Skeleton Reviews

Judge's Vanquish| -breezyfoot

Skeleton: @breezyfoot
Client: charlottemallory
Book Title: "Judge's Vanquish"
Chapters Read: 5 (There is only 5 currently.)

Cover: The cover itself is honestly fantastic. I love simple elements in covers that draw your attention immediately. The font is great as well. It's elegant and spaced out pretty evenly on the cover. My only recommendation is adding a small drop shadow to the letter since the element on your cover has one, and slightly moving the title up in the header, just to make your header/footer even on the page.

Summary: I enjoyed that the summary was split into two parts. One describing the story surrounding the main character, and the one for the story setting/plot in general. I feel as if it gives a good indication of what the reader will expect in the story, but still leaving a bit to the imagination. It feels as if the summary is drawing me in as a reader to be like, "Oh! This sounds awesome actually!"

Flow: In the first chapter, you have a wonderful flow from talking about the crowd being pleased by a public hanging, to talking with disgust about the "well behaved wife" poster. Showing that public hanging is okay, but god forbid a woman who isn't a housewife isn't okay. Then at the end, Vanessa telling her father she doesn't want to just be a pretty wife. I truly liked how all elements flowed together so much, I had to make it my first point.

Going from chapter 1 to chapter 2 though was an interesting point too. Talking about how technologically advanced society had been before that virus, but now things slightly resemble the 1800's, living wise. I think that is also interesting, to have all of this knowledge of technology but not being able to use it.

I also like the fact she is constantly battling having a family or having her freedom. To see it eat away at her throughout the story to me seems very realistic. Having something constantly nagging at you, making you decide what to do and what will be the best to do, it can weigh on you eventually.

The third chapter was absolutely incredible, in my opinion. You took the character building to another level with mentioning her other siblings. I even got a bit emotional myself, which doesn't happen often when I'm reading. I give you kudos for that!

Originality: I honestly loved the quote in the first chapter, "If fear had a smell, then the smell of unkempt humans, dirt, thick air from recent rain, topped by the smell of pansies would be it." I could really imagine and picture this awful smell!

Personally, I think you should add a bit more of a backstory in the early chapters to why the world is the way it is currently. I would love to know why people are just having families for propaganda and what happened with this Mag Virus you mentioned? Just be wary about info dumping though!

Grammar/Punctuation: Honestly your grammar is very good. I suggest using a thesaurus sometimes too for more descriptive words, but overall it's wonderful. Your punctuation is pretty good as well, you've just had a few misplaced commas and periods. I suggest being careful with short sentences in a row, it makes reading the lines not flow together correctly.

Overall: I think you have very good character building skills. We didn't get much about Vanessa in the first chapter, but as you continued to read, you could really get a feel for how she thought and reacted to certain situations. I especially saw this in the third and fourth chapters. Overall, the story is fantastic and I really hope I can read more of it sometime soon! You did a great job and thank you for choosing me to be your reviewer!