Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Maryam: You're Mine

Title: You're Mine 

Author: Ewelina_Wik

Reviewer: Marykhah77

Summary: 1/5

I'll be honest, I really don't like your summary. It doesn't introduce the stakes, it doesn't have the characters, or even their names. It's incredibly bland and it doesn't push me to read your story. Even then, the cover and the summary are incredibly different.

The dark figure began to approach me slowly, making a hissing sound. The person was so close, I felt his cold, harsh breath in my face. I cowered back in fear. He lifted a hand to reveal an axe, and covered in liquid. Blood. He swung it in my direction...

I can't really give you an alternative summary since you only have four chapters on your story, but it needs editing. It really threw me off, and your book cover didn't help at all.

Grammar: 2/5

There were a lot of errors. Some were typos, some were dialogue errors. I'll do my best to cover all that here.

First up, typos. Usually, a few can come off as mistakes, and humans make mistakes. But if you have a lot, they can come off as sloppy and lazy. Try reading over your chapters before you publish them so you can catch them. Here are a few I found—keep in mind that there are more:

My head my pounding...

That should be: 

My head was pounding...

... I didn't notice him standing directing in front of me.

That should be: 

... I didn't notice him standing directly in front of me.

Again, keep in mind that those were only a few examples. 

Next up, dialogue. When you're writing dialogue, you have to know what verbal tags are. Verbal tags are how the character says something. For example: he whispered, she yelled, and they said. Whenever you use these at the end of a phrase that a character said, add a comma before the closing quotation mark. Here's an example of it incorrect: 

"Are you afraid of me, sweetheart." He asks...

There are three mistakes with the above phrase that I pulled out of your story. Let's start with what I was talking about: comma. I would usually do that, but that phrase is a question, so you would use a question mark, not a period. 

"Are you afraid of me, sweetheart?" He asks...

Now, the phrase after the closing quotation mark has to be lower-case since it is a verbal tag. 

"Are you afraid of me, sweetheart?" he asks...

Finally, your story is written in mostly past tense, so you have to stick by it. "Asks" is present tense. "Asked" is past tense, so that's what you should've done instead. 

"Are you afraid of me, sweetheart?" he asked...

Let's move on to commas. When you're addressing a character, add a comma before or after—it depends on where it is in the sentence. Let me show you an example from your story:

"Dad I miss you."

There, you'd have to add a comma after "Dad".

"Dad, I miss you."

I'm not going to point out every mistake in your story. If you're looking for someone to edit through your story, there's the Ruby Editing Store. 

Plot Development: 2/5

The plot started off fast; it is a short-story, after all. I'm a huge fan of stories getting right into the plot, so I like that you started it quickly.

However, I didn't really like the plot. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad about a kidnap-related story. But I hate—and I mean hate—romanticizing it. To be quite honest, I thought about not reviewing it a few times. Abuse in any way should never be romanticized, and I don't know if that's just my opinion, but I felt extremely uncomfortable reading. I can say that part of the reason why the score for this is so low is because of that.

If I ignore that, then I can say that the first three chapters dragged a bit. I felt like they were the same thing with different words. Either combine the three chapters or use chapter two and three to move the plot along better.

Character Development: [no score - will not be added in final score]

You had four chapters up at the time I was reviewing, so there isn't going to be much development for characters.

I will say that you could add more information on the characters. We're in chapter four and I still don't know the main character's name. You should introduce her right away, especially since she's the main character. 

Characterisation: 4.5/5

The characters, as far as I could tell, were different. The main character was sensitive—again, I'm going off the four chapters that were up. The kidnapper was very temperamental, so I liked how they both were different.

I wished we got more information on the father, though. He seemed to have played a very important role in the protagonist's life, but again, there's only four chapters, so I'm going off what I got.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5/20

Overall, a suspenseful concept. The mystery behind what's happening is played out well. Just work on the grammar and edit the summary.

If you have any questions, please PM me Marykhah77.