Suns & Sparks (CY)

52 2 10
                                    

Suns & Sparksbooklover311921

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Suns & Sparks
booklover311921

Cover - 8.5/10

With this being a collection of stories, there's not really anything specific I'm looking for in a cover. I really like what you have at the moment, myself being a fan of having some sort of central object in a cover, and the hooded figure and forest background offer some curiosity. The fade into white at the top is not the most professional looking, but does okay at serving its purpose. The font as well isn't exactly pleasing, and I'd go for something more whimsy maybe? It just looks like a quick PicsArt addition, which, while there isn't anything wrong with it, it doesn't look very appealing. 

Blurb - 9/10

I don't have much experience when it comes to writing poetic or creative blurbs, but I really liked yours. It adds a nice creative flare to your blurb, because you honestly can't describe all your short stories in it. I do also like the fact that you added the genre of each of the parts, that way people can know what they're reading. Great job, overall.

Starlight - 9.5/10

Let me just start off by saying how truly amazing this story was. I love reading romance, even though I can't write it, and yours truly is some of the best I've ever read—the amount of emotion and detail presented was breathtaking.

And now that I'm done with that, I'll talk through each part of this short story to let you know my thoughts. I know already that there won't be too many critical points, because this is amazing already, but I'll try my best to offer some useful pointers.

Starting with the quote at the top, I'm not exactly in love with it. I like how it ties to the story's title, but I'm not exactly sure it has a real place in this story part. I know it's kind of just personal preference, but I really like a clean start to a story, so the same goes for the playlist. I really love how it fits—and I myself know half the lyrics to all those songs—but I don't like it hogging my attention before I get to read your story. I noticed that there was a playlist in at least one other chapter of your story as well, so maybe you could make a separate chapter for playlists or something. Just some ideas to keep it clean and uncluttered so readers can get right into the story.

 Another "stylistic" choice I'm going to comment on is the switching between italics and regular print as you switch between reality and memory. I really like it, and find that it's helpful differentiating when the scenery changes.

Some of the dialogue gets a little confusing when there's a lot of lines and little dialogue/action tags breaking it up. Occasionally I had to read back to the last one and count from there to find out who says what. That being said, though, your dialogue is usually personal enough that I can tell anyway, but just thought I'd point that out.

I don't have much to say until we reach the part where Elena and Lucas are stargazing. There's a quick typo I noticed:

First one gleam, and then another, drew streaks of silver across the velvet canvas until *they/it* exploded in a supernova of light.

There's also a break between two lines of Elena's dialogue when there's really no need for one. There's no extra dialogue/action tag, nor is the paragraph necessarily long. It's while she's explaining the meaning of Qué será, será to Hannah. 

In your story, all the paragraphs are already really short, which gives it a sort of poem-like appearance that I sort of like, so there's no need to break up dialogue into separate short lines.

Final Notes - 9/10

I cut the previous section of the review a little short because there truly wasn't any criticism I could offer to the rest of the story. All the emotions and details were written so perfectly, and painted such an amazing picture that's sure to captivate any mind. Besides the little things I nitpicked, and the need of a improved cover, I absolutely loved what this story had to offer.

I apologize for the short review, but as I've already stated, there's not much more for me to say. I'm also sorry for the long wait for your review, I know the queue was long and my own personal issues made it even more difficult for me to get reviews out in a reasonable time frame, but I hope what I offer today at least gives you some encouragement, if not just a little advice.

Thanks for choosing me as your reviewer!

—Cyprus

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