CLN's Seasonal Reviews (CLOSED)

I am your umbrella by Dext12345

REVIEW DONE BY : AimForTheTop

Summary :

Sana and Dayhun are two girls who met at school, even though their love is pure, their intentions and destiny keeps standing in the way. Thoughts come to mind. Suicide, hatred, regret. Everything could end but it doesn't necessarily need to, mistakes are human, and that is what these two girls are bound to learn.

Chapters :

The way the book started is unclear and very cliche. It started with a conversation between two girls in love, and you say that back then they had a fight and one of them decided to commit suicide.

Firstly, these lines all sound like they're coming from the same person, so why quoting all of them ?

Secondly, the phrase a girl "made a phone call" is grammatically wrong in english. You can replace it by simply saying "a lonesome girl called her friend" since the word "made" is never used to describe a call.

Thirdly, while describing the surroundings and the land, there were small weaknesses spotted, for example ; you used words that can weaken the structure or expressions that contradict each other.
You said the skies were "bare" i'm guessing you mean empty, or tried showing misery within the nature's elements, but if you wanna do that you have to be careful. You cannot say the skies are bare and then describe the clouds... it's either the skies are fully bare or a clouded sky. Also pay attention to your tenses or usage of the plural/singular. The clouds is in plural, but later you said "the clouds itself" the right term would be themselves. However i don't suggest you use these terms in description. You did try to describe the surroundings but it wasn't enough. Maybe try adding trees or even them being in a park or some public place.

I can see what effect you're trying to make by repeating the verb running three times, you wanted to show that the girl wan running for quite some time by that repetition, but it didn't give off that vibe. It showed more of a lack of vocabulary and maybe even descriptions. You can for example explain the variety of feelings this girl has she's running she must be thinking of something right ? We haven't seen her POV for a while, we have no idea what's going on, it's delivering more of a confusion than an excitement.

Be careful about the amount of repetition, you used the word "collapsed" two times in the same sentence that can be replace by any other word to say she has fallen down to her knees.

You should work more on delivering the feelings of frustration, fear, regret and guilt. Also when you wanna show that she decided to commit suicide, i suggest doing it in a more specific and clear kind of way. As in you can try saying this "Dayhun suddenly stood up not caring about the tiredness and weakness she felt in her legs, she was trembling but she had already made up her mind. Her determination was inspiring but her motives not as much" something that gives off a similar meaning to that will fit too.

You need to stretch your vocabulary range, like saying "some forces were forcing her" readers must be thinking "no kidding forces do force us" while they should be thinking "what is that mysterious reason that keeps her from throwing herself ?" You might wanna consider changing that into something close to this "she decided her life wasn't worth living, what was the point of going through all the pain ? There was none in her opinion so might aswell end everything. As much as she wanted to she couldn't there was a strong strange power pushing her back, making her back away from that fateful decision."

Your description of "spring" is better then anything else you described til now. Yet it can get stronger, i do suggest talking about the colorful flower gardens, the people shopping, show the liveliness of spring, even if there are only two characters that really matter, don't lose the surroundings by not paying attention to them.

I'm not quite a fan of how you described a girl sleeping in her double sized bed. Like saying that she is "a weird species of human being" is merely offending. You might want to fix that. You don't need to make a big deal out of it just say that a girl was laying in her bed. I would suggest you drop the narrative quest you go by and start writing in POV, because you are missing out on a lot of details.

There are many errors with grammar and tenses like for example add "her" to when you were talking about sana placing her head between her hands, also do pay attention to the uses of tenses, if you started the paragraph in present tense keep it up don't switch to the past in a split of seconds to make it sound fancy. It's messing with the structure of your paragraphs.

There is something I do think is a strengthening factor to the events, like that little scene of the present we see before actually turning back to the explanation of what caused it in the past. The thing here is while doing that you are messing up your tenses.

Plot :

More efforts have to be put through the plot and how it unrolls. For example, we need straight feelings, clear reasons, not some quotes we can pickup anywhere from any book. There has to be more tension. You have to write in a way that would make the writer feel the action, the pain and sorrow by only reading one line of description, what you accomplished was too shallow, i am not implying that you did not describe, you did but it needs to be improved from describing the sky to the whole surroundings and focus more on the feelings as well as the twists and turns.

Settings and Locales :

This is basically a repetition of the idea i pointed out earlier, there has to be more putting the reader into the picture. I have to be able to imagine what the place looks like. What the girls look like. All this must be relooked into. As in you describe the cloudy sky, the spring weather but you need to show how the spring unfolds, what dies the sky have to do with the story's events ? It affects the feelings. For example when a character is feeling sad, it's raining, that's how you should choose the weather.

POV :

You could say i am most likely disappointed in that matter. We didn't get to feel what the characters are going through. We didn't have that raging feeling of need to continue reading til the next chapter. POV's are important to show emotion and direct actions, they kill the boredom of a story, you have showed only a glimpse of these emotions not letting us enjoy the real taste of defeat, guilt, regret...

Characters :

The main character, Sana, wasn't introduced in a clear way to the readers except in the next chapters starting part 2 from episode one. I would suggest you focus more on the following details :
• Sana's likings, interests ( sports, music, drawing...)
• Sana's look ( hair, style...)
• Sana's family ( the parent's presence or maybe siblings...)
• Sana's friendships or just relationships in general ( is she a sociable person, maybe popular...)

Dialogue :

You seem to have put so much effort in the dialogue that in some places it didn't fit the characters personalities in general, their actions were questionable and sometimes unrealistic.
Try and put yourself in that situation the protagonist is in, maybe then the speech will naturally come to mind.

Overview :

This book's plot is cliche, so if you wanna make it a success there is a lot of work to put into it, more than you have put anyway. The descriptions are questionable so are the characters, these details need serious rethinking. Also i do suggest you send the book over to our editing shop, to minimize the grammatical errors, these might be simple typos or a problem with the tenses. The book isn't one of the best but with more effort it should be a good one. Step up your game and don't be afraid to let the emotions drop that is the best way to improve.

Hope you weren't disappointed with your work, have a good day/night !