Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Danielle: The White Veil

Title: The White Veil

Author: CabianaR

Reviewer: pluviophile_bookworm

Summary: 4/5

Your summary is not bad; you've got a quote from your book and a brief outline of the beginning plot. But a couple things could be improved.

For one, your quote sounds almost threatening the first time you read it. It doesn't sound like a love story, it nearly sounds like a thriller or a mystery. My advice is to change that quote to something intriguing, but not quite so 'almost creepy'.

The text below is fairly good, but it could end better. You end it with a question - basically dating the reader to find out if life gets better for the protagonist. It's not really hard to figure out what the answer will be when it's a fanfiction love story.

I might change the question to something such as "Ellie is struggling to find a way to help the people of Camden, but can she fix this before it's too late?" Or, "How can the pair discover who is causing these problems for this small town?"

But don't just take my word for it. Come up with your own, and see what sounds more intriguing to YOU.

Grammar: 3/5

Right away, I noticed a few things that need to be changed in your grammar. The very first thing I noticed was your sentence phrasing. Allow me to give an example from your first chapter and how it can easily be improved.

"One would probably think I'm like the average grumpy teenager who moves around every couple of years because of her dad's job. Well that statement is partially true. We move because of my dad's job. My dad is a guy who helps people set up new businesses and run them for a couple of years before moving on. Whatever the official name for that job is."

That's a lot of short sentences in one paragraph. It makes it choppy and it doesn't flow as well. Instead, try something like: 

"One would probably think I'm like the average grumpy teenager who moves around every couple of years because of her dad's job; well, that statement is partially true. We do move because of my dad's job. My dad is a guy who helps people set up new businesses and run them for a couple of years before moving on, whatever the official name for that job is."

You get the idea.

There's several of these paragraphs that could be connected further to make the whole thing easier to read. If I were you, I would go through and read your story out loud to yourself. When you speak the words, it makes it easier to tell what is natural and what is not.

Another quick thing: for a some of your text, you run it together with almost no paragraph spacing, which makes it hard to read and kinda boring.

Most Wattpad authors put a line between each paragraph; this is not necessary, but it does make it easier to read. If you don't want to do this, go back and put spaces between the beginning of each new paragraph and the first word; it's much easier to understand that way.

Writing Style: 3/5

I already mentioned that you like to divide your paragraphs into a lot of smaller sentences, which makes it difficult to read smoothly sometimes. However, you have connected the plot well. It doesn't jump around and the romance is smooth and slow-going.

You don't use a lot whole of description in your writing, which is only good some of the time. It lets the story be straight and to the point, but using adjectives and telling us about setting, characters, and other issues in the story does make it more enjoyable to read.

Your plot is connected, but your wording is not; again, I go back to my advice about reading it out loud to yourself, or maybe having a friend you trust read it out loud. It really helps you see where things should be changed and can ultimately improve the story by a lot. 

Character Development: 2.5/5

I think you've made several decent ground characters for sure, but they need to be given more personality traits. For starters, the boys seem similar: bad boys with a slight potential for good. There doesn't seem to be much more than that.

You've rounded out Ellie fairly well, letting us see how afraid she is when she finds out what's happening with Harry (like any sane person should be, thank you for not making her sassy and fearless) and showing us how fed up she is with moving and with her dad's job. Still, I would like to see her when she's happy, too. Is there anything she's really passionate about? Art? Biking? Animals? Music? Whatever the case, I'd like to see her capacity to be lovable as well.

I'd also really like to learn some more about her family. Nick and Mack and her dad could be such integral parts of the story. I'd love to see her interacting with her siblings; what would happen if Harry targeted one or both of them to get to her? What if one took his side against her?

I also think you could use the loss of her mother to affect her more. What impact did that have on her personality and her family? Is she bitter, is her family bitter? I would love to know. 

Plot + Originality: 3/5

I will admit, I have not read much Harry Styles fanfiction. I'm not into that stuff. But I've read quite a few bad boy/good girl books as your book seems to be, and I can't say that there's usually much difference between them.

New girl arrives in town, somehow attracts the attention of the resident bad boy, some kind of background plot builds, but the love story slowly flourishes. Your book does have quite a bit of that.

First thing I will address: the love story.

It's pretty obvious that Ellie and Harry are going to wind up together by the end; I mean, that's usually what fanfictions of male celebrities are about. The bad boy/good girl dynamic is kind of cliche, especially in that of course they hate each other when they first meet. But I can definitely appreciate that, twelve chapters in, the romance is still almost non-existent.

I mean, in 85% of the books like these out there, the protagonist and the love interest have "sparks flying" in the first few chapters, and often something major in the romance development will happen within the first ten. I don't believe in this type of "love at first sight" writing.

In my personal opinion, it should take at least ten chapters of solid development and interaction before a character falls in love. I mean, in real life, you don't just see someone and decide you're meant to be, you gradually develop a liking for someone. I enjoy the fact that you're slowly building the romance, not changing everything around right off the bat.

The background plot so far is a little lacking - I think we need some more information on how and why, exactly, businesses and such started failing and pandemonium ensued in the town. Also, Harry isn't exactly following good logic for the target of his rage: thousands of people have the initials E. B., and it's highly unlikely that one teenage girl could be responsible for the fall of a while town; what could she have done to begin that?

Harry seems to have a "tragic past" motive for being 'evil' at first, which is probably the most cliché motive for a violin out there. I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, but I do think you should tweak it in some way to make it your own. 

All in all, you seem to have taken a fairly cliché plot, changed it here and there until it's actually fairly interesting, and written a fanfiction of it. I applaud that.

OVERALL SCORE: 15.5/25

I think you have a good base for a fanfiction. I would go back and do some thorough editing, and maybe write a full outline about what the plot is and where you want it to go. Ask a friend who's also a fan to read it and go over some spelling and phrasing issues. Other than that, I think your story definitely has potential. Good work!