Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Maryam: Soulmates

Title: Soulmates

Author: tylergathers

Reviewer: Marykhah77

Summary: 3.5/5

The book summary was rather straightforward. I don't have a problem with short and to the point summaries, but yours didn't push me to want to read your book. It didn't seem very original or unique.

Also, you had places that could've used commas. Like here:

In this case the guy is Blake. Change this to: In this case, the guy is Blake. 

Try to not use multiple exclamation points. Using only one will get the point across just as well. 

Grammar + Punctuation: 2/5

I'll start off by saying your book has a lot of errors. Let's start with dialogue.

To write dialogue, you need to know what verbal tags are. These come either before or after quotation marks. For example: she said, they whispered, he muttered.

Let me show you a phrase from your book to which you wrote it incorrectly:

I hand him the heel, hug him and say "I guess you will have to find me later."...

There, you would have to add a comma after say since it is a verbal tag. The correct way would be: 

I hand him the heel, hug him and say, "I guess you will have to find me later."...

Now, I'm going to talk about what I mentioned in the summary portion. Stick to using only one source of punctuation—with an exception of ellipses. Don't have both a question mark and an exclamation point. If that does happen, you'd usually put the exclamation point. 

When you are writing, try to not capitalize. Instead, chose to italicize. It's rare to need to capitalize, but you use them quite frequently in places that you could simply italicize at. 

The errors I found were very noticeable. Sometimes, they can disrupt the story's flow, so try to find an editor to run through your story and fix up any issues you may have.

Plot Development: 3/5

I will say that it was very similar to The Bachelor. In fact, I think too similar. Again, going back to what I stated in the summary, you should try to make it original. Add some twists. Add mystery or suspense. Make it your own. That's the best part about writing your own story.

Though, you did write the dates well. Maybe make them a bit longer, and that should make your chapters a longer and more enjoyable. 

Character Development: 2.5/5

Blake was a very flat character. You said that he was very nice, but you should should show us. Show us an instance when Blake showed his personality.

Rosalena also was very flat. In fact, all the characters were. They were all so alike, I kept wanting to read about a different character. In all honesty, I liked Kashiya because she was so different. Readers will get bored reading the same character over and over again.

As the story went on, none of the characters seemed to develop. That's not a problem; there are such characters. But they grew more and more bothering to read about. I didn't care enough about them, so I didn't bother to try to understand them more. 

Try to give each character a goal. And, no, I'm not talking about their goal being Blake. Realistically, not everything is about love. Show a character with an internal struggle. 

Characterisation: 2.5/5

The characters were, again, incredibly alike. They all want the same thing, they all have similar personalities. In fact, they even looked the same.

A piece of advice: try to add diversity. I'm not saying to change your characters completely, but add a character of color. That's not the only thing you can add or change—there are many things. Mix it up a bit. Give us variation. Make the characters more relatable. 

Blake could be a very interesting character if given the proper things. Describe his life more. Why did he come? Who does he look up to? Heck, describe how he walks. Anything to give us more information without overloading us with descriptors is something that readers, like myself, could devour. 

OVERALL SCORE: 13.5/25

All in all, try to fix up the grammar. There are many places that can get you great editors, and I'm sure they'd be happy to look over your story. Add a bit of spice to the characters, and you should be good to go. 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to PM me Marykhah77.