Hello! Yeah, so I haven't been reviewing things as much lately because, well, I've been pretty preoccupied with real life stuff. But, because I prefer to ignore my problems once they've been fixed *enough* to not be directly, uh, problematic, I'm going to go binge reading stuff and whatnot.
Anyway, so that's how I came across this. I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise, to be honest, due to my personal preference for complete stories. Which leads me into a quick disclaimer, I like whole narratives, the whole three-act structure, setup-conclusion, you get the gist. So that's the lens I'm going to be reviewing this through.
Okay, that all said, I'm going to go paragraph by paragraph and give little critiques of the really nitpicky stuff so we can get that out of the way at the beginning, or, middle, then I'll give my general thoughts at the end.
""If you killed my mother, I’d still be there for you,”"
Here's your first line. Despite the fact that you frame this as a section of a book you'll "never write" (such confidence you have in those words despite the fact that you are, yourself, a writer and therefore more likely to get attached to the idea of a story) (unless there is not a story here, which doesn't feel likely) you actually start out with a really good hook. Well done, or maybe not. I don't have context, so maybe this line works, maybe it doesn't. (This is minorly frustrating).
Moving on to something of more substance.
"Even as I felt the words settle in the air, I felt the irony of it all"
Your use of the word "felt" could be seen as problematic. Let me explain. You see, here you are telling something that should definitely be shown. When your character 'says', even in the first person, "I felt _(insert thing that the character feels here)_" it reminds the readers that the MC is a character and that they, the reader, are not feeling those things as well. This may sound like a matter of opinion or personal experience, but I actually went around my entire school (students and staff, totaling about 140 people give or take) (it's a small school) (but we could still beat your school) (fight me) and asked all of the readers, which would be just about all of them (except Paul, Cory, and Anthony) (they don't know what they're missing) and had them read two versions of the same sentence, one phrased with the word "felt" and the other without and they almost unanimously agreed that the one without was more compelling.
I did that because I didn't want to sew anymore. My poor, poor fingers. May they rest in peace.
I know that I don't usually make much sense when I rant like this, so I'll give you the example used for my little experiment.
Sentence 1- "She felt the icy fingers of dread tighten around her throat."
Sentence 2- "The icy fingers of dread tightened around her throat."
I'll let you make your own decisions, but that's just what I discovered.
Anyway, so that's all the nitpicky stuff (yes, just the two lines) (what can I say? The rest didn't break any of my main rules of writing). The rest was actually quite good. You could have tied in the first line statement a little better, rather than just dropping it halfway through. The way that you did tie it in though, with the little bit where your MC goes on about their actual mother, was pretty confusing, but I don't have any advice on how to fix it. Maybe read it aloud or something? I don't know, it just feels wrong to me.
But other than that, well done. I really related to your "paradox of kindness message" (it's something I'm batting right now in pretty much every relationship of every kind that I have) and you got it across quite well.
So that's all from me, goodbye and happy writing!
Points: 999
Reviews: 95
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