Bluebell Review Chamber [CLOSED]

જ Kiss Me Away જ ☾ Carmi ☽

Book Title: Kiss Me Away
Author: Min_Suga_kook
Reviewer: Read-aholic2006
•••
(Note that this review is merely based on the nine available chapters that I had read.)
•••
Title: 10/10

The author has chosen a suitable title as it clearly links to the romance genre.

Cover: 9/10

The cover is rather eye-catching despite the dark colour scheme. BTS fans would immediately be drawn to that Korean face, but in general, readers would find such covers to be striking. The title is large enough to see and I love the hook sentence at the bottom of the cover: "Love isn't scary, you are." It's captivating. But there is no indication of the author's name on the cover.

Blurb: 8/10

There are only a few grammatical errors, but nothing major. Starting your blurb with an interesting quote or a snippet of dialogue from your book is always effective. The author uses a specific scene from her book to serve as the body of her blurb and I find this to be very clever and intriguing. However, I would probably change the wording of the rhetorical question at the end so it sounds smoother.

Creativity/Originality: 10/10

Personally, I've never been acquainted with such a storyline before so I'd say that it's very creative. Our female MC—Rose—basically gets kidnapped by her long-lost friend—Tae—but there's a somewhat justifiable reason for his actions and psychotic behaviour. He's not letting her go. Not again. However, instead of trying to escape, Rose tries to find a way to help Tae because she knows her real friend is in there somewhere. But, of course, that won't be as easy as she would hope it to be.

Plot/Flow: 19/20

The plot doesn't hit any annoying speed bumps, so the events roll on pretty smoothly. The chapters aren't numbered (although they should be) but I can infer that the story starts off with an interesting prologue. And then already in the first chapter, things take a dark turn for Rose.

But I found it unrealistic that Rose didn't recognize her friend, no matter how many years had passed. Unless he had a face transplant or something, I think she should have at least been able to notice some sort of familiarity within his features.

Characters: 10/10

Tae's a rather complex character—which is a good thing, of course. He isn't just some 2D representation of a morally twisted antagonist. In fact, he falls into the grey area—neither good nor bad, just slightly broken, confused, scary, unstable and mentally ill. It's awesome.

And Rose is torn between fear and the desperation of trying to dig up the old Tae she'd known all those years ago. She seems like those typical sweet, submissive female characters I often roll my eyes at. But Rose is clever. And convincing. Therefore, her character slightly sidesteps the common stereotype.

Writing style/grammar: 5/10

Unfortunately, the grammatical errors are unavoidable. There are various punctuation errors, including missing commas and comma splices. There's a typo or spelling error here and there and incorrect capitalization and word usage. Also, there is no need to embolden the dialogue.

The author also uses many pleonasms, adding an unnecessary sentence or detail when the dialogue was sufficient.

Quite a few of the sentences sounded awkward: He made her climb on his shoulder as he carried her down the bus.

The author could change the aforementioned sentence to: He slung her arm around his neck, wrapped his own around her waist and pulled her along with him, stepping off the bus into the cool, dark air.

And the author also has a habit of using the word "orbs" to replace "eyes". Again, it makes the descriptions sound awkward: Her orbs studied his face, and his dark brown iris stared at her back with a piercing intensity.

Simply say: She studied his face and his dark brown eyes stared back at her with a piercing intensity.

And I suggest the writer makes use of her figurative language to add a layer of beauty to her descriptions. For example, instead of writing, She felt a feeling called dread arising in her...

You can change it to: She felt the icy hand of dread curl around her stomach, a heavy blanket of fear draping itself over her limbs.

Also, the author keeps switching perspectives. Half the chapter would be written by an omniscient narrator then the rest of the chapter would be told by Rose then the next part is told by Tae and it's all rather sporadic and inconsistent. It's best to stick to just one narrator (a third-person narrator) or two—one chapter only told in Rose's POV and the following chapter told only in Tae's POV.

The author doesn't exactly allow information to bleed through her writing; I feel as though it's all either spoon-fed or thrown carelessly into the story. To make your narration sound more natural, you should gracefully season it with snippets of information—whether it's through flashbacks, dialogue or character perspectives. Yes, the author makes use of all three of those techniques, but it's not done cautiously. The random flashbacks were so out of place it slightly threw me off balance.

Then there's a detail that didn't make sense to me. In one of the chapters, Rose hears a news reporter on TV vaguely mentioning Tae's "suicide". However, why call it "suicide" when the police hadn't even found his body? Shouldn't it be classified as a missing persons case instead?

But despite of all these issues, the diction is very moving. I found certain scenes to be emotional; the flashback that had depicted Tae as a loner, a small, helpless boy verbally abused by the other kids, was heartbreaking. And when Rose comes in to save the day, you can't help but smile.

Genre relevance: 10/10

There was a clear link between the story and its genres. I would've expected this book to lean heavily toward the fanfiction genre, but the author seemed to break away from those expectations, which is very refreshing.

The plot and its characters scream psychological thriller and also point at a twisted romance and angst.

Reading enjoyment: 7/10

My top favourite genre is psychological thrillers; I love those contorted, broken, teary characters, so Tae really appealed to me. The emotions experienced by Rose and Tae are raw and indecisive—they're both scared and desperate.

But I absolutely loathe grammatical errors, so the mistakes had left a bitter taste in my mouth. Readers would also struggle to interpret some of the sentences. I also wished the writing showcased more imagery, adding a creative splash of colour to the descriptions.

Overall thoughts and extra comments 88/100:

The author should spend sufficient time working on her grammar and polishing her descriptions. If she takes careful note of all I had mentioned in the review and takes some of my advice, then this story would be much more enjoyable. The author has come up with a brilliant book; all it needs is some thorough editing.