REVIEW BY -liberated. 

Title (5/10)

It’s actually a beautiful title and I like that it has a tone that hints at some kind of regret the protagonist probably felt towards her partners. It effectively brings across how something is left unsaid between the characters and it piques the reader’s curiousity as to what regrets your character has and why she has them. I understand that the title is lifted from the novel of the same name and I wished that you had done something more creative with it and allude to it rather than simply lifting it. Do note that ‘the’ doesn’t need to be capitalised.

So upon reading through the story, it seems that the title has less of a direct correlation to the story. While the first half of it was about the boys Minju loved, the second half was about the boy she didn’t love at first, so it would have been more suitable if the title was ‘To the Boy That I Didn’t Love’ or something along those lines.

Description/Foreword (5/10)

Before I actually dive into the content of your description and foreword, do note that there shouldn’t be a space before the comma or full-stop. Instead of “Jeon Minju is a dreamer , and her life…”, it should be “Jeon Minju is a dreamer, and her life…”. I understand that this may be your stylistic preference, but hey, punctuation rules are universal for the English language.

You managed to grab my interest with the description because it contains an element of mystery (like how the letters went missing and got distributed to the rightful recipients). I liked that you included messages from each love interest because each message gave away an original character trait for each of them. I could instantly notice how Jeonghan seems to be a more straight-forward character and Wonwoo seems a little more cautious and delicate than the rest. I want to talk about why Minju used her mother’s jewellery box to keep the letters but I think I’ll address them later in the plot or characterization section. I also wished you’d elaborate on why Minju was described as a ‘dreamer’ because she sounds like she’s more realistic than idealistic in the foreword.

I’m going to be stricter here because your description and foreword does not stand out amongst the sea of fanfics here. Already, your description gives me the impression that Minju is your typical Mary Sue who lost her parents when she was young, had to work late nights, but manages to have like thirteen guys fall in love with her and then suddenly her life becomes better with these thirteen guys. (Having thirteen guys in your life would be a mess, by the way.)

The foreword makes me expect that Minju might just reject every guy out there because she is aware of how love isn’t actually all fluffy and sweet. I’m actually hoping she does reject them, because then she’d be able to prove herself, that she isn’t a Mary Sue and she doesn’t need a guy to survive.

Language (11/15)

I didn’t notice any jarring grammatical errors because you were consistent with your tenses so kudos to you for that! There is that occasional awkward expression.

Eg: A few students walked past us , my heart skipped a beat.

A better version of it would be ‘a few students walked past us and my heart skipped a beat’. Nothing too severe.

Eg: I was greeted with the shouting of Mrs Son by the time I got back to the cafe , and a few smacks of the newspaper again.

Again, you seem to have used the wrong form of the word ‘shout’. I would suggest just simply ‘I was greeted by the shouts of Mrs Son and a few smacks of the newspaper by the time I got back to the café’.

After looking through the first few chapters, I think that the main problem that you have is just syntax errors and awkward expressions. Your tenses are generally fine. Other than that, do remember to correct the punctuation that I mentioned in the description/foreword section!

Just one last thing before I move on, I would suggest removing any Korean romanization in the story. I could understand things like ‘oppa’ or ‘unnie’ because it might fit better if the story takes place in Korea, but words like ‘wae’ have got to go because it makes your story look unprofessional and readers newer to k-pop may not understand them.

Plot (16/30)

A quick breakdown of your story would be that Minju loses all her letters, dates Seungcheol, Jeonghan, Mingyu, Wonwoo, and then discovers that they don’t match and that Wonwoo is her half-brother. She then starts to realize her feelings for Joshua who has been her friend for a while. The rest of the story is her getting close to Joshua and his family, with Wonwoo dating Hayoon as the side couple.

I found the first few chapters relatively irrelevant to the main gist of your story because your story seems to focus more on Joshua rather than the previous love interests. The parts with Seungcheol, Jeonghan and Mingyu were actually more repetitive than anything because it was confession, followed by date, and then the discovery that Minju actually doesn’t have any feelings for them. In fact, in chapter five, I predicted that Minju would get together with Joshua in the end. Joshua was just a differently depicted character compared to Seungcheol, Jeonghan, Mingyu and Wonwoo.

I wish you started off the story more strongly, but you did lay out the background well enough. I just wanted some explanation as to why the box contained letters rather than money, like you mentioned. However, you did introduce the trigger to the entire story – the letters. I hate to say it, but I was sorely disappointed because you never did give away the reason why the letters went missing. I was looking for it throughout the story and when I got to the ending and it still wasn’t resolved, I was let down. It would have been nice to give some sort of explanation to the trigger that started everything.

A major weakness with regards to the plot development is how the flow doesn’t seem to be coherent. It seems like you didn’t plan or think the plot out, because it’s rather haphazardly written. Your story goes from the love interests to Joshua who Minju had no feelings for at first to Wonwoo being a half-brother and Wonwoo meeting Hayoon. Things seem to happen simply due to plot convenience – Wonwoo being a half-brother seemed to pop out of nowhere, like Hayoon as well. It would have been great if you stuck to the motif of letters because that is exactly what your story is based on.

There were some things that I didn’t think was logical. An example would be how Minju seems to always be bullied by Soyoung but her friends never seem to stand up for her. Halla and Yuna seem to be ignorant to the bullying that Minju encounters every day. The reason for Minju’s bullying is rather shaky too, because you mentioned it was because she was a loner, but Minju simply wasn’t a loner at all. In fact, she has made some great friends like Mingyu, Seungcheol, Wonwoo, Hayoon etc. Yuna getting angry at both Mingyu and Minju after overhearing the whole conversation seems rather irrational as well because she heard the entire conversation and couldn’t possibly misunderstand. Furthermore, Yuna knew Minju since she was a child. Shouldn’t there be more trust in her best friend?

