Review by Danielle: Don't Let Me Love You

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Title: Don't Let Me Love You: A Travlyn Aphmau Fanfiction

Author: SiennaWritesAlot

Reviewer: pluviophile_bookworm


Summary: 3/5 

The summary begins with a good, intriguing quote from the book, but there isn't enough to truly make me interested to read the book at first glance. It provides hardly any information, and the only thing you truly ascertain is that it's going to be a romance book. What I would do is start off with the quote, and then underneath it, write something like this:

"Travis and Katelyn have been best friends as long as they can remember. They can trust each other on anything and act like a brother and sister. So when Katelyn\Travis's feelings begin growing into something more..." Etc.


Grammar: 2/5 

I caught a lot of grammar mistakes, which leads me to believe it hasn't been edited. But also, a lot of the dialogue wasn't properly marked, a few texting abbreviations were used throughout the book (such as OMG), and often there were excessive exclamation marks and question marks, such as: 

"Hearing Katelyn's "'Ugh!!'" made me think...she must be SOO hungry right now!!" 

All of this makes the book difficult to take seriously. But, with little effort, you can easily translate it into something more grammatically correct, like this:

"Hearing Katelyn's groan made me think of something. She must be so hungry right now!"

By putting Travis's thoughts into italics, it distinctly defines the inner dialogue aide from regular speech or narration. My suggestion is just reread your book and look for the errors like these. Of course, if you would like help, I know there is a fantastic Ruby Editing Store in Treasure Community!


Character Development: 4.5/5 

I really loved watching as Katelyn and Travis slowly came to terms with their feelings, and I liked seeing them in different emotional situations: sadness, anxiety, anger, and fear. It was interesting watching how they acted around other people, also.

The only thing I would suggest is that it seemed like they fell in love a little too quickly; I think it's interesting to watch their friendship before becoming lovers. In my opinion, it's funny and entertaining to watch them snipe at each other as friends—and it keeps the reader engaged longer, because we want our ship to become canon! But overall, very good character development. 


Writing Style: 3/5 

I liked how you could make even the simplest date or event into something romantic or funny, albeit cooking, picnics, or ice skating. The simplicity of it was beautiful, and it all felt realistic and utterly adorable.

The book could be hard to read sometimes, because it jumped around a bit, having lots of "Times Skips" over mundane events that I think you could have made interesting. Also, as I said before, the abbreviations, like 'OMG or LOL' made the book seem a bit childish. But I think that your natural writing style is quite interesting to read. 


Plot Uniqueness: 3/5 

This one is a bit hard to do, because I don't know much about this fandom. But when I take out the fandom parts from it, the plot is kind of cliché—childhood friends become more than friends, and the boy protects the abused girl from bullying. Also, at times the chapters rambled a bit, and I wasn't really sure where it was going. 

But putting the fandom in, I thought it was a sweet, cute fandom short story. I believe it is an AU of a fandom, and it seemed realistic, like it could actually have taken place. 


OVERALL SCORE: 15.5/25

I think this is an adorable but flawed fandom short story, and if you could clean up your grammar, maybe throw in a bit more suspense to the plot to keep readers engaged, it could be an excellent story. I really was shipping Katelyn and Travis—and I'm not even part of that fandom. So if you cleaned it up a bit, I think it could be a fantastic fanfiction!


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