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Review by Sunshine: Laws of Siblinghood

Title: Laws of Siblinghood

Author: Bibliophile005

Summary: 3.5/5

Overall, a nice and cohesive summary that very clearly tells the reader what to expect. You introduce the protagonist, the relevant backstory, and the conflict. Well done! I would consider, however, fleshing it out just that little bit more – exactly how are Carmen and Ray the opposite of what he was used to? Why will that make it so hard for him to adjust? That way, we can see that there is a real conflict at hand.

Also, watch out for punctuation. You are missing some commas. For example:

When Zack's father gets remarried, Ray Vasquez, his stepsister moves in with his dad and him. Ray and her mom, Carmen are the exact opposite of what Zack was used to.

For the above sentence to be cohesive, it should be:

When Zack's father gets remarried, Ray Vasquez, his stepsister, moves in with his dad and him. Ray and her mom, Carmen, are the exact opposite of what Zack is used to.

You'll also note that I changed the 'was' to an 'is' – this is to keep your tenses consistent throughout the summary. 

Grammar: 3/5

Overall, your story is fluent and easy to read. However, there were a few things that I noticed. One was the usage of commas, which I mentioned in the summary section above. Another thing I noted was that some of your questions didn't always end with question marks.

Furthermore, let's talk about dialogue and punctuation. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"Life As We Know It wins." Ray said.

It should be:

"Life As We Know It wins," Ray said.

Another example:

"It will be good for us to have someone else in this house, too," dad smiled sadly.

It should be:

"It will be good for us to have someone else in this house, too." Dad smiled sadly.

Next, capitalisation of proper nouns. I noticed that there were some proper nouns you didn't capitalise. For example, the word, 'dad'. It's a tricky one, but basically, whenever you're saying 'my dad, his dad, her dad' – you don't capitalise the 'dad', because that's saying how they are related. However, in the following example:

"You aren't nice to people in general," dad answered with a smile.

'Dad' is what Zack calls his dad. It is a name. Therefore, it is a proper noun. It should be:

"You aren't nice to people in general," Dad answered with a smile.

And just watch out for little typos, such as:

Carmen and dad her prepared Ray's room specially."

The 'her' should be 'had', or it should be removed entirely. 

Characterisation: 3.5/5

My favourite thing about your story was the character development Zack went to. From the very start, he is incredibly relatable with his constant sarcasm. We also see, from the start, that there is hope for him and Ray to get along – with both of them loving chilli. I like that it was the mundane things that brought the blended family together, like choosing movies, and it was simply adorable seeing him be a good older brother by driving Ray around and teasing her about boys. The scene in the bookstore was very cute, and when I saw that she couldn't put the book down, I felt so content with how smoothly their siblinghood was coming together.