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The Forbidden Love by sparkle_diamond
Review by coolgirlaamy
Title(2.5/5)
I’m not really sure about what I think about this title. It’s relevant to the story, short and to the point, but I know straight away that it is a generic title. I have used the same title for one of my stories, which I later changed, but I know that there are many stories out there with the same title, and because there are other stories with the same title, it doesn’t stand out as much as a title that you had came up with that wasn’t like any other. If I scrolled past it, I wouldn’t want to click on it because it just suggests that the story follows a generic plot line too. I hope you see what I’m getting at here, and I understand that titles can’t be extremely original but I think something else may suit the story better and would draw more attention to the story than this one does.
Description and Foreword (7/10)
In terms of the description, you have successfully summarised the story in a few lines which is good. You didn’t leave us wondering too much of what the story is going to be out. However, there is a fine line between giving out too much information and giving the perfect amount and I think that you may have gone slightly to the side of giving too much information. What I mean by this is that I can somewhat sense the ending to your story through reading the description - I can’t tell what is going to happen completely but I know more than I probably should. And I didn’t really want to know the ending.
Also, there are a few grammar errors in the description which I will come to later, however, one thing that managed to bother me about the description was that it was very spread out. There is too much white space which would make it easier to read but here, it just seems weird and I’m not a huge fan of all of that space.
As for the foreword, I do like it when writers put in an excerpt of the story into the foreword because in my opinion, it can really grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read the rest of the story. I also like how the excerpt kind of likes in with the description in that the description talks about Kai and this girl falling in love and this is where they meet and fall in love. I have a few issues about how this love arises but I will talk about that more in the next section.
Plot and Originality (23/30)
When I turned the first chapter and saw the words ‘Arranged marriage’, I was immediately thinking that this was going to be a very clichéd story, since arranged marriage is one of the most overused plots on the website, from what I know, and personally, I’m not a huge fan of them. However, when I realized that the two main characters weren’t actually arranged to be married to each other, then I kind of relaxed a bit, because if it was an arranged marriage story then I would be ranting in this whole section about the originality of that. I’m glad that this isn’t one of those stories and you introduced different elements to this story that I’ve never really read before - BAP’s planet against EXOPlanet and the matoki bunny used to capture the girl. I thought it was quite cool.
In terms of the plot, I think the idea of having the forbidden love between them, like the fact that they couldn’t be together since he was an alien was slightly clichéd. I mean, two people from different backgrounds can’t be together has been used before, however, the fact that he was actually from a different planet made the situation a little different because he wasn’t allowed to be with her since humans could hurt them and he wouldn’t be able to protect the tree properly. So I can’t mark you down for originality since you did make your story quite original by introducing different ideas that make the situation the way it is.
However, I did have a few issues with this plot and I will now list what these are:
- How on earth did they fall in love so suddenly? Honestly, she only looks at him and she falls in love and it’s the same with him. Plus, why would he ask her out for something to eat so suddenly either? They only just met each other but he’s like taking her out on a date already. Don’t you need to get to know someone first before that happens? Maybe it’s just me that finds this a little strange, probably because I haven’t fallen in love yet but a lot of this just seems impossible.
- How did EXO accept her so suddenly? At first, they’re like, ‘Get rid of her’ and ‘Why are you leaving us?’ then they’re under attack and are just like, ‘You can bring her with you’ as if they had accepted her.
- What did the matoki actually look like? Because, on the album covers it looks like some kind of weird robot bunny, but in the story, is it an actual bunny or a robot-type bunny? This probably sounds like a stupid question but I was just wondering since it isn’t exactly explained, or maybe I just missed it.
Characterisation (8/20)
I wasn’t very fond of the characters. They were somewhat missing something which made them not seem very realistic to me. I suppose that is one of the troubles you get when writing a one shot because you only have a chapter (or ten parts) to get through a whole story and develop the characters. I don’t think the characters were very well developed, I didn’t feel like I actually got to know them, grow attached to them. I personally felt like Marilyn was quite a weak character. She, personality wise, seemed very weak, she was two-dimensional, not possessing any kind of characteristics. I didn’t like her.
Writing Style and Language (17/25)
In terms of your writing style, I don’t think it’s bad. I have found writers that are more stylish in the way they write and they develop the scenes more but I don’t think it’s bad, personally because in my time, I have seen extremely badly written stories. I think once you write more, your writing style does develop and becomes a lot more ‘sophisticated’, I’m not sure if that is the right way to put it, so don’t worry about it. I can tell that you have the potential to be a good writer.
One thing that did bother me about the writing style though was the fact that a few times the POV changed within the chapter. I’m personally not a huge fan of POV changes and would much more prefer if you write in the Third Person POV, rather than changing between characters but writers have their own artistic license and can do whatever they want, so you have the choice to continue writing your POV’s in the way that you do.
Now onto the Language. Spelling was completely fine through the story, I only spotted one misspelt word which was probably just a typo so it’s okay. In terms of grammar though, there were a few problems:
1. ‘All EXO guardians all have arranged marriages.’ - There is no need to put ‘all’ twice. It just seems clumsy. ‘All of the EXO guardians have arranged marriages.’
2. ‘Then Kai is be gone forever, snatched out of your life.’ - I’m not sure how to explain the correction but it should be, ‘Kai will be gone forever, snatched out your life.’
The punctuation of the dialogue was also missing in a number of cases throughout the story.
3. ‘I love you too…Kai’ - This should be, ‘I love you too…Kai.’
4. “‘I’ll always love you, too’ I whisper back - You missed out the comma/ full stop and there is an extra comma which isn’t needed. It should be, “‘I’ll always love you too,’ I whisper back.”
There are a few more cases but it’s pointless if I just list them all.
Flow (7/10)
The general flow of the story was okay. However, the flow of some situations was way too fast and I’m sure I’ve already mentioned that they fell in love too quickly to be possible. I also would have wanted to have seen the love develop between them more, for them to have spent more time together before they were split apart.
Total (64.5/100)
I’m so sorry it took me so long to write the review and I did enjoy reading the story. Thanks for requesting and please leave a comment to let me know what you think.
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