blurb writing? Damn! I have no words to describe how I feel about your blurb. It is so precise, so inviting and it's not even long! I am not a fan of your chosen genre but I can assure you that I'll read your book anytime any day after reading the blurb you have going. The blurb has all the elements promised in the cover and many more. Well done!
From the very first word, your style hooked me to the story and I couldn't stop until I had my feel of Jihad's ordeal and Ummi's stern approach to everything. Your writing style and story presentation is formidable, it makes reading the story easy, effortless and enjoyable.
Characters were all realistic. Jihad had the weirdest of comparisons for people and it was both interesting and entertaining. I guess Danielle is that one friend everybody thinks is a bad influence but in the end she is just being misunderstood. For me Danielle was definitely my favourite.
As for Dialogue development, I think you need to work on holding conversations that are natural. You actually did well in this aspect, there were just a few conversations or exchanges that didn't feel natural.
For instance there is a scene where Rasheedah and Danielle exchange words in chapter 3, the part where they were hailing Ameer as a scholar and Rasheedah lashed out at Danielle out of the blue and . . . it ended right there.
A few scenes later, they were all good. I don't know if it was supposed to be a joke or just a way the both of them relate in class. It felt like something was missing. I suggest you either take out that part or develop it more. Let there be an actual reason for Rasheedah to call Danielle names.
Maybe Danielle was being too loud or Rasheedah was just being grumpy, I don't know but whatever the case may be, let it flow continually and consistently with the next scenes.
Another thing you need to brush up will be your punctuation. Your dialogues are not properly punctuated nor are they properly tagged. This sometimes makes it difficult to really decipher the message in the conversation and the action of the speaker. I'll give a quick example from chapter four.
" That's why I just pity this one that's following him about like a mumu" she flicks a hand towards me.
From the example above, I can't tell if Rasheedah (the speaker) is angry or just talking. I can perhaps guess that she is mad at Jihad, but that's just a guess. I want to be able to connect with every emotion each character exerts not just through their thoughts but through their dialogues too. You can achieve this by properly punctuating and tagging your dialogues.
"That's why, I just pity this one that's following him about like a mumu!" she exclaims flicking a mocking finger towards me.
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You might also what to keep an eye out for spacing, I noticed a few missing spaces between words.
In addition, I love how you put up vocabularies at the end of some chapters, I'll encourage you to add more words in these vocabularies so that non-Nigerians reading your story can also relate. Simple words like 'mumu', 'pomo', 'jollof' etc. should be defined to help others understand better.
Finally, Jihad is a beautiful story filled with lots of lessons for not just the Hijaabis but every young person out there. The story has so many mysteries surrounding it that every chapter keeps you wanting more. Every character introduced brings in more spice to the story and you can't help but wonder how they are all connected.
