Our twentieth story for our Community Book Club was reviewed by five people, and all the scores will be an average. The book was…
This week’s book is…
Journey: The Mirror, by Meme_Episodes
It’s a thriller and here’s the link.
About: A family curse causes all the woman to vanish… can you break the curse before you are next?
This story was recommended by @Episode.Cameronwrite!
First Impression (Cover/title/summary)
Rating: 3.75
The cover does tell you about the story without giving too much away, which is nice. I believe the title could have a bit more thought into it as the title does not really fit the cover, nor the description. … I found the summary intriguing. It was short but said enough to make me want to read the story. The covers looked decent.
However, another reader thought the covers weren’t really that appealing and the summary is a little too short to get a real feel for it.
The story (Content and Flow)
Rating: 3.5
The story is pretty original. … It flowed well and was well directed. The episodes were so short that it felt like one episode broken into 3. … The story was a bit rushed, and a bit more insight into the family background would be nice. The content was there but not in much detail. … Even though it was a short story, the plot moved too fast. It either should have more or longer chapters. The author didn’t have enough time to build up suspense, and we didn’t have enough time either to get to know/love/hate the characters and immerse ourselves in the events.
One reader: "Gah! An author’s note… -20. No, not really, they are just a bad way start to a story and it stops the reader from immediately getting enthused in the episode! Anyway, the story needs a little more meat (detail) to fill in each scene. Each episode was just far too short, even for a reader that likes shorter episodes.
Characters
Rating: 3.6
Diverse characters, which is great and a wide range of character development seen. Focus a bit more on the surroundings and include some background characters to make it seem realistic. … We got some details on the personality of the cheater/scammer boyfriend and the old woman but not much of the MC. It would have been nice to know more about her feelings and thoughts.
Because the episodes were so short this reader feels like we weren’t given enough time to connect to the characters. They did like that the cast was relatively diverse and it was nice to see a POC as the main character. … Another reader thought they were boring and a little undeveloped. The reader can sense a little chemistry between the main couple, but a little more dialogue between them would help improve this more.
Visually (The directing)
Rating: 4.4
The use of overlays was great but maybe include (more) zooms and spot positioning.
The directing was simple and average with some zooms, tappable overlays, weather effects, transitions, magic effects. This reader really enjoyed the old woman sneakily floating through the blue flames, and the spell duel.
Language (Grammar)
Rating: 4.45
Some grammar errors were present. … There was a lack of commas and the wrong letter capitalised. Double periods/fullstops and the wrong words used. Also, punctuation should finish ALL lines of dialogue.
Choices
Rating: 2.4
Not many choices present that affect the story. … Choices? Where? There should be more choices to help the reader feel involved. … The first choice with the roses looked cool but was not understood. We had to make an important decision based on two flowers that seemed somehow out of context. There was no indication for what either meant. Maybe if the episodes were longer and had more information and choices, choices would be better.
2-3 was the average number of episodes read by the five reviewers.
It has great potential and a good entry to an episode contest, but proofreading and a little more detail would definitely help this story. … A good story idea, the author has a creative imagination, but it wasn’t exploited enough. They suggest adding more details to each chapter or more chapters in between. … The directing and dialogue were done very well. There should be more stories with POCs for MCs. Awesome tappable choices and overlays, they added a little more uniqueness to the story. However, the episodes were WAY too short and felt like it was rushing through the content. It would have been preferred that the episodes were at minimum 2x longer than they are, even just adding in a couple more scenes.
Final Book Club score is … 3.68
Start a discussion below of this book if you want to! (wink)
Now for next week’s book, get voting because we only have 21 hours left.