THE CENTAUR REVIEWS

Chiaroscuro | WolvesandMoons

❤️Book: Chiaroscuro
❤️By: AshXan_99
❤️Reviewer: WolvesandMoons

Initial Thoughts.

Title: Short catchy and not overused, I'm uncultured enough that I needed to google what it was. Though when accompanied by the present cover it wouldn't make me overly interested, with a well-done cover this title would catch my attention.

Cover: Sorry to set off on a poor foot, but it's just too generic to catch my interest. Honestly I never really read teen-fiction, but if I were to begin this would not interest me enough to even read the blurb. At the very least I would find a font that stands out better, or perhaps ask a graphic designer to work with you to create something more professional looking.

Blurb: I think the blurb is well written but could do with being written in a different order, I get that the first line is intended to be humorous, however, it would personally be more catching if you scratch that and go in for 'Little girl,' onwards. And then the description about Xena, and in turn the one about Rafe. Personally, I wouldn't even include the names, it just acts as a line cut and would read much more smoothly without. Also, though perhaps just a personal peeve, I don't enjoy referring directly to the audience in blurbs, and honestly there isn't much point of it where it is.

Prologue:

This has potential but seems all written out of order much like the blurb. You have the catch of the first paragraph, only to break into something irrelevant that the reader doesn't really need to know. It would be much better to remove the middle bit, as it is very expositional and honestly not that interesting. You do a lot of telling and not enough showing, telling us that the dad is angry,

You could cut out a lot of unnecessary filler, for example, you'll often make a statement and then add unnecessary detail that could be inferred or described in more interesting ways, like 'The family of nine which included the seven brothers and parents.' Or 'They longed for a baby girl to love and spoil. In the whole of the Marchetti extended family, there was no girl.' It would do just as well to cut out the latter bit of the second example - less wordy and still gets across the same information.

The whole paragraph about the Marchetti family could be shown in a far more interesting manner, and it would do a far better job of hooking the reader if you were to rewrite it in a less expositional way.

In an effort to not be entirely critical, I do enjoy the family dynamics. Though I feel you would do well to polish the way you have characters speak, it doesn't sound entirely realistic. I do, however, enjoy a good old fashioned badass family story. I like that Alessandro doesn't seem to care about anything outside of the family. It's a fairly interesting plot, not unique but could be interesting if well done, however, I do feel it is in need of polishing.

However, the matter of fact is a lot of this prologue was frankly boring. I would either remove the prologue or narrow it down to be only the twins going missing with a couple of extra details. Your chapters are short as is, it won't be great to have what writing you do have to offer to be bogged down in exposition.

Chapter One:

This chapter was already far better than the last. You allowed yourself the room to actually write rather than chopping it up into small segments for dramatic effect that you did a lot in the prologue. Some of the descriptions were done really well, however, there were a couple of instances where you explain to the reader outright what you meant by your description, rather than just letting us know/imagine from your descriptions.