Jabberwocky Reviews

32: Hurricane With a Little Sunshine by LakshmiVaishnavi

"Vanessa or Ness as her friends call her, is a simple girl who craves for the love and attention of her dear ones, and is always lost in her dream world - because the reality is too harsh on her.

For her, life is not a love song that we like, it's just broken pieces floating by.

She has no friends, a brother who seems perfect on the outside and a single dad, who isn't fond of her.

What happens when one fine day, fate decides to have mercy on her and gifts her something more valuable than rubies and diamonds -- a secret along with a friend.

A friend who turns her life upside down.

It's not just a saga of friendship and love, it's also about a girl whom no one seems to notice or love, who finally learns what life is and what is it that her heart yearns for."

Your blurb is a good character introduction for Vanessa. Obviously this is going to be a story that somewhat follows the Wattpad template, being in a very common genre for Wattpad that has a common story pattern. Nevertheless, we learn something about who she is. There are some very awkward phrasings in here, e.g. "because the reality is too harsh on her" with its redundant article (because reality is too harsh on her), that could be cleaned up. This is a recurring trend through what I read, that there could be another pass or two of editing done. Grammarly helps, or asking someone specifically to help you edit; I am not Grammarly, and I'm also not the best editor unless I feel really, really motivated. So I'm not going to fill up this review with more comments on that front besides saying that some needs to be done.

I like how you begin your first chapter in medias res, and then immediately flash back: we're now curious to read on and figure out what could have possibly led to this kidnapping. It's cinematic, in a way. Here I think your execution falls flat in the pacing: while you give us a kick-start with this introduction, you need to carry this energy through what follows or otherwise it feels like false advertising. And we drift very quickly into a very mundane, I'd go as far as to say, hackneyed following few chapters. Scenes like "I stare in the mirror and tell you about my clothing" aren't carrying your initial energy, and I'm not saying that we need the rest of this story to be ludicrously high-paced. There just needs to be something that captures our interest in the same way as the opening scene.

I agree with some of the other comments you've received that certain moments feel unrealistic in a way that breaks immersion: it's very hard, for instance, to break your own skin with your fingernails as described because we have an instinct that tells us not to do that. These comments say a lot of what I'd want to say, and instead of rephrasing what they're saying I'm going to tell you that the feedback you've received already will put you on the right track.

This idea of realism and "immersion" in writing is a complicated one: nobody would want to read a book about people who spend all day commuting to work and filing taxes. But at the same time, the more actions are dramatized, the harder they are to relate to. It's not like we have our own meet-cutes daily, stumbling into people in libraries and breaking our phones cutely, or we're clenching our fists so hard we draw blood. Good writing is a balancing act: good writing has the challenge of making us believe implausible things happen, that there are dragons or vampires roaming the planet with us. With this, especially the first few chapters, there was something missing for me—this idea of relatability or something else—that made it hard for me to connect with the narrative.

There are some other weird details that pop up, unanswered questions that your other readers have already noticed or how she knows one of her kidnappers is Jamaican or why that actually has any bearing on the narrative. Details like this and the proofreading issues (though I will admit I don't know why that one reader was so persistent with pointing out spelling mistakes, like at some point it stops being helpful and starts being annoying IMO) mean that execution-wise, your story lacks a clear spike that separates it from the other stories I've reviewed that have similar themes, similar characters, and similar ideas. It's not bland, but I feel like I've read this story before even if I know of course I haven't read it exactly: it's statistically impossible for two people to write the same story.

I can't think of much else to say, and that here is more of a negative mark than a positive one. I kept waiting for something to coalesce and it never did. I'll give you a 75/100 because I think the premise is solid, there's good character development, and there's nothing clearly "wrong" here that would make me want to give a lower rating—I've reviewed stories where I could point to clear faults that made them really deserve a low rating, but here there's nothing pulling me in either direction. Really try to clean up elements proofreading-wise, and look to your comments for other suggestions. Look at other stories I've reviewed to see what made them feel more unique, more one-of-a-kind; if you find yourself saying "I like this and it's unique in a way I haven't seen before" when reading something, that means there's something there you might be able to emulate. Not copy—that defeats the point—but think of those as promises of what the roads less-traveled may hold. Good start.