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4/10: Denying Fate

Denying Fate by _aych_

"You will always be the pathetic Beta's daughter who can't even throw a punch. And to me, you're nothing more than the Luna I am forced to deal with for the sake of my pack."

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Raven Hilton is unloved. With neglect and cruelty comes insecurity and pain, and she grows up bearing the burden of her inner turmoil.

After she finds her mate, the cruel, feared Alpha Alexander, this doesn't change. She is cast aside and treated like filth by the one she is destined to love.

Raven has never been one to accept what destiny has in store for her.

Raven soon becomes tangled up into a mess of secrets, painful scars, and lies. As new friends and new enemies are added to the equation, she comes to realize that she is not the only one with scars from her past.

Her new friends have scars, too.

Her enemies have scars, too.

Raven finds that there are hidden truths to be discovered about everyone around her, including her mate.

Time does not heal all wounds, and love does not melt all hearts.

COVER: I actually like it. The graphic is nice, the font work is nice, the color scheme is all good and fresh. No complaints here. Well done. That touch at the top, A WEREWOLF NOVEL, you get major points for that from me. I love a good cover that has something like that.

MECHANICS: Punctuation-wise, you were doing good. You were doing great, actually, and then around the middle of the first chapter you started fumbling up the dialogue tags. That's not the biggest deal in the world, and it's a very common mistake, which is why I hate to see it. It's such an easy fix yet it slips under people's radar so easily.

You have a few sentence fragments littered around the chapter, which again, common but not good.

Okay, so I read the first two chapters, and that's where I'm going to cut this off. There is no diversity in your sentence structure. Everything is written so plain and cookie-cutter, it's like "subject-verb," i.e.:

Jay continues. Jay shakes his head. I say sarcastically. I arch an eyebrow. I laugh. I state. I yell, then turn back to my phone. I stuff my phone into my purse and sit on my bed. I hear her groan on the other end. I frown. Alexander shrugs. I look at my mother and father. He glances at me.

These are all direct examples taken from one quick scroll through the second chapter- which, by the way, was considerably better than the first. The first chapter had little to no detail/descriptive additives. Sprinkle in a couple of complex sentences, compound, compound-complex, heck even a few em dashes and semicolons could do you wonders. As it is written right now, I couldn't immerse myself into your fictional world. I didn't feel like I was there, watching things happen play out like a movie in my head. I felt like I was just...reading about it.

Grammar-wise, I have no complaints. You're fine.

CONTENT: Right off the bat, I notice that detail and imagery is not really what you're about. The main character, a skinny, short, unwanted, and neglected girl, Raven whatever, is being verbally abused by her mother. She goes on to narrate why her life sucks, which just makes her seem like a self-pitying basketcase turned cold-hearted by this lifelong maltreatment. The first half of the chapter feels a little bit a lot like an info dump, which is like, okay thanks for context but can we get on with it?