Hello Dragonbane ,

Thank you so much for your formal review request of your item "The Coffee Shop" . It was not the sort of thing that I usually read, but it is certainly appropriate considering the holidays, and it's good to do something a little out of my comfort zone.

So, let's get right to it.






Description:

This is more about your writing style than the story itself, but I like that you used a healthy level of description when setting the scene and introducing characters.

I had a particularly easy time picturing Tom from the way you described him so carefully (and in a way that really reflected how much Lucy is thinking about him.)





Conflict


I liked that the main conflict/struggle of the piece was a little more mature than the usual tropes that are seen in so many romance short stories. Not only is it refreshing to me as a reader, but I think it's appropriate for the characters as well, considering that they're a bit older and would be more inclined to avoid the standard relationship pitfalls that are usually written about.

I don't want to get too into specifics for those in the Public Review Forum who haven't handled it, but it was surprising and overall handled quite well.





Editing


One thing that I usually suggest, and feel applies here, would be to do another round of editing. There were a bunch of small, technical errors that I think one more draft would help to smooth out.

There was one sentence in particular that wandered in the opening paragraph:

It made it stand out from other cafes and restaurants within the mall with a waiter service you placed your order and found a seat, and shortly a friendly waitress would bring it to you very popular with shoppers in the mall.

In general though, there were just instances throughout with things like missing punctuation, extra words being capitalized, etc. They weren't overly distracting, but it's something to keep an eye out for as you work with the piece.

Anne and Lucy's Development


My biggest problem with the story itself is that I feel like some of the characters, particularly Anne and Lucy, could have used a little more development. That's something that can be tricky when writing romance, is that you want the romantic interest to be a focal point, but you also want to see the characters having distinct personalities outside of their relationships, which is something I feel Lucy was lacking in a little.

I think this could be easily fixed by just having one or two short scenes added where Tom isn't mentioned - and a great opportunity to do that would actually be right at the beginning of the piece. Anne is already there to talk to Lucy, and establishing their friendship outside of discussing a man would really add some personality to both of them in my opinion.

Pacing


The other thing that I think could use a little work is pacing. It's not so much that too much happens in the story, but the story covers a wide period of time, which I think might be working against you to make the piece read as more rushed than would be ideal.

The up side to this is that it feels less like the relationship is rushed because there is time for Tom and Lucy to get to know one another, and as an audience we get to see that relationship develop. The downside is that the pacing itself feels very rushed. Covering a relationship in it's entirety like this is something that I feel would be difficult to do in a single short story, and with all the time skips of weeks at a time, it just felt like a lot of stuff was being glossed over.

That's something that would be a trickier aspect to work on than the other things I mentioned, because I feel like it would require changing the formula, and the final product might be too different than the story you set out to tell. If it's an idea you want to play with, however, I think a couple options would be either to whittle this down to just the highlights with the inclusion of specific dates to mark the evolution of the relationship (which would result in a tighter, shorter narrative) or to consider expanding on some subplots and elaborate on the times that are skipped to draw this out into a longer format, perhaps even a novella.

I don't read a lot of romance, but for what it's worth I do think you've got the groundwork a longer project, if that is something that interests you.







I think the story had a lot of good elements. Although I'm not big on romance, you did something unique with this piece. While there were some areas I think could use some work, it's also worth noting that I don't have a lot of things I can compare it to, and it probably is one of the better romance pieces I've read for a long time.

Best of luck with the project, and let me know if you have any questions.

-Cat













My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .