Hi Lareine,
I'm a bit rusty on reviewing prose, but I'm here to offer a few thoughts. [I also need to review something in the mystery & short story category and your opening paragraph intrigued me.]
The way you seamlessly blend the description in with what's happening and give little details of character is really well done (throughout the piece).
For instance here:
"Something about Kyle’s uncle made him look intimidating even while he was chomping down on candy—maybe it was that he stood six-foot-three slouching. He looked like he could bench-press a cow.
and
here:
He had a way of cursing without cursing—his words were filled with a barely-hidden “fuck you.”
I love that. I learn a little bit about the uncle character as well as how Kyle thinks, and what a creative way to describe the uncle, I can absolutely picture it.
This is another great spot: "Kyle breathed in the stale, old-house air and enjoyed it for a brief moment. Then he remembered that he was stuck here, without a car, without his friends, and without his mom for the next four weeks. " --- lovely job just establishing an overall sort of melancholy/restless/spooky tone.
A few spots that I stopped at:
"There was a cool little valley just past the lake where he actually got cell reception." -- This is nit-picky but the combination of "cool" and "little valley by the lake" sort of tripped me up. I'm not sure if cool is referring to temperature or asthetics.
This sentence was a bit hard to keep track of: "Every time Kyle asked her why she did this or that—or why she sent him to live with Uncle Jake when he was sixteen years old in July and he could have looked after himself for a month—he got the same response. "
"“Make yourself at home.” Uncle Jake came back downstairs—he must have gone up while Kyle was petting the animals—arms full of the cheap plastic dresser Kyle used on every visit since he was 5"-- in other places where you refer to age you used the written out numbers. Actually something I noticed in that section were there were quite a few numbers, and ages, and chronologies being listed. If some of them can be eliminated or other signifiers added it might be a good call, since it gets a bit more taxing to do the math in your head rather than reading "when I was a young kid". -- More exact to use numbers of course, but just try not to saturate it with too many I guess.
"There was fuck-all to do on the property." -- Maybe I just don't curse enough, but for some reason this one didn't quite make sense to me.
I'm not sure it matters, but for the earlier part of the piece I was unclear whether Jamie was a male or female. Also in the texting portions, it would add some clarity to add the initials of the names before the message -- although this is a mystery, and it's not really necessary to the context in most places -- so just a note.
Ending
At the end of the story for me it wasn't super clear what happened, was player 1 a ghost? was the pinball machine haunted? And were his fingers really bleeding at the end?
I didn't expect the ending, but the suspense you had going up to it was great. All the while I was very curious what the uncle was working on and what would finally be the turn in their relationship or the story. For me the ending opened up more questions than answers.
Overall, some things that stood out were as I said before you descriptions but also your characterization. Kyle, the Uncle, and Jamie all had such clear personalities that were really entertaining to unfold as the story went on. Your dialogue was natural and also went with those personalities.
An enjoyable piece to read and consider!
~alliyah
Points: 144400
Reviews: 1227
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