Reviews : a book where I try to review other books

28 | Conditional Love

By:

First Impression

Seeing it's giving me teen fiction or young adult fiction vibes. I grabbed some physical books of the same genre

Reason behind that is because your book is pretty well written grammar wise and seemed to me was well thought out when I started reading it.

but the intro could be better. I realized most of the time, books don't start with dialogue.

It happens but not much in teen fiction and genres similar to it. Usually it's because when a book starts with dialogue it feels like the reader is interrupting a conversation and is left out.

I'd suggest to start with the character's thoughts in their current situation or maybe something else entirely.

In one of the books I used as reference for this review, started with the topic about jellyfish which is used as a metaphor throughout the book.

In your book, maybe you start with the character saying

"the concrete roads never felt more alive. It's strange how many things you notice when all you see is darkness.

(proceed to set the setting in the scene)"

Then you can branch off that with why the character was told to close their eyes.

This way it kinda feels more natural and less like I was reading chapter 2 instead of 1.

Pacing

As like any other review i've made. I only read 5 chapters.

The first chapter having a quick jump felt iffy to me tbh.

If there was something discussing about her going to Canada before we jump to the next scene, it wouldn't feel like there was something missing in between the bike scene and the moving scene

But yeah, as you'll see in the rest of this review most of my nitpicks are about the first chapter but the pacing for the rest is pretty well paced and I didn't bored reading it or felt it was too rushed.

You take your time giving them dialogue and time to have an inner monologue for the readers to catch up on how the character feels about the current situation.

Plot
It's interesting. Not completely different but it's not a flaw, the book has good pacing and interactions which what usually these genres are more prominent in.

So I think the plot is okay.

Characters

Michael's distaste for interacting or basically just distaste about things at some part felt forced and shallow.

My suggestion is to give him reason why he doesn't like a certain thing (the eager freshmen: maybe he assumes that the amount of times this person will be pestering him about work or bother him to be more productive.

The plants and bugs and nature : a personal experience perhaps or he hates the idea of something crawling on his neck or the sticky feeling of mud on his skin. etc

And maybe he hates leading the freshmen because it's sickening to see them so eager after knowing that college isn't about the partying or the fraternities or sororities or whatever college is portrayed as in movies and shows.

Allowing him to explain why kinda gives the readers a perspective, see what this character thinks about life and college since this was the vibe I was getting from him.

Other than the first chapter thought, Michael and Alyssa have pretty fleshed out personalities and the dialogue backs them up really well.

Dialogue

If I were to chose what category you did the best in, I guess I would says dialogue. There is a certain flow to the way you write the sequences and their lines and what they do as they say it pretty well written.

It was also very easy to read and follow through.

Descriptions

I think you did well in the descriptions too. Sometimes it was iffy or I felt like it lacked something but on most parts the descriptions do their part for the story and they do it well.

Blurb

It gives the right amount of what to expect in the book while still keeps the mystery to it, as how blurbs should be and I think your blurb is really good!

Is it compelling
For me the title felt too boring. It's just a personal thing. The story and the writing is really good but if I wasn't a reviewer I wouldn't be interested because of the title.

It just didn't feel as personal to the characters. It kinda saddens me honestly. I liked reading the book and I think perhaps with a different title

(an example to this is: The thing about jellyfish - this book tackles a girl and how she grieves for a lost friend and through out the book discusses about jellyfish/connects her grief with things about jellyfish.

Windfall - it is a teen fiction with similar tones and characters to your book. The plot is the girl's friend wins the lottery and the book follows through with his decision on where to use it.

Forever or a long long time - two orphan children who refused to believe a forever home exists)

Based on the examples I used, the titles have this sort of personal connection to the story. Where it makes sense that the book is title that way.

Conditional love is good as a title but whether it can intrigue a reader (in this case, me) But in the books I used as an example even on the first chapter I could already connect to why the book was title that way.

The question is why is the book titled conditional love. (I might end up sounding dumb if there is a connection to the story and I just didn't see it so if I did. This entire segment is void.)

If there is a clear answer to it, then it is a good title but if it takes more than a sentence to explain than perhaps

Tbh, love in the title is hard to make interesting unless it was title lovely murder or something like that.

I won't be suggesting titles as this part is simply a suggestion and you can ignore it you want.

Overall

The book is well written with good characters and I can see the book doing well. I genuinely liked reading the characters interact and enjoyed reading it overall.

So yeah, I do hope this review didn't come off as rude as sometimes I tend to sound as such without noticing it.  I also hope this review was helpful in someway.

Anyhow, have a good day/night and farewell.