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2.5/10: Fake Me To Church

Fake Me To Church by BlueJay325

Steven Hall has never once doubted his status. The son of esteemed Pastor Marcus Hall and his wife Evelyn, Steven was born atop the tentative peak of public opinion within his Ecclesiastical city of obsequious religious devotion. And when new adoptee and Muslim-turned-Christian Ahmed Heavenstate enrolls in EdgeWay Academy, the social domain over which Steven rules, the two boys are immediately thrown into conflict. But no schoolyard rivalry, personal or otherwise, can prepare these warring adolescents for the discovery of a brutalized corpse in the school's main building. As the passions and prejudices of new acquaintances begin whirling throughout their town of cryptic stares and decades-old secrets, Steven and Ahmed will discover a truth more terrifying than anything their paragon of sacred laws and tradition would dare allow them to believe.

COVER: I don't like the cover at all. I get what you're going for. It's meant to give people a scary, thrilling vibe of mystery, but I'm just not getting that. I think it looks a little messy. The graphics seem cheesy, and the color scheme is off. The text also feels like it's out of place. It just didn't click and fit together like I think that it could. My advice would just be to scrap it and start again, but this is just me being biased and not liking it. If you feel that's the best it gets, then keep it, otherwise the wattpad forums have amazing graphic designers that could help you out for a small payment. I don't have good critiques for it, I just don't like it, so disregard this if you want.

GRAMMAR: As I started reading prologue, I noticed an error in capitalization. It's literally in the third paragraph, so just go in and fix that please. No big deal. You also have the same kind of sentence structure throughout the majority of this piece. "I frowned, confused. I fake-whined, puffing (yada yada). I said over my shoulder, speaking." It's all the same and it looks the same, and when that happens, a reader's eyes wander. Reading becomes more of a skimming thing. Be careful with that.

CONTENT: So the prologue starts off with our main character sitting alone in a coffee shop late at night, and a guy trying to hit on her. Classy. Only the way he hits on her is so creepy, like... Who does that? And then she makes an excuse to leave, but messes it up by mentioning a hardware store. As a physical, verbal interaction between two strangers, it sounds dumb. In her inner thoughts/narration, she mentions he was cute, kind of digging his creepy vibes I guess, and then at the end she thinks to herself, What a tool. So does she like him or not? I'm confused.

The first chapter is in the perspective of some hot-shot senior named Steven, apparently. He's a rude boy, shoving past juniors like he's some kind of god or something, and he's also a preacher's kid. He's also a bully, along with most of the rest of that class. Where is the teacher in all of this mess? The majority of the class is throwing spitballs at this poor freaking kid, and the teacher doesn't say anything until after most of it is over? Bad teacher. Ugly kids with ugly personalities. But most of all, unrealistic and cruel if it is realistic. These kinds of situations just don't normally exist anymore, and if they do, I hope guys like Steven fall into a pit of legos. Poor Carl, the kid being ridiculed by everybody. If he kills himself... Jesus.

The rest of the chapter was actually fairly entertaining. It's not as bad as I expected it to be. Your writing is so much better here.

Next is Ahmed's perspective, a new Indian boy at school that Steven decided to make his life's mission to destroy. I was reading the second chapter, skimming mostly through the part where they're at practice because sports in writing bore me to death, but I got the gist. Steven elbowed Ahmed in the nose, making it bleed, and Ahmed was kind of clueless as to why Steven was such a jerk. Ahmed's character seems innocent and kind of weak, eager to please. He's hiding in the chapel when he hears footsteps, first in front of him then behind and then giggling. This is the part that perplexed me. Why is the owner of these footsteps, Irina, being so creepy? She's giggling and running circles around this guy, then she's nervous around him. She seems shy, abashed, but pretty sweet when she interacts with him- which in itself is weird. What about the horror movie level giggles she was giving earlier?  Reading on, she doesn't seem like that at all. I'm struggling to understand this character because her actions don't make much sense in that order and within the span of five, maybe ten minutes.

