Do Love Your Neighbors by deibaby03

Reviewed by: Avocado

Ungraded:

The title doesn't fit the story.  It's about Teen Top and Hyeri, and they live in the same house.  They are not neighbors.  Also, Chunji doesn't appear in the character page, but he's mentioned in the story and he is part of Teen Top.  Otherwise, yay?  I know what it means to "love your neighbors" (the title doesn't need the word "do" in it either); you don't need to explain it to me.  And the rest of the description is just a spoiler.  Also, posting the name of every new subscriber/commenter/up-voter is rather...self-centered almost.  It's like saying to everyone "OMG look at how many people subscribed/commented/up-voted aren't I awesome you should do it too nudge nudge wink wink" (besides, how many people would subscribe/comment/up-vote just so they can see their name up there?).  And seriously.  All-caps-giant-font-repeated-shouty-questionable-emotion "NO SILENT READERS" is completely unnecessary.  It's like a challenge; my response to that was "what can you do to stop me, huh?".  The more in-your-face you are about those things, the more deterring it is.

Graded:

Plot: ★★ (2/5)

Pretty typical plot with minimal twists and surprises.  I will summarize here: girl lives with Teen Top, is best friends with Changjo, falls for new-guy L.Joe, is angry because Changjo has a crush on someone, the end.  But there's a few minor problems.  In chapter 7, L.Joe said he studied in elementary school in New York until age 14.  Most kids in America start high school at age 14 (elementary school ends around age 11).  Also, how are Hyeri and L.Joe in the same locker room?  Maybe locker rooms are different, but I'm pretty sure most are gender-segregated (I mean, people walk around in locker rooms, so I'm pretty sure that a high school would separate boys and girls).  One more note: in chapter 8, there is no conversation between L.Joe and Hyeri, yet in their PoV parts, they both reference a conversation.  Is that the conversation from chapter 7?  If so, the L.Joe and Hyeri PoV parts should go before the big chunk with all the members in the house.

Characterization: ★★ (2/5)

Once again, rather typical characters.  I couldn't really relate to any of them, but I haven't experienced living with 5 boys so maybe that's just me.  I feel like the other members of Teen Top could have been developed a bit more (Niel and Chunji are mentioned..twice? three times? in the story).  Also, Changjo is either a flirty brother (eww) or he can't make up his mind about who he likes (still eww...liking his sister?).  He flops between being kind and shy with Ara to being a louder, teasing older brother almost in an instant (minor note: chapter 5 says his "happiest day ever" is eating too much pizza at the mall with Hyeri...that's a pretty boring "happiest day").  Also, what does Ricky do?  He poofs in and out of the story seemingly on his own accord, and I have no word to describe him as other than "younger brother?" (yes, the '?' is intentional).  L.Joe is the "picture-perfect" love interest (not my definition of perfect, but society's); he is new, alone, kind, fun, flirted upon, flirt-rejecting, has a tragic story, etc etc.  Please don't be offended if I whispered "boring" while I read chapter 7 (the locker moment).  And finally Hyeri.  Is she in love with her brother too?  If that's the case, skip all the filler and write the most wonderful you can imagine (actually, please don't).  BUT SERIOUSLY.  Both she and Changjo have obvious love interests in the story which are not each other.  I thought Hyeri is supposed to end up with her neighbor (you said so in the description), so I know she and Changjo won't happen.

Flow: ★★ (2/5)

Gee, 2/5 seems to be the rating of the day.  The flow's not horrible, but not great.  There are tense changes everywhere (more on that later) which disrupts it a bit, and I mentioned a bit of discontinuity in the 'Plot' section.  And here is where I rat on the PoVs.  Prepare yourself (actually, it won't hurt too badly).  There is no such thing as "Nobody" PoV.  What you mean here is you're using 3rd person narrative, which would be the "Narrator" PoV or even "3rd Person".  "Nobody" implies that no one is telling the story, which is dumb because the words got on the page somehow.  Also, maybe if you could do each chapter in one PoV it would work a little better?  I should be able to figure out how the other characters feel about something by the way they act; you shouldn't have to switch PoV to tell me.

Originality: ★★ (2/5)

I guess it's original?ish?not really?  Actually no, it's not a brand new plot at all.  I've already mentioned that the characters and the plot are cookie-cutter, and it's kind of hard for something to be original with bland characters/story line.  I've seen this sort of story before, and no doubt will I see it again.

Grammar/Punctuation: ★/★★ (1.5/5)

I'm tempted to give a 1/5 for this, but it wasn't über bad...  You change tenses everywhere, your pluralization is bad, and you need a dictionary.  For example (at the end of chapter 9), you say the mother is "covered in sanguine and crucially dead".  There are two things wrong with this: sanguine is an adjective meaning "optimistic" (you cannot be covered in an adjective--need a noun there), and if someone is dead, it's obvious that it's crucial, otherwise they wouldn't have died (it is a fictional story, you know).  A good beta would help you a LOT.  You have a lot of cool-sounding words in inappropriate places (example "Stupefying how I can still manage myself..." in chapter 5).  On that note, the random romanization is not reader-friendly.  For someone who speaks no Korean (I know maybe two super-basic phrases), they just seem like really bad typos (for example "anyeonghaseyo" looks like "any young has eyo" which is gibberish; also "neh" which I know means "yes" looks like how someone would respond negatively, which is contradictory.  I am aware that "anyeonghaseyo" means "hello", but to someone who is not, it is confusing).  In contrast, the punctuation was fine.

Overall: ★★ (2/5)

Well, here we are.  This wasn't a trainwreck (even though I nitpicked a lot), but it could be better.  The plot and flow were entirely readable, just the grammar wasn't great and it wasn't super engaging.  I wasn't cringing the whole time, but I'm not going to subscribe or come back to it to read for pleasure.

My final word of advice is to get yourself a good beta who has a very strong knowledge of the English language and can point out/fix all of the weird word choices and tense changes.  Also, keep writing; you will improve with practice!  Avocado