TITLE: Can I Really Love or be Loved?

AUTHOR: ema1392

MAIN CHARACTERS: Hyorin(OC), Kris, Jaejoong, Yunho, and Changmin.

GENRES: Romance, drama

SYNOPSIS: It's mostly about the life of Hyorin and how her life is not easy to live in. Her family died and she was the only survivor to the accident. She blames herself a lot with their deaths and everything that happens to her or her loved ones. She rather stay by herself but all that changed when she meets her two best friends. Her friends are gay and they stayed by her side even if they don't know the whole truth about her. Now, they are living together and try to live as a happy family for each other. Slowly, they start to learn more of each other as the years go by but Hyorin has too many to actually reveal to them since she doesn't want them to worry or put them in danger.

REVIEWED BY: MisoCakes

 

 

Title.

I’ve been on AFF for a really long time and have read and written a lot, and when I see titles like these, I usually skip over them because I already know what to expect. To me, personally, it is a really cliche title that doesn’t pull me in - however this may be different for other readers. I suggest trying to find a title that’s /different/ and more eye-catching. Something that says ‘read me’, you know? I get that you’re going for the whole ‘drama’ thing, but this might be a bit much, a tad too cliche.

 

 

 

Appearance (Graphic/Poster)

As for your poster, I’m not really feeling it either. The colour scheme is a bit too brown toned and all over the place. From just the poster alone, I can’t tell who the main character/pairing is. Is it Kris? Is it Yunjae? Is it the Girl?? I think that the poster should be ‘longer’, if you catch my drift, rather than wider. If you see other posters on AFF they all have that ‘movie poster’ type of feel, which I personally like.

I’m not a big fan of the way the title is positioned or done either, at first glance, it’s a bit hard to read and the heart at the back is a little cheesy.

I’m not trying to bash your graphic artist, but there are some things that do need working on, especially due to the fact that posters are usually what ‘advertise’ and ‘sell’ a story. Kind of like a try and buy before reading and I’m just not feeling it.

Maybe you should just try a different graphic?? Especially since your story is a drama, the poster doesn’t seem really dramatic.

 

 

 

 

Foreword/Description

Before I get to your description, I suggest putting the ‘all rights reserved’ at the bottom of the foreword so that it doesn’t get in the way, because it’s kind of /just there/ and looks a little off putting.

Description: OKAY! I am trying my best not to sound harsh, but I have seen descriptions like this /all over the place/ and after a while it does get tiring. I’m just saying, descriptions like this are the #1 cliché. I'm also not feeling the different fonts. Is this because two people are talking? If so, couldn’t you have just quoted it? It would make the whole description a whole lot cleaner and easier to read.

Foreword: I like the idea of the Character Introductions especially since you want to really articulate what type of person each character is but most of the introductions are really cliche. I also think that you give a bit too much away in these introductions too. In Hyorin’s intro you said that ‘she lost her family at the tender age of 14’ - by saying that, I know what happened to her and it leaves little mystery for the readers when actually reading the story. The whole ‘-’ in “two best friends- Yunho and Jaejoong- in high school.”  is completely unnecessary in that line. These intros’s are a bit all over the place and could do with some simplifying.

Now in Yunho’s intro, I felt like it was a bit too conversational and drifted away from storytelling. I suggest taking out the ‘Yup, that’s right. He’s gay’ because that made it a little less serious for me.

Okay, besides that - I really think that you should consider taking an excerpt from your story and putting it into the foreword, even if it is just one or two paragraphs so that readers can see what the story is like, rather than basing it off of the character introductions alone.

Now at the end of your foreword, the different colours that you used was really striking, I had to squint at first to read it because it was /hella/. If you do plan on using red, I suggest a red that isn’t as bright; my go-to is usually the dark crimson, so yeah. Maybe give that a try.

 

 

 

 

Characterization

I don’t see much character development in the story, to be honest. The characters however, do have a lot of problems to overcome, which is good, but I don’t really see them changing much thought the plot, they kind of just… Stay the same.

I will mention this a few times in the review, but I’m not particularly fond of the way Hyorin swears through her P.O.V, it just rubs me the wrong way, I don’t know why. Also, I would have liked to have seen a bit of what it was like when Hyorin was with her family, maybe through a flashback or something? I think in the chapter ‘Double life’(?) Hyorin says she has 3 jobs. But if she’s the heir, and gets income, is there really a need for 3? It seems a bit excessive.

As for Yunho and Jaejoong, they give off this