They talk, she leaves, then cut to the cafeteria again. Irina asks to sit with Ahmed and he says sure, then some guy comes and covers her eyes from behind her. Apparently he's 25-ish? What's this dude doing in a cafeteria of 14-18-year-olds? Ahmed is insecure and compares himself to everyone he meets, it seems. Oh, I forgot that he's also a teenager that was adopted by a family called the Heavenstates, apparently. So he's in a new town with a new school, new family, and he's having a hard time fitting in. Blah blah, he made it into the team that he was trying out for, and that night there was a game against some other school. Ahmed thinks to himself that he already heard about the guys from this other school, but my question is, when? Do you his parents randomly talk about other schools and their basketball team? No one has really spoken to him, apparently, yet he knows about this team and he's nervous. Being nervous about a game checks out, but him already knowing about...? I don't see how that's necessary or makes sense considering his situation, but k.

This whole situation is just...what? Later in the locker room, Ahmed bumps into Steven and Steven is chilling, talking normal like whatever. And suddenly, Ahmed is this tough guy when just the day before he was crying and asking who he thought was Steven to leave him alone. Then later, Irina is suddenly in the boys locker room (makes no sense but K) and gives him some old shoes that belonged to a guy who Ahmed barely met earlier that day, the 25-ish old dude. And Ahmed is hype for this? Tell me how this makes sense. Next are more sports, yada yada. Steven falls on his face, Ahmed steals the ball and essentially the game and the fame, and suddenly he's a hero. Irina is there for him after, even though she only met him the day before, and they look into each other's eyes and sparks fly and apparently she makes him his best self or something? You were doing so good! What happened? This is so bad, I want to cry. This story had potential and now nothing is making sense, like a poorly written and very cheesy basketball movie.

Ah-ha! So now we know what that whole shoe thing was about. Steven rigged Ahmed's shoes to fall apart cause yada yada big ego senior didn't want to be challenged by talented freshman. Why does Irina have it out for Steven? She seems to be personally invested in making that boy mad. Now not only is Steven big mad about Ahmed and the rigged shoes, but he's also threatened by Ahmed wanting to take his girl. He's manipulating Grace into vandalism, it seems, and guilt-tripping his girlfriend into doing what he wants. Right after Steven paints the word TERRORIST on Ahmed's locker, Irina comes out of the dark clapping. Apparently she knew this was going to happen? How? What kind of creep is she, actually? And then there's a dead body, ominous laughter, carvings in the body's back, and locked doors. It just doesn't make logical sense. I get what you're trying to do to put it all together, but find a better, more believable way.

NOTES: The author's note at the end of the prologue talks about you hoping you piqued people's interests with this prologue, and honestly, I'm not sure how this would. The mystery is there, sure, but it just looks like she's a judgmental B, cocky enough to receive this attention without feeling a bit flattered (since clearly she was digging it) and lowkey rude. And this guy looks like one of those guys who try to be smooth but they're highkey not. Both of these characters make me cringe. Even the comments are like, "he's too much, ew, etc."

I lost interest after the second chapter, but I did one more just cause.

Your author's mic section at the end of each chapter is a real turn off. I don't want your perspective of what I'm reading as I read; I want to have my own thoughts about what i'm reading. All these questions that you include sound like an off-brand Dragon Ball Z ending. It worked for them. It's not working for you, in my opinion. I just wish you'd leave the chapter where it's at and write the next one.

OVERALL: It started off bad, was pretty good in the first chapter, and then from bad to worse in the second and third chapters. These characters don't feel realistic at all to me, which i think is the worst part. The least you could do is write real  characters, ones that resemble real people, otherwise this just looks like a smutty middle-school book with blatant bad guys, smart girlfriends, beta males and insecure alpha males and that one creepy girl that knows everything. I didn't like it. I wouldn't have read past the prologue if I was reading on my own.

Your writing itself wasn't bad at all, but the content is where you lost me. The two points I'm giving you in the rating are for the writing. The half a point I'm allowing is for interesting me in the first chapter. Thanks for requesting, and I hope you can improve these things. Like I said, your writing and mechanics are all good and well, just the content and the realism and how it's all put together needs so much work, in my opinion. I hope this helped.

RATING: 2/10