I'm Right Here (DS)

44 5 18
                                    

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read your book. Please, keep in mind that my reading of your story is by necessity a subjective opinion. Your story is beautiful and important to you more than any other story you could have been telling. How I perceived it is very much a matter of my preferences.

I read the first 10 chapters of your story available at this time. At that point, the story's main conflict is well on the way, with the central story line developing nicely.

You have 16 book tags. I suggest going all the way up to 25 that are allowed. I feel that you covered what is unique about your story in the tags well, so what I would add are more tropes you are using (in addition to arranged marriage, such as pairings types (grumpy×sunshine, other woman), situations (forced proximity), type of romance (slowburn, international romance), setting (contemporary romance or whatever else you are hitting), and age group (new adult). Once you highlight the main tropes and buzzwords you are using, it will be easier for folks to find your story, and if it ranks in one of these tags, it would help with increasing readership.

I only comment on the covers when I feel that changing them will significantly improve the curb appeal of the story, and I feel that it's the case with your story. The image you picked is oversaturated and unclear, there is no author's name on the cover or any framing to focus the viewer's eye. Canva is a free software that now has a lot of India themed assets including frames, fonts, images and graphics, so I encourage you to spend some time there to create covers and chapter headers and thank-you footers. Alternatively, if you are with the Dreamland Community, there are talented folks who can help you create something appealing.

I like your title because it is straightforward and it's emotional, both of those qualities important in a romantic book.

For romance I look first and foremost at how much I root for the couple to end together, how important your main character had become to me; the presence of the emotional conflict that is growing as the book progresses, the emotional and the physical intimacy development and interplay, and if I would be able to remember your story a few months from now. In addition, in an international romance, I am looking for that recognition of a place on the planet and meeting characters from different cultures that makes me see them beyond stereotypes.

You use a quote from the story in place of a blurb/summary to introduce your story. It's a choice, but if you want to catch the eye of the judges in various Wattpad events, check out @BootcampMentors workshop on loglines and blurbs to build a successful front page for your book. You double down, use the same quote as a prologue, but it's not really either thing. I would suggest renaming it Moodboards, making three of them (he, she, ambiance) and integrating the most grabbing lines into the mood boards as mood setting quotes.

Your first chapter is a great set up, blending the rom com tropes (the FMC who can't cook and trips over her feet) with fresh flavors. Marriage of convenience doesn't make the main characters shrink away in horror from such an outlandish notion. They are looking at it as a great thing that is common.

This is very cool, it also takes away the easy-made, comes with the trope, conflict that you would get in a traditional arranged marriage romance. You also wave away the traditional expectations versus modern approach to a working woman. So, you will have to work harder at making the emotional conflict clear and enticing to read the story further.

My two suggestions for this chapter would be to avoid the POV split (keep chapter in the same POV, beginning to end) and show the seeds of the growing conflict from Asfia's perspective, when Faisal snaps to attention and declares his readiness to marry a complete stranger like, yesterday.

Despite how insanely good their match is, and how all her concerns are put to rest, something ought to bother her...what?

From your blurb quote it's that Asfia can't make Faisal genuinely see her, move from a friendly indifference to passionate love. The hint of it should first appear in chapter one, and start growing from there, keeping me glued. Without it, what I get the 'kids did good. Next book!" vibe (yes, even with the prologue you repeat the blurb in, because the conflict is served in a wrong order that way).

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