Title

I actually really liked the title. It took me a couple of chapters and until I got to your latest chapter, I hadn’t really gone into depth or understood why the title was Dark Ties until I looked at the whole plot in my head. It doesn’t give away too much but I’m sure you could have come up with something more eye catching. It’s not something I could click on even if it was an EXO fanfic so maybe you can try something more catchy next time.It’s still an okay title though!

Foreword/Description

Your description is quite eye catching. It makes readers wonder what the character’s lives are like with the “monsters.” You can already kind of imply that it’s a painful and hard life but it makes you wonder why. It doesn’t reveal the whole plot which is a very good thing. You don’t really know what the characters are like yet so you wonder and I found that very satisfying.

Though one thing I wasn’t a big fan of was the character charts. I’m sure you’ve heard this multiple times but as an author, you should be able to build up your characters through your story and not have to explain to your readers how they act. It makes it a lot more interesting and mysterious too.

Appearance

Overall, it’s easy to read. Your layout isn’t bothersome it’s just that when you read it on the computer there’s too much spacing between the paragraphs. On my phone it was okay but on the laptop it was bothersome to scroll through all that spacing. It seems like you did that to make the chapter look longer but even if your chapter is short don’t worry about it and leave normal spacing between your paragraphs.

I wasn’t a big fan of your poster either. Maybe you could talk to the person who edited it for you? It seemed a bit rushed and looked like something that could be pulled off in thirty minutes. When I first saw it I was kind of like “Eh. Not a big fan.” And the font isn’t too interesting. Since the story is supposed to have a more mysterious/dark image, I would hope that the font would be more, in a way, fancy.

Plot

In my opinion, the plot is slightly cliche. The whole mafia CEO thing is kind of seen often in many stories on AFF and it doesn’t seem really realistic to me but it’s still a bit interesting to see how it will be played out when written. A couple of the chapters felt slightly out of place though and it feels slightly underdeveloped when trying to write this. The way you built Tiffany and Taeyeon’s relationship didn’t really satisfy me either. It felt rushed and out of nowhere so I didn’t admire the way you wrote out the story.

I know you probably really loved this plot but in my opinion, I don’t think you did it justice. I’ve seen authors write this out perfectly but you weren’t really able to capture that feeling. Even if you were able to incorporate how evil both character’s parents were it didn’t make up for much. You showed how hard their past was but you didn’t write the whole CEO parts well. You just seem like the type of writer to stick to fluff and maybe that is your thing. People say think out of the box but I think if you are going to do that, you have to make sure you’re ready to write it in a way that will do it justice.

Grammar

You have few spelling and grammar mistakes but it’s barely there and you can easily look over it. When you’re writing you tend to mix past tense with present tense and it bothers me. Also, your punctuation is off when you were writing your dialogues. I saw it multiple times and I really really wished I had your account so I could go through and edit everything. I’m not a horrible grammar nazi but when I see things they still bother me.

For example:

"You're worthless, every part of you!".

You didn’t need the extra period there and I saw that pop up often in your story.

It could have just been “You’re worthless, every part of you!”

Whenever the raging torrents of words, insults fell in, I try to drown them out, singing to myself, letting my voice pull me into slumber.

Now this sentence. I didn’t really understand. I got the first part but the insults fell in part bothered me. I get that you’re trying to make this very descriptive, which is why you’ve taken so many reviews from other shops, but sometimes the way you write doesn’t really fit into the storyline. You seem to try often to put in many similes and metaphors but the way you add it in doesn’t work well. I haven’t read any of your other stories but if simplistic writing is your thing leave it that way. Don’t try to fit yourself into what others view as “good.” Just do what you like and own it.

There were other parts of the story where it was grammatically incorrect and if you want to know more you could PM me so I could maybe help you out.

Flow

The story is easy to understand but it feels a little rushed. You said you didn’t feel like it was rushed and even put in that little part where you said that Taeyeon always had a soft spot for here but your plot seemed a bit contradicting. I really want to put this in the characterization section because that’s where I want to rant about it. Though I do feel like they fell for each other too fast. They only got close in five days and in my opinion it’s bothersome. Like they suddenly love each other? Taeyeon knows she wants her already? I understand if it’s out of lust but falling in love with a girl in five days is a bit too fast in my opinion. Even if they knew each other for three years. Life just doesn’t work out that way so it seemed odd to me.

Characterization

Let me start off with your two main characters:

Taeyeon:

Her character was….weird, for a lack of better words. She seemed slightly contradicting too. You describe her in the first chapter as this typical bad girl who doesn’t care about anything and it makes it seem like she’s suicidal too. Yet later into the story you don’t really stick to thatand maybe you started it out not knowing completely how you wanted Taeyeon’s character to be but she seemed a bit odd. The fact that the teacher wanted her to tutor Tiffany too was what had me struck. I asked myself, why would the teacher want Taeyeon to tutor Tiffany when the author makes it seem like Taeyeon doesn’t even do well in school? It just seemed out of place in your plot. What really bothered me was the shopping scene. Taeyeon totally changed personalities and it was weird. I think you could have built it up just slightly. Maybe Taeyeon was a bit “cold” while they were shopping and it wouldn’t have seemed like a total 180.

Tiffany’s character confuses me just a bit. I can see that she has the double sided personality thing going on but it was that shopping scene that irked me the most. She made a total 180 too. She was excited and I just sat there and thought, “Wait what?” I really really hated that shopping scene because it felt out of place. (I’m so sorry if I sound mean. I just can’t sugar coat it.)

You said something about Yuri’s character coming into play too? Jessica seemed slightly interested in her so I’m sure there’s something more to come with her character.

Jessica’s character was pretty bad though. Yet still, I wasn’t a big fan of her. To be honest I wasn’t really a big fan of a lot of your characters and maybe it’s just because the plot didn’t seem realistic to me.

Comments/Enjoyment

The story was slightly interesting. Not my cup of tea because I don’t really care to venture into the SNSD tag nor do I really look forward to Taeny. Honestly though, I didn’t really like it. It seemed a bit bland and in the next couple of chapters I hope you go into more into depth about everything.

Please comment once you've seen this! Hope this helped you!