Cheshire's Reviews (CFCU)

Far Away From Home

Title: Far Away From Home

Author: yompous

Special attention: am I drawing readers in? Grammar and desciptions.

Cover: One of the things you wanted me to take a good look at was if you are succeeding at drawing readers in. The first thing a reader looks at is your cover. I have a few issues with it. The picture itself, of the gigantic palace of a mansion, which I presume is the Miller's house, is fine. My problem is the color of the font and some of your subtitles. First, though, you cannot claim this book is a "New York Times Best Seller" on your cover, if it is not. I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure you can get in trouble for claiming this. So regardless if you agree with the rest of what I have to say, you need to change it.

While you are at it, instead of making each word of your title a different color (which is distracting and a bit tacky)... make "Far Away From" in white then make "Home" stand out in a different color. This will also make your font seem more professional, I think.

Lastly, get rid of the subtitles "Loss and Love. Love all, trust few". Your title is long enough as it is. Subtitles should only be used if a title is two words or less.

Blurb: The next thing I look at will also determine how effectively you are drawing readers in. Your blurb should be a short description of what the reader expects to read in your book. Your blurb right now reads as:

"What if the person you think is the closest to you ends up being your worst nightmare?"

This one liner is intriguing, but you should've kept going. It says nothing about what this story is really about.

Introduction: You start the book off with a little hello and tell your readers that this story comes from your imagination, so if things don't add up then to just accept it...

...

...

But it is my job to point out when things don't "add up", so I'm gunna. Of course, you don't have to take any of my suggestions. I'm not twisting anyone's arm.

You do provide a trigger warning. I appreciate that since RIGHT AFTER you said that, prologue began and bam the rape happened.

First of all... your information page and your prologue need to be on different parts. Prologue should have its own "chapter". Look at my book Affinity if you don't understand what I mean by that.

I have no problem with the prologue, story wise. I helped clean up the first two paragraphs, but I will address those issues under Grammar.

The first two chapters we are introduced to Mimi. Mimi is saying goodbye to her family, and it is a tearful goodbye. She is from somewhere in Africa and goes to America to stay with this very rich family in Florida, the Millers, while she attends university. All this information... I slowly got it over the course of like 10 chapters, when I should've been given all this information between the first and second chapter honestly. There is no reason for any of this to be a mystery when we are in Mimi's 1st person POV. Something to think about.

The only other problem I have with your introduction to this story is how much time you spent going over every single detail of what she was doing whilst unpacking when it could have been summarized and the reader wouldn't have missed a thing. If I wasn't trying to pick up on mistakes and reviewing, if I was just a normal reader, I would've skimmed through a lot of it.

I want to pause here and tell you that I don't mean to sound harsh. My reviews always come from a place of love and honesty. I want you to be the best writer you can be. But you can only grow with true feedback.