Hi, Querencia! Pan dropping in for another quick review.
Finally, she came up to him and leaned against his desk, looking like she'd only just spotted him. She was wearing a sheer, lacy shirt and a pair of those overalls that were actually shorts that all the girls like her loved to wear. Finnley detested her instantly.
I always jars me reading American stories where kids don't wear a school uniform at school, haha. Like, you mean you didn't have to suffer through clip on ties that unravelled within weeks and horrible polyester blazers? Crazy.
Turning my attention to a point with some purpose, though, Finnley's first reaction to Sylvie kind of irritated me, because he takes a dislike to her before she's even done anything deplorable. It's not an unrealistic reaction, of course, because people do judge teen girls for wearing particular clothes and make up, but it still made me roll my eyes. Maybe it's because I own overall shorts and lacy shirts!
"Hi there," she said, batting her eyes. They were heavily cloaked in makeup. She extended a bejeweled hand, full of all sorts of rings. Her perfect nails were a violent shade of pink. Finnley didn't shake it, and she put it down, her painted lips puckered into a pout. "I'm Sylvie."
Furthermore, Finnley's actually being quite rude here by refusing to shake her hand. Where's that well-mannered young man from the last chapter, hm?
"I see," she sniffed. "And may I ask who it is that would be better than me?"
Okay, so now she starts getting a bit pantomime. She does seem like a flat-out stereotype, this Sylvie. So far, I'd guess that she's the popular school bully who is nasty to Mia because she's an oddball and is trying to seduce Finnley to get to her. And she's got to be clothes and make-up mad, of course, because all nasty girls are. I'm just concerned about cliché here, because I feel like Sylvie is a formula that I see a lot in teen fiction. It's tiring, and it doesn't feel very real to me.
Okay, that's about all for specific comments. On the positive side, I do think you capture Finnley's awkwardness very well, even if the predicament he's in stretches the suspension of disbelief a bit. To be clear, I don't actually think that the situation itself is unbelievable. I can completely believe that Mia would be a target at school because she is an unusual kid, and I can imagine insidious schoolgirls would try this kind of trick if they wanted to upset her. However, they're very obvious about it. And in my experience of insidious schoolgirls (which is thankfully not too extensive), they're subtle. They're great at making fun of you and pushing you into things without you even realising they're doing it, which is why it seems so odd for Sylvie to say 'oh just dump the other girl and come with me instead'. I feel like it would be more realistic and more effective if they were a bit craftier about it.
That's all for this review! I hope it helped.
Keep writing!
~Pan
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