Story: The Guilty Vicarage

Author: shizunebachi

Genre: Mystery

Reviewer: shhimquiet

Title (3/5)

The title “The Guilty Vicarage” really made me curious and it sounded really original. You’re probably the only one in AFF that has a story with that title, so kudos to you! I like how the title really embodies the genre that you’re going for, which is mystery, and how it would make anyone want to read your story to know what it was all about. The thing is though once I did read your story, I couldn’t see the relation of the title. Well, it could be because your story is still on-going but I still felt that it was somewhat off. I also didn’t get the title “The Guilty Vicarage”. Sure it seems grand and the mysterious, but what does The Guilty Vicarage mean? Vicarage in the dictionary means a vicar’s residence or position. The guilty vicar’s residence? The guilty vicar’s position? What does that title mean?

Appearance (8/10)

There wasn’t any poster or background to judge. Having a poster or at least a background can help set a mood for a story. It can be that maybe you didn’t want to give anything away. But even so, I don’t think having something to base off or something that will capture the reader’s interest would hurt. The story is written cleanly and there is a good amount of space. It’s great that even though you didn’t use indentation you still used good spacing between the paragraphs to set everything apart. The chapters were very easy to read and looked very clean.

Description/Foreword (7/10)

When I first read the description, I thought that it was really good and really mysterious. It didn’t give anything away and it was very vague. It does need a little something more to spice it up because when I read it again, the meaning behind it seemed so simple. Of course everyone has secrets and some secrets that could harm someone or completely destroy something that they hold dear. What else is there? Also, I didn’t get the vibe of the main plot at all. I thought that it was about a deadly secret between two people or a person having a secret life. I didn’t get the detective vibe from it at all. I didn’t think that it was that kind of mystery. Maybe you could add something that would hint or explain to readers that it includes detectives, murder, framing, and all of that stuff because you’re not “packaging” it properly. You didn’t give out at least setting of the story or what it is generally about (the plot), and instead you gave a very vague description and foreword. By the way, I feel like you could do away with the ellipses in the description and make it stand as a kind of poem to make it appear more appealing to readers.

Characters (12/15)

For the characters, generally I felt that they weren’t very consistent and their personalities conflicted with their actions. For Jaejin, I felt like he was too teenager-y when you switched to the first person point of view. He thinks about his relationships at the worst moment possible. There he was on the job and examining a dead body but he’s thinking about Hongki and Seunghyun. He chose the worst possible time to contemplate and feel jealous. That sounds very teenager-y to me when he should have been all professional. Because of this, I felt like the story was turning more into a romance rather than a mystery. You can mix those two, but I think making the romance more subtle and something on the side would make it better. For example, Sherlock (the series by BBC) doesn’t really have romance and it is centered more on the cases but I can say that a lot of Sherlockians ship Sherlock and Watson. I feel like you should tone down the teenager-ness of Jaejin.

Hongki, for me, was a very confusing character. At first he was being a brat and then he became very buddy-buddy with the others. There