I along with countless amount of people, are affected by first impressions. The title, cover, and blurb of your book should represent the story without giving away too much. Hopefully, you can take what I say into consideration to make your book even better.
» Title :: 3.5/5
I like the title quite a lot. Some might say it’s wordy but it has a nice ring to it and yours is an example of why a title doesn’t always have to be two or three words. Although one complaint would be that it only represents the first part of the story ‘Before they were Bulletproof’, I believe a title should encompass a book as a whole. And also you do not have to make ‘they’ and ‘were’ capital as well just ‘Before’ and ‘Bulletproof’. But other than that I have no real complaints about your title. Good job!
» Cover :: 2/10
To put it simply, your cover is not good. It is outdated even. A cover should convey the plot or some important aspect of the story as should the title and blurb. Your cover is just a picture of BTS with some font slapped on top of it.
The first thing that jumped at me was how it didn’t fit the Wattpad cover dimensions. Your cover should be 512 x 800 pixels. I don’t know what dimensions you used but it has cut out some of your username and ‘OT7 x OC’. This might be nitpicking but trust me it will look so much better if you used the correct dimensions.
Also instead of using the boys as you could also consider adding some other parts of the plot to enhance it. Since crime is a big theme you could also incorporate that into your cover. If you don’t have the skills you could request a cover shop to do it for you.
Overall I think your cover is a bit basic but with some enhancements, it can look much better. It is a sad fact but people indeed judge books by their cover especially here on Wattpad.
» Blurb :: 3/5
In the part of your blurb where you described the story, I enjoyed it a lot. It describes the story well without giving much away. I also felt there was a sense of suspense to it and it really was written well. I would just recommend you lengthen it a little bit more so the readers can feel that excitement for a little longer.
One thing that I found particularly distracting though was the big block of tags at the end of the blurb. It is fine to inform the reader what to expect but there is no need to be excessive. It is similar to the Ao3 tagging system but trust me that only takes away from the great blurb you have crafted.
That’s all I have to say about your blurb, it was written well and you can see some thought was put into it. You just need to adjust a few things!
Dawn :: 2/10
Dawn should introduce the readers to the characters while also showing them the main conflict of a story. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that was present in your story.
From the beginning, you were using pictures instead of words to describe places where your main character was. This is not writing, the way it comes off is that you can’t write (which isn’t true) and it also seems lazy. Another downside to this is you are not letting the reader paint the picture in their heads. You are doing it for them and that can be seen as bad writing.
Another problem I had was the main conflict was not introduced properly. I know it is supposed to be for later on in the story but it would be way more effective if you hinted at it early on. It would get people to keep reading and the criminal part would not come out of left field.
Plot and Idea :: 11/20
College AUs and crime AUs are not a new concept, everybody is aware of that. But I don’t think a plot’s value should simply be derived from originality. It should be judged by the way it unravels.
As I have mentioned before one major issue that I found was how late into the story the conflict is introduced. In my opinion, I think the crime part should be introduced/hinted at way earlier on.
Another part I found quite a cliche was that in the earlier chapters, Jia was bullied simply because she was pretty. You can definitely do better than that. If you change that part I’m sure it will give your story a different feel than countless other stories on Wattpad.
And lastly, there was too much filler in your story. Especially in the beginning. You took your time introducing all seven of the BTS boys. I know you don’t want to make it overwhelming but you could have built it up more instead of adding filler to your chapters.
Overall, I enjoyed reading your story. Just take some of what I have to say to mind and I hope you can see how this will improve it.
Characters and Emotions :: 5/15
One of the most important things to have in a story is a character’s inner conflict, motivation and fear. And these three things should be rooted in each other.
You had eight main characters in your story and I think anyone can see how difficult it might be to flesh out each one of them. Although I do applaud you for making each one of them distinct and not just carbon copies of each other. That’s not easy. For future reference, I would say always make sure you keep a close eye on each of their development but I got to hand it to you. You did the best you could.
Writing Style :: 9/15
After getting through your early chapters I could see how much your writing improved. You got more comfortable with it as opposed to the start of the book. Just one thing to look out for is description. I often found that your story suffered from ‘white room syndrome’. What that basically means is when a story does not have enough description the reader can only imagine a scene taking place in an empty room with white walls. Other than that your writing was good. Just make sure to practice your pros and description writing more.
Grammar :: 20/20
Your grammar throughout the book was mostly perfect. Just some syntax and spelling errors sprinkled far out. Those didn’t really break the immersion which I think is what’s important. Keep up the good work!
TOTAL :: 55.5/100
Reviewer's Note :: You got a solid book in your hands. Just make sure you can handle all those characters and I’m sure your sequel can flourish too. I hope this didn’t throw you off in any way just remember to keep writing. I hope this helped!
![𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐕𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄 : ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡ sʜᴏᴘ [CLOSED]](https://img.wattpad.com/cover/287210578-64-k299057.jpg)