Rookywriters Book Reviews

No. 29 Benita

Introduction

¤Book title and author - Benita by jessica_se
¤Genre - Teen fiction

¤First impression - I thought Benita was a vampire, judging from the book cover.

Summary says I should, Join Benita as she fights against annoying people, irritating bodyguards and a flirt who just doesn't know when to stop.

I ask again, is she a vampire? Lol.

¤Weakness - Incomplete thoughts in a sentence. Little or no character and settings descriptions.

¤Improvement - I think you should reconstruct the summary, and give a full detail of the beginning (Who is Benita),

middle (What led Benita to live the way she does, her family background summary)

and the end (What is her goal at the end of the day, what are her plans for the future in terms of her family, school and the flirt who just doesn't know when to stop)

¤Strengths - Good, gripping, writing voice.

Body

¤Opening - I could give anything to keep the looks on their faces, the guests look confused, my stepmom looks appalled, my step-siblings look smug, and my dad looks irritated.

First of all, this sentence may or may not work as an opening. There is repetition of 'look' and the whole actions of the characters seem passive. Why? Probably because there is no prior introduction of what is happening, where what is happening, who did what and why; and reading further down the chapter, the actions are not too clear either.

Err... you know what to do...

¤Conflict - I am still wondering what exactly is the beef between the father and daughter. But whatever it is, I think its bringing strong conflict to the story.

¤Plot - The plot is like 80 percent character dialogue than the actual story line

¤Setting - Most of the chapters had little or no settings described.

¤Characterization - The side characters, James, Craig, Rianna, Vincent and Mark were all introduced in chapter three but instead of showing us who they are, the writer told us literally who they are.

Characters lacked description. There is need to describe what they looked like, their hair colour, skin tone, hairstyle, mode of dressing, etc.

Also there needs to be a distinct voice between each characters. It seems they all sound alike. Especially the part where the father calls his own daughter a bitch is a bit err... girlish, Give the male characters their own voice to bring out their masculine personality.

And limit the number of characters you introduce in a chapter. Too many names can get confusing at some point.

¤Dialogue - Most of the dialogues lacked dialogue tags. There are hundreds of dialogue tags that can be used when making conversations.

Mutter, call, babble, answer, agree, ask, laugh, murmur, nag, jest, croon, bawl, etc

The words 'say and smile', was overused. The few tags I noticed was mumble, grin, huffs, hiss, and they were used in a way that it didn't actually express exactly what the characters were either saying or doing.

Example somewhere in chapter 2,

I sigh and explain my situation to them. Lisa shudders, "Reform school."

"I know right," I mumble.

Mark huffs, "We'll only go along with your plan because we like you."

"I grin, "Thanks guys this means so much to me."

Instead of I mumble, use, I mutter.

Mark huffs, what is the meaning of huff? Huff means to breathe heavily. You can easily say, Mark inhaled deepily.

Instead of, I grin, you could say, I let a fake smile dance on my lips.

Why? Because your book is written in the present tense and I will only relate with what I see the characters doing at this particular time.

If you get what I mean...

¤Point of view - The story is written from first person pov and it made the story feel one sided. We only get to see things from the main character's angle.

¤Show versus tell - There is more telling than showing.

¤Format of the text - Paragraphing was done properly. Text was readable.

¤Grammar and spelling - Grammar is simple. There are few punctuation errors that can be corrected while editing.

¤Style - Writing style is a not too strong. But you have a storytelling voice.

Conclusion

Comment - Benita is a catchy title for a teen fiction story. I believe you can invest more into this book by giving it full attention. Like paying attention to details. Don't just write for writing sake, make researches on topics, find out what makes teens tick and how they cope with teenage life and activities. Fill up the chapters with strong settings and character descriptions. And err... that's it. Book cover is really nice and catchy,

Thanks for letting me evaluate your book.

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