Rookywriters Book Reviews

No. 18 The Betrayal

Introduction

¤ Book title and author - The betrayal by @Rosie_80
Genre - Mystery/thriller

¤ First impression - Prologue ... The prologue, sometimes is written to introduce the story. Not necessarily beginning the story with different character povs.

¤ Weakness - Characters seem flat because of lack of descriptions.

Sentences are incomplete and there are no emotional words or dialogue tags to convey the feelings of the characters.

¤ Improvement - The prologue is an excerpt to give readers some hint about what either happened few times back, or what is happening immediately, it's like a teaser, an introduction to the story.
I will suggest writing a brief story about how Billy's parents met, since their love story is an important backbone to the plot.
But if you want to stick with the way the prologue is then make it the first chapter.

¤ Strengths - Good story telling style. Good diction.

Body

¤ Opening - After leaving the restaurant, I walked Shauna home and as usual it took me long to bid her goodnight. We stayed at the bench at her porch for a while and she sat on my knees.

This opening sentences tells a lot about your writing style and the kind of idea you have planned for the rest of the chapter.

Many writers spend months polishing their first chapter because that first sentence will either get readers hooked or turn them off.

I think the situation is supposed to be a lovely scene but the sentences are not conveying anything lovely.

There are random tense shifts, it's difficult to tell when what exactly is happening.

After leaving ...
I walked...
It took me long to...
She sat on...

The sentences sound like an essay writing instead of narrative.

A lot of emotions go on when a couple is together and that have to be shown.

Shauna and I left the restaurant after having a dinner of pasta and meatballs. I was glad to have her around me. I missed her so much. It was already dark when we got to her house.
She kept smiling at me. Her blue eyes were glowing in the lights as we sat in front of her house.

"What?" I chuckled.

"Do you want to sit?" she smiled. She gestured her hand to the bench in front of the porch.

"Sure." I replied. As I sat down, she came to my side and sat comfortably on my legs. It was so refreshing to have her close to my body like that.

We spent a little time giggling and kissing till we heard the flicker of the kitchen lights. I guess someone was up and it was time to let Shauna go for the night.

Well, this might not be perfect but an opening like this will definitely catch some attention.

¤ Conflict - The old secret between the parents and the children created conflict in the story.

¤ Plot -Good story plot. It's applaudable the way the story was rounded up in twelve chapters.

¤ Setting - The skeletal parts of the story is quite obvious. Settings around the characters is lacking. The weather conditions, the home descriptions, their street, the kind of vegetations around the  neighborhood etc

¤ Characterization - The characters only had names, Scott, Jerry, Billy, Carla, there was no relatable attributes that set them different, like their intonation, do they have accents, body physique, hairstyles, etc

¤ Dialogue - Dialogue among the characters was done quite well. All is needed are dialogue tags to convey emotions and certain facial expressions to show how the character is feeling.

When writing dialogues there is need to at least write,  said Jerry, or Carla said, at the end to point exactly who is talking. You totally skipped all this tags in the whole book.

¤ Point of View - POVs, well you did a good job working with the different characters. Since this book has a multi character settings.

¤ Show versus tell - The whole story was more of telling than showing.

¤ Format of the text - Paragraphing was done properly. But there was several switches from bold text to normal, from bold italics texts, to normal and back to bold and straight and italics...again.

Geezzzz! because there is a change in pov doesn't mean there should also be a change in the text. It really doesn't work that way in writing.

So what happens if Jerry is having a flashback and his whole pov is written in italics, how do readers know what is going on? It gets complicated.

The Bold, italics and underline are not used for decorating your chapters. They're used in special occasions.

Also most readers read with their phones and switching randomly distorts reading.

¤ Grammar and spelling - Grammar was good.  Except for most sentences that needed rephrasing. Especially the tenses.

Example in chapter eight,

The driver told us he had seen a woman going out of her car and getting into another one that left at once.

This sentence is complicated. The reporting style is clashing with number of verbs in it.

Make it simpler, for the readers peace of mind.

The driver had said, he saw a woman leave her car and get into a black sedan which drove off at once.

Here, this sounds better.

Try reading the sentences aloud and point out areas that need to be rephrased.

¤ Style - Story telling style of writing.

Conclusion

Comments - Your story is really interesting, though the title and cover gives off horror or thriller vibes.

The cover is a bit blurry and has a shady picture, just like the way you have written the skeletal parts of your book.

Try fixing the chapters with location descriptions, weather situations, characters looks, facial expressions, hair color, mode of dressing, and add dialogue tags in their conversation, then your story is perfectly set.

I enjoyed reading your book.

Thanks for letting me evaluate your book.

Any comments or questions about any confusion just PM me or hit the comments.