Book Reviews [closed]

Hostel Life, By AkoOku

Review for AkoOku !

Introduction
The first chapter was very expressive. The main character Debbie and her brother Nate are really funny and humorous. Your story is one of those type of stories that have a lot of personality- it's realistic, but in a way where its personality shines throughout the story, which is a good thing and a bad thing. The introduction overall had a lot of good things to it, but don't make it too repetitive with Nate and Debbie just quarreling for the whole first chapter. From what I could collect after reading only the first chapter, was that:

-Debbie (Deborah) has a brother named Nate (Nathaniel)
-Debbie and Nate seem really close, and like to joke around a lot but they tend to get violent sometimes
-The two siblings are apparently being shipped to boarding school by their parents

I couldn't really get why or if there was an important reason they were going to boarding school, so you should add that in the first chapter instead of after. The order of things made it dense, and confusing.

In the first chapter, you should fit in enough information to introduce the reader and for them to get the feel of the book, but you should also not try to squeeze everything in all at one time.

Characters
The characters were decent enough for me to understand their motives and their mindsets. I think Jaycee was kind of creepy by hacking the school computers to know more about Debbie, especially since she didn't know anything about Debbie and she's never talked to her once in her life. Unless you wanted to give off that creepy approach with Jaycee, you could change it and make her more of a welcoming kind of friend.

Besides Jaycee, the other characters like Debbie, her brother, Michie, and Raymond were all standard and they didn't have anything bad to them, but Debbie was a little concerning. She was super violent and I understood that that was mainly the reason her and her brother had to go to boarding school, but there were a lot of times where she'd casually beat someone up to death then right after the story would casually continue and for some reason everyone would play it cool.

For example, in chapter 7 "the home wrecker" Debbie got on top of Jason and started punching him, to the point where blood got involved. Right after this happened, they were both happy with each other and they began to be friends, which made no sense at all.

Spelling/grammar
The spelling and the grammar was fine, I didn't see any major typos or any errors while reading. One thing I noticed was that in chapter 3, you should've said "[insert character name here]'s POV" so I'd know whose POV the chapter would be in.

Dialogue
As for the dialogue, I liked the playful banners between the two siblings, but I'm not gonna lie, it got a little weird. They got really close in some of the beginning chapters so I was questioning if they were joking, liked each other romantically, or they seriously wanted to kill each other. Make it more easier to read and more gratifying to read.

There weren't many noticeable mistakes with the dialogue but the dialogue in these sentences below wasn't very clear.

I didn't get why first, they were joking, then immediately Nathan was being serious about her memory. You could've added hints earlier in the story or maybe something else to do with her memory if you wanted the story to revolve around her memory, because it didn't make sense at all to me because they were joking a lot then he just says her memory's getting worse.

Storyline
It was very cliche to have the main character instantly see Raymond and her immediately falling in love with him just by his looks- she didn't know anything about him, they didn't even have a proper conversation, and yet she still drooled over him like he was a piece of meat.

For example, in the third chapter you chose to end it with things like "his dark green orbs" and "he was undeniably attractive" which was very forward and blunt, and it made the main events very predictable. Since you added basically 2 paragraphs only on the main characters thoughts thinking how "hot" Raymond was, it was super obvious the story would eventually lead to her liking him, blah blah blah, etc. so to fix this you could make things more realistic. Since Michie is Raymond's girlfriend and they're dating, you could slowly build a bond with Raymond and Debbie then later on they fall in love behind Michies back.

Pacing
As I said in the storyline, some parts were very blunt and too straightforward. Adjust to the pace you like the most and remember to not rush it and make it all happen too quickly, because that might effect the storyline and make it less interesting.

Pros:
-Spelling/grammar
-Characters

Cons:
-Introduction
-Dialogue
-Pacing