Reverie Reviews

review #62.S3: Him Without Her

Him Without Her

Author: icamilie
Reviewer: -sylver

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SYNOPSIS

If he knew where this journey would lead him and what kind of secrets would be revealed...would Nathanael have done it anyway?

*****

When Dr. Nathanael Rodriguez losses the love of his life Eddia Keira in the saddest way possible, he is left empty, confused and heartbroken. Six months later and everyone begs him to move on from the tragedy, but he thinks he is unable to do such a thing. He just can't--not when the wound was still fresh and bleeding and when he perceived Keira to be his forever. But, when fate pushes him to go on a business trip to Lagos, he surprisingly finds himself in the same country and town with a look alike Keira who claims to be a Nigerian of name Sharon Chikodi.

Now the deep question: is she really Keira? Or is it all in Nathanaël's head? And if she is, is it the beginning of a happy ever after? Or the epitome of a destructive encounter?

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TITLE

His Forever is a basic romance themed title for a novel. Nothing very eye-catching unless you're looking for something that sounds like it'd have dark romance in it. I honestly thought there were going to be some toxic relationship elements in the story from the title alone.

COVER

The cover is very deceiving in my opinion. You're writing a story about black characters. You even have a full cast of faceclaims, but the cover shows people who don't look anything like the people you're trying to depict, so the cover seems very inappropriate for the story. Other than that it's a nice cover and caters towards its genre, but it just doesn't go with your story specifically.

SUMMARY

I think the first part of your summary was supposed to be the logline. It wasn't very enticing to read. It is a nice line but it doesn't give a sense of what your story is about or the theme of why we the readers should read it. It just reveals that Nathanael will be going on a tough journey which is what the usual main character struggles through.

Moving on to the actual summary paragraph you make a mistake in the first sentence. Loses not losses. I also don't see the emphasis on calling him a doctor in the blurb if his career isn't heavily mentioned in the beginning of the story while he's traveling to Nigeria. I don't really like the phrasing "who claims to be a Nigerian of name Sharon Chikodi." It reads awkward. I'd honestly phrase it like "But when fate pushes him to go on a business trip to Lagos, he surprisingly finds himself in the same country and town with a woman who looks like his deceased wife." I'd leave that last paragraph out because I think you should let the readers wonder that instead of pushing the questions into their head. It'd probably add better shock value instead of having them already contemplate it and then coming to the conclusion that yes it is her and moving on because they think the plot is predictable. The blurb is missing a few stakes in it that should compel the reader to want to read it so you should probably add that to the blurb to spice it up some more.

PLOT

The prelude got me like "Yep Sharon is Keira, next book please." Starting off with 'Her name was Keira' is very telling. "And Kiera is said to never come back. Until she does..." Makes me question why I'm reading the story if it's basically stated that Keira is going to be Sharon. Is that not a huge plot point? I feel like it should be. I'd be shocked if Keira and Sharon were only doppelgangers and not the same person honestly. I'm not a huge fan of the phrasing in the prelude.In chapter one it says Nathanael adopted calling Lydia Lily but only uses the name once and then keeps calling her Lydia after that. Some of these nickname introductions and mentions of middle names seem unnecessary.The plot was honestly very dragging out for me. It took about ten chapters just to get to the interesting part and even the interesting part was so convenient. I'm not really a fan of convenient plot points. Dylan happening to somehow run over Nathanael out of anybody in the world? Not likely to happen unless Nathanael had planned that out to get hit by his car so he could run into Sharon again. And what I mean by interesting parts is for many sections of each chapter I've been reading about how much Nathanael loved Keira and how he can't survive without her. It was mentioned a bit too much.