Sunflower Reviews

Mila - In Our Reverie

Reviewer: Mila_333

Review: In Our Reverie

Client: HNWrite

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Blurb

It is imperative to make your blurb free of grammatical mistakes. Unfortunately, I came across some grammar issues in the blurb, namely the lack of preposition, missed words, a not-so-neat line spacing and some wrong verb tenses used. The blurb is the second thing your audience reads, the first being the title, hence, it is of utmost importance to lure your readers from there itself, and grammatical mistakes are a huge turn off for a lot of people. So, make sure you do correct those mistakes as they are not nice, to the point that might discourage readers to start reading the book.

Title

The title is really nice, totally corresponding to the plot. It is also quite unique and sounds pleasant to the ears. I also find it entertaining enough to catch the eyes of readers, so this is a plus point for you.

Cover

Similar to the title, the cover definitely entails the same function to attract readers, although you shouldn't really judge a book by its cover. People nonetheless keep doing it and hence having an attractive cover is a bonus. In my opinion, the cover is simply perfect and most importantly it matches the story really well. The male figure is so well suited and his act of sleeping/dreaming is so on point! I absolutely loved it. The title is well placed, the font size, style and color being simply amazing. The only thing I didn't really find nice is the font size of your author name, placing it at the top in such a small size makes it hardly visible. I suggest you amplify the size of it

Grammar

Well, this is the most crucial section of your review, so I suggest you take it seriously. Unfortunately, just like in the blurb, I came across a lot of grammatical mistakes. Before you try to change anything in the story, if ever you have anything up your sleeve to act on, I request you pause everything and take care of your grammar first. Grammar issues can be a bit annoying to readers and once they become bothersome, they quit reading the book. Now, no one's perfect and we all start somewhere, and this is your cue. Amongst the main issues I came across, one was the wrong use of verb tenses. Now, the story, as soon as it begins, has different segments with events happening in the past while others bring the audience back to the present time. Therefore, if you have decided to relate the story using present tense, obviously for events that are currently happening, you should stick to that only. On the other hand, relating the male protagonist's memories, for instance, the series of things that took place on his birthday should be narrated using past tense or past perfect tense in some cases. It is preponderant that you differentiate between the two scenes and apply the correct tenses that require to be used. At one point, it was a bit confusing as to when the events are actually happening since the wrong use of verb tenses made it unclear at times.

I also noted the lack of prepositions and the wrong use of these. Revision on certain sentence structures should also be done. For example the following sentence in chapter 1: "A place that was once magical and most special eventually becoming the most deteriorated lousy place that I'll never imagine I'll abhor for the rest of my life." is wrong on so many levels. It doesn't contain a flow which will derive the meaning and hence the clear interpretation of the sentence is missing, although I get what you mean by this phrase here. It also doesn't possess the required punctuation marks throughout. Apart from that, I came across loads of typos as well as missed words, misspellings and lack of conjunctions.

However, the bright side is despite all the above issues, I noted you possess a good bundle of vocabulary which is a very good thing. Therefore, I require you to proofread your work and correct all the current mistakes first by adding the lack of proper words, revising sentence fragments, and making avail of linking words. To try a shortcut for all of these, you can simply copy paste your work on Microsoft Word and automatically correct all your mistakes there. However, this can only work as a temporary solution as you genuinely need to work on your weak spots and there's huge need for improvement.

Plot

The concept of the imaginary voice Is really intriguing. Although we are only three chapters in, I was getting eager to know who she really is. And when the male protagonist dreamt about her, I was really on edge and for once I thought that maybe she is real. Well, I was hoping she is real because otherwise the guy is legit crazy. I also love how you started the plot, narrating the events that occurred in the male protagonist's life to lead him to how he is today. The scenes narrated were emotional. The only thing that deemed the effect of the scene was the grammatical mistakes and I'm really hoping that you will see to them. Apart from that, the plot itself is well planned out. It has a flow and the pace is also okay. The scene at the male protagonist's office enlightens readers on how he's actually living his life. These are the only things that I can comment on for now as the story should go on further so that I can give more insight on the plot. Till now everything's going great.

Writing style

Despite the grammar issues, I can see you have quite a nice writing style. As mentioned above, I see you have a good bundle of vocabulary and you do make good use of them. However, due to the grammatical mistakes, I see your writing style is getting hindered and it doesn't really have the effect that it should have. Every story has its own voice and it is determined by your writing style. I feel like due to the mistakes with regard to the grammar, the writing style is a bit over the place. Once you get the grammar sorted out, you can focus on the writing style. So you can see exactly why I asked to focus on the grammar first.

Reader's enjoyment and originality

Till where the story has reached, I can say that it is very unique and intriguing because of the concept of the imaginary personality. Because of that, I was able to enjoy the story. However, I simply cannot rate the level of enjoyment because I still need to see what events unfold later on.