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 Review #4288667 |
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| (4.0)| ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hey Liz! I’m flattered that someone who writes as well as you do would request my thoughts. Thank you for the giftpoints, and I hope you feel they are well spent. Praise:  Your writing was polished to a professional level (in my entirely unprofessional opinion). You mention in your bio that you’ve been published before, and it definitely shows. This piece was effortless to read. Your portrayal of Julie was heartbreaking. I found the line “She supposed what she wanted was a sign that they felt the devastation that she did” especially touching. Her subdued emotional turmoil was realistic, insightful, and engaging to read about. Similarly, I though the relationship between May and Martin was well constructed. I could just see her poor, exasperated husband rolling his eyes at another one of her crazy theories! Even though it was horror, there parts that really made me smile. My favourite was the bit about making coffee like milo. Perfect logic, hilarious results! (Although I did wonder whether a mother that didn’t like her young children playing out of sight would be comfortable with their use of the kettle).I’d gush more about your skill and the things that you’ve done well, but I’m sure you know you’re a talented writer. On to the guts of it! Main Area of Improvement: The plot and twists were all a bit expected. You start out with seemingly innocent young twins. Then you introduce the death of the father under suspicious circumstances. When you get to “revealing their mother’s sewing pins” it get real dark real quick. It pretty much confirmed all the suspicions I had that they were involved in the father’s death. After that I felt less interested because I felt like I knew what was going to happen, from “I hope I don’t have to read about it when they torture the puppy” to “yep, that next door neighbour is so going to die.” I might have enjoyed the piece more if the mystery had been maintained throughout. For example, if we only learn about the twin’s actions from May and Julies observations. Like that movie (those movies?) where the main character is housebound and spying on their serial-killer neighbours. I think that’s a trope because the mystery works well. Technical Stuff: For the most part your grammar and punctuation was polished to a professional level. However, I did notice a couple things.  There were a couple places where question-mark usage was a little off. The lines “…something out of your pocket?” and ”you just said we can play?” read like statements to me. I understand that the marks were there to make the statements sound more questioning, but twisting the inflection at the end to fit the punctuation felt a little awkward, for me. Possible typo: “on the premise they kept the noise down.” Did you mean “on the promise they kept the noise down” (which would be a little weird considering they were playing further away) or “on the premise that it would keep the noise down”? I thought the sentence “Julie had hoped it might help distract them…” might be better placed in the paragraph above it as it seemed more related to the topic of the play equipment than to Julie sitting down to watch. When Theo said he “placed some of the pie inside,” I thought the word “placed” felt a bit overly formal. I know making them intelligent adds to their creepiness, but I’d consider changing it to “put” anyway. Oh, and there’s some funky formatting/missing indentation throughout the piece. I’m assuming that’s just the WDC version though, so it’s not a big issue.Portrayal of the Twins: At the very beginning, I struggled to get a fix on their personality. They answer the door with “mischievous glances” but are “wide-eyed and unnerved” by May. That seemed contradictory. After that, they’re pretty consistently innocent-in-public-but-privately-creepy. I did notice that Theo seemed more excitable and Maliana seemed more to-the-point, so you did get some differentiation in there. However, I felt like their personality besides being generic creepy twins could have been developed more, especially in those opening paragraphs. Overall: I feel like I wrote a lot more suggestions than praise, which is odd considering how much skill and experience you clearly have. I think it’s because you are so much closer to perfection than the pieces I normally review. So please don’t feel over-criticised! If you have a delicate ego, please give it a cookie and offer my comforts. It deserves to be proud as punch! And now I have to give you a star rating. I feel conflicted. The style and writing is easily five star quality. However, the predictability really did detract from the experience, and it just didn’t excite me as much as it could have. So… four stars. With the disclaimer that it was just this particular piece that didn’t do it for me, and that I should look through your portfolio to find something that more takes my fancy. I hope this review was what you were hoping for, or that parts of it were at least a bit helpful. Thank you for sharing! From RainbowFish. P.S. I had a look at some of your reviews to get an idea of what you might be looking for. I noticed you’d signed them “DayDreamBeliever.”  Cheer up sleeeeepy genie!   My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 01/05/2017 @ 6:20am EST