You also included a snippet of Mr Airplane and I am so troubled by this because this was the perfect opportunity to use it as a motif in your story but you didn’t manage to use it. There could have been so much significance placed on this because there was Hayoon who both exist in the story and Mr Airplane and there was that similar trait of Joshua and Minju of them being bookworms, romanticists and all tumblr-aesthetic. You alluded to the fault in our stars a lot and I wish you did that from the beginning because it could have been a powerful tool to not only emphasise on the theme of hope and salvation, but also to give a sense of completeness to the story.

Overall, I felt there was a lot of potential in the storyline itself, but there were certain opportunities that you missed out and it was a pity.

Characterization (15/30)

Minju: Honestly, I liked her least in the story. I do understand that she is an orphan, her mother passed away and her father left. She now lives in an attic with the auntie who owns a café. All that is fine, except that if your parents are not there for you, at twelve years old, you would be under a guardian’s care and that guardian is usually a relative. Even if you do not have relatives, you would at least be in an orphanage. Independence at twelve is highly unlikely. Furthermore, I wish you would give more information regarding Minju’s background because she is the protagonist after all. I had hoped that her character would be heavily influenced by her lack of parents (she could have been more optimistic/pessimistic about life depending on what direction you’re going with) but I didn’t see that.

In the first few chapters, she came across as flippant and I’m not sure I like that trait for someone who has depression and lost her parents at an early age. It’s never easy to write depression accurately so I usually advise people to stick to what they are familiar with. You claimed that she ‘loved’ Seungcheol, Jeonghan etc, but a more accurate wording would be ‘crushed on’. She changed her mind too easily when it came to boys and while she didn’t come across as a playgirl, she definitely did not seem like she had depression.

She was even a bit irrational in chapter 24, where she got mad at Joshua because she felt like Joshua didn’t tell her about his life. I do understand that she might have felt unimportant because he didn’t tell her everything but fault’s on her for not noticing Joshua in the first place and asking him these things. Joshua didn’t lie, they just weren’t as close back then.

The only time I felt she was legitimately in character was when she tried to cut herself, but even then, the suicidal attempt seemed to be downplayed and trivialised in the story. While you gave her characteristics like poverty and being an orphan to try to invoke pathos, to appeal to your readers by letting them sympathise with Minju, it was hard to do so because of her inconsistency.

Joshua: He was the most consistent character throughout the story and I was quite fond of him. At first, he seemed like a pretty 2D character because he was just kind. I even kind of resented him at first because he seemed to be kind without reason. Then you added that back story with Lily committing suicide and his guilt towards Lily, things made more sense. I understood why he was generous when it came to Minju – she reminded him of Lily and he didn’t want to lose another loved one. It was a wise decision on your part to include this back story because it definitely made him more realistic and relatable. He also came from a wealthy family so I can comprehend why he isn’t stingy with his things. His philanthropic nature seems to be inherited from his parents and that’s acceptable. Would have been nice to know why he liked books so much because it seems to be a pretty prominent thing, not just for Joshua and Minju, but the overall story as well.

Wonwoo: I liked him at first for his sincerity when it came to Minju, but he seemed out of character when he confronted Minju regarding the whole half-sibling thing. It didn’t seem like a realistic reaction because Minju is kind of his sister and I expected a higher degree of care and concern for her and not this brushing off.

There are quite a number of chapters dedicated to his point of view and I see his sincerity again when he met Hayoon. (I’m a bit miffed at how easily he moved on when it came to Minju, but I guess I can let that go.) I would have liked to see how Wonwoo and Minju got along as siblings because they were more friends than half-siblings.

Mingyu, Seungcheol, Jeonghan: Mingyu was the only one out of these three who was more fleshed out. He got the girl pregnant and I didn’t like how teenage pregnancy seemed to be something slight, with the way he and Yuna reacted. However, I did like how he was consistent – very faithful to Yuna no matter the circumstance, so good job on that! Seungcheol and Jeonghan were cameos in this and while cameos can contribute to a story, I felt that they were unnecessary in this one because they didn’t contribute. They were hardly mentioned throughout the course of the story after the first few chapters.

I think the main problem is that you had a lot of characters to develop and that’s why some of them weren’t developed properly.

Additional Notes (2/5)

I want to talk about your writing style here. While the flow wasn’t choppy, some parts were added for the sake of plot convenience and some parts were lifted out of character/plot tropes, like the orphan thing.

One thing that I realized is that your writing is very dialogue-driven. There are a lot of dialogues and even though that may not be necessarily a bad thing, it makes your characters rather flat. In reality, not every character says their thoughts so some things could be thought rather than said. This is especially so since you were using a first person narration, it is essentially much easier to convey the persona’s thoughts. You could have made use of this to make your characters more real, not just through words and thoughts, but facial expressions or body gestures. Furthermore, a dialogue-driven story means you’re missing out on another essential element of a story, which is setting. Since some parts of the story takes place in Auckland, it would have been great if you could describe some of the scenery because Minju should be awed (she has never gone overseas).

Overall, I think while you had some trouble addressing certain elements of the story, you also did well in other areas. There is a lot potential for the story to grow and you develop your writing style over time so I hope you continue improving yourself. 

Overall score: 54/100

reviewer's note