Hi, I just finished your piece and wanted to share some feedback. I'm not great with templates for reviews, but I will try to keep your guidelines in mind, even if I don't strictly follow the order.

Potential: I definitely think this is worth revisiting. I don't think it would be good to go beyond the story parameters and write more before the beginning, or after the ending,but you could bulk the story up. I'd say there are two aspects that would really appreciate some extra material.

The Ex/Previous relationship: Rather than dropping in an additional paragraph about that relationship, and ending up with an information dump, you could sprinkle some bits throughout the rest of the story. It would allow you to let us get to know Grace more, what she really wants out of here "encounters/relationships." And you could lay out these breadcrumbs in a way that serves as a much stronger backdrop for what she ultimately does to Peter. We'd get a very vivid image of her desires and then see them fulfilled in the murder. Not that you don't do this already, but you could thicken it up some more.

The Driver: Presumably, Grace could have done this whole thing herself. She could have written the ad, and done the driving too. So in this story the driver comes off mostly as a chaperone who watches Grace's back while she sates her morbid desires. This gets reinforced by her hurry-it-up attitude at the end. But I think you missed an opportunity to do something slightly more interesting and creepy. The fact that the driver had a hand in plotting the whole thing, (at least going so far as to write the add,) suggests that she does enjoy it. I think if you reworked the driver as a voyeuristic character, it would compliment the underlying (mildly deranged ((I mean that as a compliment)) eroticism of the piece. It would give you a chance to draw on the stereotype of the couple (one who participates, one who "just likes to watch") who brings the uninitiated third party into their activities.

Concept and Approach: I don't know that I've never seen a story with this basic concept before, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable or even original. In broad strokes, a predator lures in their prey with the promise of sex and ultimately kills them, which coincidentally, the predator finds somewhat sexually gratifying. The story could have been written with Grace just picking this guy up at the bar, but using the newspaper ad allowed you to explore human nature, and opportunism, which made the story far more interesting.

Telling it from Grace's POV was definitely the more sophisticated option, and (no pun intended,) gracefully done. You never lied to the reader. You were just very careful in what you told us an how. I think there was good craft on display here. You could have written the story from Peter's POV and it would have been far less rewarding at the end, because there were a few times when I actually didn't know who was the predator and who was the prey.

Length: The length was fine. It wasn't too short, but based on some of my suggestions, you could probably guess that I would say the story would benefit if you made it just a little longer. Maybe another 500ish words.

Gore: Perfect. For me anyway. Maybe you could hint at little more description. Just a little. Engage a couple more senses. Smell of the the blood. The sound of the knife chipping some bone. Or even just a some atmosphere to put the reader in the car during the murder. Smell of the seat leather or the hum of the engine.

Emotions: The story was sexy. I never felt "scared," but this wasn't a ghost type story. There was also never any "hunting," or roller coaster moments where I was moving between anxiety and relief. But it's a short story so I don't know how much of THAT kind of back and forth is appropriate. What the story did elicit for me was a constant state of concern and interest, trying to figure out who was the cat and who was the mouse. The humor, eroticism, and concern, all engaged me emotionally and kept me receptive to everything that was unfolding.

This was well written. Nice work.

-James

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