Reverie Reviews

review #52.S3: It's On Us

It's On Us

Author: @handenyx
Reviewer: LadyInLostYearn

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SYNOPSIS

Two weeks remain until the Class of Us graduates, but it appears that one student has completely vanished from the picture. Her friend Psyche shows up to locate her via anyone who may have been aware of her movements.

When Klear returns one day, they find themselves embroiled in a string of misfortunes when Klear tumbles out of the window while the class is taking pictures for graduation.

Given that everyone was down the building for the photo, who might have pushed her?

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Disclaimer: While I was reading your book with my best effort to stay unbiased, I might not have caught your intended style for your characters, storyline, or purposes. By the end of the day, you control its narrative. I was just passing through, exploring around, and giving a deduction.

Overall review:
Great cover, simple and eye-catching. But the words above and bottom title are too small to read. A vague title, but a good decision after I read a few chapters. Simple yet hooking blurb, but do clear up confusion by saying that one student is named Klear and 'they' are the students of the class.

The character names were unrealistic, which I was wary of until many characters involved were not physically and elaborately described. While I didn't know what they looked like and was not sure of their characteristics yet, I could catch on to what was going on between the students and how different their relationships were with each other because their names were unique and distinguishable. It worked.

I liked the perspective about the shift on Psyche and Julian's cheating dad is similar. I hope there will be more of this level of relatability in later chapters since it could give Julian more depth. "So Klear does exist." Very interesting for Julian to say this since she questioned how she became friends with Klear in the first place in the previous chapter. It added more questions to the reliability of the narrator after I found out that hypnosis was involved. But this "As Klear and I were not very close when we first shared a home," and this "Klear's been with me since childhood," were contradictory, making me scratch my head. The same goes for "As far as I'm concerned, Matthew and Henry are not on good terms," while in the earlier chapter, they both did PDA in front of Psyche. If all of those were contributing to the unreliability of the narrators, do show some signs that not only Klear (and probably Psyche too) was affected by hypnosis, but others as well. However, if these contradictions were unintentional, it's better to check their logical inconsistencies and fix them. Another one, "I checked my phone and noticed that Klear had replied to Psyche's message." Before that sentence, Julian already talked about SMS content.

There are several other issues. This story has a White Room Syndrome. Chapter 3 didn't even show where they bought Matthew's disguises, and the hallway setting in Chapter 2 could've been elaborated. I wished I had a clear picture of the classroom so I could be immersed with the students when a drama went down. I was confused when Klear introduced Psyche to her classmates on the wall since there was no description of the classmate list on the wall in the first place. Also, the story misses facial nuances and quirks that give distinct personalities to each character and make them more human. It's good for the characters to have descriptive expressions and action beats too. When Alyvia called Henry across the classroom, do describe his reaction and her tone. When Psyche said "Still!" Describe her physical reactions. You can't always depend on dialogue tones to show what's going on.

There were many awkward sentences as well and some were missing or were the wrong words. They could be rewritten such as "...is this something we all truly want to live for?" and "No way in my ass can I blame them!" and "Matthew in response to Alyvia," and so on. "...he carried me through my shoulder and led the way," made me confused. 'Through' by definition is inserting something and it comes out of another end. I highly doubt that he punched a hole through her shoulder. So, watch out for prepositions. "I am not a cheater! Shouting that past the classroom windows was Matthew." Watch for quotation marks and periods too since a few were missing. Didn't know "Well, you were being duped, of course!" was Psyche's speaking since it was missing quotation marks and not followed by her dialogue tag. 'Suggests' and 'answers' can still be continued after a dialogue. Discern which paragraph should break and which should be resumed. "Psyche, get over that ... mother figure!" And "I confidently yelled at her..." should be continued after, not in another paragraph.

I know that calling Klear—by herself and others—chaotic, chaos, and pandemonium might seem a good move for the 'Klear the Khaos' line, but those words just created awkwardness from exaggeration and dramatics. I suggest that unstable, menace, threatening or a threat would've been suitable. With that, 'Klear the Khaos' still could be used.

The final and major setback for this book. From the get-go, mixed tenses came into play consistently, contributing to further confusion. "The principal said..." and "I'm sick of this stupid drama," Alyvia says," and a lot of others that need to be checked and corrected. Choose one tense and stick to it except for flashbacks or referring to past events. "You're proud of me, aren't you?" When Psyche asked this about her achievement, I'm unsure if this was a flashback or back when Klear was still messed up about the rumour. In later chapters when Psyche woke up Klear after hypnosis and Klear was shaken about what happened, she somehow went about the history of Psyche, never came back to that weird situation, and continued to introduce classmates to Psyche. I didn't know which one was the present and the past anymore. Any clear transitions, except the time at the top of the chapters, were absent.

You got the dark tone from the first chapter and Mira's scene jumpstarted the nerve-wracking element. However, the ability to hold readers' attention would be difficult when they have to wade through the layers of perplexities, and not in a good way. I know this plot is unique despite the hard time reading it, and I really hope that you'd edit this book into a more comprehensive story. Use Grammarly or ProWritingAid (don't fully rely on them) for grammar. Text-to-speech site is for detecting awkward sentences and missing words. Read more books outside Wattpad too.