integrity & borders by hotaznspice



Criticism Level: 9-10

Title: 3/5
The title makes me think of police-type of story.  Throughout the story, I don't see much integrity nor borders (maybe just a few boundaries set by some characters) in any of the characters, so this title is not the most fitting.  Though, it is certainly eye-catching.

Description & Foreword: 7/10
The description only contains the characters' profiles and gives a vague idea on what this story is about.  To be honest, I cringed after reading the main character (YOU character), Choi Joohyun's profile.  Off the bat, she sounds too typical of an OC (cold outside, warm inside).  From a reviewing perspective, unforunately, I have gritted my teeth through the rest of the character descriptions.  These character descriptions are more appropriate to be reserved for the author's own use.  The REVIEWS section should be under the Foreword.

Characters: 15/20
Choi Joohyun: Unique OC name.  Anyways, stating that this is a "YOU" character does not automatically make the readers think this girl is representing them (bridge a connection between the audience with the character).  Honestly, it makes less sense to me when this "You" character speaks in first person perspective sometimes.  It's best if the author just admit that this is an OC and leave it at that.  On another regard, she's learning the ropes of seduction from her elder brother - making connections through pimping herself out (sure, I can re-word this more elegantly, but the core of the truth is still this).

The rest of the characters (actually including Joohyun as well) reminds me of the characters from Gossip Girl.  To be honest, I can't really find much distinction between the characters' personalities (the hungry businessmen/woman such as Siwon, Suho, Jongdae, and Joohyun alike) except for their slightly different motivations.  

Kris is a bit different, in that he knows when to feel guilt (ie. Chapter Twenty-Three, his confession to Joohyun) - he can see tell the difference between the harsh game of business and the true treasures (ie. love) of reality.  Though, I felt the focus on him came rather late in the story.  Finally, not much development going on with his character - too static.

Side characters such as Amber and Krystal are a bit more innocent, which provide a nice contrast to the rest of the ambitious, dirty businessmen.

Plot: 15/20
Though the story has a slow start, it turns out to have a nice balance of business, drama, and iness after the story finally starts.  However, the ending was wrapped up rather abruptly, even if you are just making way for a sequel.  The problem with a slow start is that it would lose readership since things are not really happening until much later in the story.  You can avoid the slow start by cutting back irrelevant scenes or make some scenes more concised....Or combining few of the earlier chapters as one chapter, so that at least the readers would not have felt as though they were expecting nothing significant with each update.  The ending could serioulsly have been a lot better (doesn't even have to explain who Joohyun will end up with to make a good ending....Also, by the end of it, I'm convinced that you have chose the wrong story title.

Flow: 2.5/5
One of my biggest pet peeves is switching from third to (second and to) first person mode and vice versa.  That just speaks to me the author doesn't really know where he or she's going with the story.  Of even a bigger sin, POV switched in the middle of a chapter (ie. Chapter Four).  At some point, I was confused on who's telling the story.  

Grammar & Vocabulary: 12/15
Too much inappropriate use of semi-colons [;], for example:

[Exotic Core Asia (ECA); the multi-billion dollar umbrella organisation for heavyweight companies expanding across the globe; particularly the west.] (Chapter Two - Two Days Later) should be [Exotic Core Asia (ECA) is the multi-billion...across the globe, particularly the west.]

[...the young man on the TV spoke into the microphones; Wu Yifan.] (Chapter Two) plainly, that's not the use of semi-colons [;].  Semi-colons are used to connect two independent sentences of related thoughts.  Instead, you could have used a colon [:] or a dash [-] here.

Another painfully, glaring misuse of semi-colon [;] is Krystal's monologue about keeping Joohyun's pregnancy a secret (Chapter Twenty-Eight).

Whenever the writing is in first person perspective it does not mean the author can just dump the past vs. present tense rules down the ocean altogether (Chapter Three).  Since the story is told in past tense for the most part, it's best if the entire story should just stick with past tense. For example: [But when I witness him in court, he was a real hard-.]

Typo: [I looked at me again and smiled before picking up his knife and fork.] (Chapter Five)

Unless if you're writing about the past or try to emphasize something, please try NOT to italicize.  The phone conversation between Amber and Joohyun can confuse some readers because Amber's lines were italicized.

["Wait -- what?!" Jongdae asked.  His eyes widened even more than before, and so did everyone else's in the room.  But I didn't take notice of them.] (Chapter Fourteen)  The bolded part sounds strange following from the sentences before it.

Inconsistency with character names (not talking about Chen) --> Lay vs. Yixing.  At the beginning of his appearance, Yixing was introduced as Yixing, but all of a sudden in Chapter Nineteen, he was refered to as Lay.

Description & Emotions: 10/10
The description & emotions conveyed are spot on.

Format (Graphics & Layout): 6/10
Readable font.  Hates the POV switching layout.  Don't like the poster because of the quality of the pictures.  Joohyun is the girl in the middle, I assumed - she looked as if she just got out of prison (or just got into prison).  It gave me the impression (before I read the story or description) that this is a crime story or female version of prison break.

Overall Enjoyment: 3/5
A nice story with overflowing ambitious businessmen.  However, the POV switching effect kind of killed the joy.

Total: 73.5/100 //C (=) 
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