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Review: Promise

Reviewer: Zo

Author: jiminzziluv

Before I get onto the review, a little note; I tend to be extremely harsh or critical, so I hope that none of my words offend you in any way, and that you use them to better your story. Okay, let's go.

My first impression of the story was mixed. The book cover is absolutely beautiful, and I love it, because it caught my attention. After reading the story, I have to say, the details are extremely on point. The red and the black, match the mafia theme of the story, and I liked it.

The title of the story isn't anything unseen, it's common, but since it matches with the plot, and idea of what the author is going for, it's fine. The blurb is apt, it matches with the story, but I felt as if something was missing. I would suggest adding a tiny bit more info, to make it more interesting. Something that would mention the whole mafia thing, because, until i read the story, I had no idea it was a mafia story (I didn't read it in the blurb ksksk). Commas are missing in the blurb, so I would suggest fixing that too.

Entering the story itself, we start with the female lead, who is eight years old, and show how she met Jimin and Taehyung, and how they become friends, and then we switch to them being high schoolers, and then an accident happens, after which we're transported to them being adults. It wasn't a bad way to start, but I would've preferred if we started it in a different way.

Like from Jimin having the dream of the female leads house burning down, and him waking up in a cold sweat, because that would create more suspense. What you've done is just dump the whole backstory in the readers face, and there's less suspense about their past, because the readers already know what had happened, and can try to guess what'll happen next.

If the story started with Jimin having the dream, then the readers would wonder what happened, and why he felt guilty etc. Then, you could show present time Y/N, and then slowly reveal their past and how they met, just to show the contrast between then and now, so that the readers will be hooked and feel connected to the story.

The reason I wrote so much about that, is just because it was one of the things that made the story not-so-nice. I would love if the author could change it up a bit, so that everything (not literally everything, but most of the info) isn't revealed in the beginning, and they could be used as plot twists or something, later in the story. It would make the story much, much better.

Next, I would like to talk about the grammar, which needs some work. The main thing that I can point out, is the inconsistency in tenses. They sometimes switch unnecessarily, and that makes the story awkward to read, because it's confusing for the reader to fully understand whatever is in the story.

Tenses switching is one of the most common errors that most authors make, because it can be really confusing and tricky to keep track of tenses, especially if you start out the story from their childhood, like how the author has done for this story. The main way to avoid this is by sticking to one tense, usually past/past perfect or, in some rare cases, present perfect. To rectify this error in the author's story, I would suggest proofreading the story, or hiring an editor to edit your story, so that they can change accordingly.

Next, is the dialogues. Most of the dialogues in the story either don't have punctuation at the end, or have the incorrect punctuation marks. I see that the author had once added a period after a question dialogue, like this, <"Why did you attack him?".> and that's incorrect, because the question is the punctuation, and the full stop after was not required, since no words were after the dialogue.

As for the other dialogues, the author has added full stop after closing the quotation marks. Instead, follow this rule: comma-before-dialogue-tag and period-before-action-tag. These rules are basically like this;

"You're annoying," he said. (comma before dialogue tag)

"You're annoying." He rolled his eyes. (period before action tag)

As you can make out, dialogue tags include said, whispered, yelled, scoffed etc. Action tags are basically any actions other than dialogue tags. I hope this is useful for everyone reading this, and they can make the necessary changes. There are also spelling errors, ellipsis errors, and missing commas, which can all easily be fixed by proofreading, or by hiring an editor.

The story was nice to read, but, if everything I've pointed out is fixed, the story has potential to be a very, very nice one. I liked reading it, so I have nothing more to say. Hwaiting!

If you have any questions, feel free to message the reviewer themselves or you can tag MochiSaysLachimolala in a comment here --->