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My Cold Mafia Crush Hates Me [Alba]

Book: My Cold Mafia Crush Hates Me
Author: KIM69123
Reviewer: oraclesighter
Chapters read: 28

The title eludes drama. It’s a strong hook for a story, as it incorporates numerous compelling factors such as mafia, conflict, and romance. The cover suits the story as well. It’s well made. It may be simple, but it’s still classy.

Moving onto the blurb, I think a few improvements could be done. It’s not that the blurb itself needs improvement, really, but I would consider working on the dialogue a bit more — which we’ll get to in a second. It’s a gripping scene you’ve chosen as a hook for the blurb, but I think it’d suit the tone and genre more if you chose to follow a more “logline-like” blurb, where you choose to explain the major events of the story without giving out too much information. It’s basically a one to two lined summary of the story, something more straightforward to have the reader know what they’re getting into.

Why I recommend you to stick to the logline blurb here is because we don’t get a hint of mafia here. I think that it may be very misleading when it comes to readers seeing the title, wanting to read a mafia story about BTS, to then see in the blurb that it doesn’t even have a tinge of it. More than anything, it’s just romance and drama about love. Where’s the mafia in this?

Here’s when we come to the plot. I think you’ve got an intriguing storyline with two Indian girls traveling abroad to Korea for study reasons — to then come across Jungkook and Taehyung. However, the way they meet each other is unrealistic. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

I think Rashi and Tae’s first interaction felt more natural, more realistic, as they didn’t know each other so well and he was just helping her from tripping over. However, Y/N’s first interaction with JK was so strange to me, it just felt so forced?

She yells for help at a party’s bathroom after she can’t reach the zip on her dress. Which, first of all, you’ve gotta consider the noise at the party. I’d assume it’s rather loud, and since you mentioned that all the people were busy partying, nobody would hear her at all — so how does Y/N’s thought process work?

It does make sense that JK is standing near the bathroom though, so you can get away with that, but I’d like you to have the character make more rational decisions instead. She could have gone out, even with the dress slightly unzipped, and then bump into Jungkook as she makes her way out. That’s how it could have made a bit more sense. But I do recommend you to choose another way to introduce these two characters.

I would like to shine light on the dialogues as well. I noticed that the majority of your dialogues are way too straightforward, too blunt.

I’ll use the dialogue from the blurb as an example:

Y/n: I-I love you Jungkook *sobs*

Jk: Y/n, I hate you

Y/n: why do you hate me?  *started crying loudly and came closer to him*

Jk: Ew Girl, stay away *pushed her*

Jk: You are ugly *yelled at her*
I fear I might come off as sounding too brusque here, but I have to be honest with you, this is not how real people talk. Minus an adult who is nearly pushing 30 and who is a mafia leader/king.

I’d recommend you to do more research in incorporating subtext within your dialogue, which refers to the underlying meaning that is conveyed indirectly when someone speaks (you can find more information on youtube or google).

Don’t be so blunt. And take care of the specific words you choose to use in dialogue, make it fit with the character. Jungkook isn’t someone I’d imagine to get upset because of someone’s looks and straight up yell at someone that they’re ugly — that feels like a teenage class bully. Not to mention he’s part of a mafia. This isn’t how mafias speak.