Book: The Viper's Venom
Author: Ipsitalali
Reviewer: FrostedForestFairy
Chapters read: 18

I will start this off by saying that I read 18 chapters properly [till ‘Sexy Peach’] and then I did sort of skim the rest of the chapters to get a better understanding of the story.

Title:
After reading the reason behind the name, I think it’s a very sweet title. Even ignoring the true meaning (which readers will find after reading the story), the title is super intriguing and I do think it’d make readers want to take a look at the story. I like the alliteration in the title too.

Cover:
The bright colours definitely grab people’s attention. I like the viper and the splashes of purple around it that could possibly be interpreted as its venom. I also like the way you used golden and purple (complementary colours). It makes the cover look soothing to the audience’s eyes despite being pretty bright. I think it’s a pretty solid cover.

Blurb:
I like the blurb! You included the conflict of the story and added a rhetoric question at the end to interest the readers. There’s one thing though, you didn’t include anything about Valeria’s role in the mafia. If you included that and the fact that Valeria has amnesia (or at least hinted at it), I think it would make the blurb even better and would give a more accurate idea of what the story is about. Otherwise, it’s a good blurb.

Grammar/vocabulary:
As a whole your grammar is pretty good! But I did notice a few mistakes [sometimes repeated] so I'll point those out.

Mask off:
‘“And what may be the plan, Valeria?” James asked , skepticism evident in his tone.’ [there is a space between the comma after ‘asked’. It should be ‘James asked, skepticism evident…’]. (You repeat this similar mistake throughout the story. There doesn’t have to be a space between a punctuation mark and the word before it.)

“I just sighed and looked at the fire that was crossing my arms…” [you used ‘just’ in the sentence right before this one. I'd suggest removing either one of the ‘just’ because otherwise it feels a bit repetitive. And what do you mean by ‘fire that was crossing my arms’? That sentence doesn’t make sense.]

“...and works as a math's teacher” [it's either ‘maths’ (British english) or ‘math’ (American english). It's not “math's”.]

Neon Pink:
“~few years ago~” [it should be ‘a few years ago’]

‘His wounded expression turned into a playful smirk as he replied,

“oh so you’re just using my charm against me, huh?”’ [The dialogue is a continuation of the sentence above it so they'll be in the same paragraph.] (you have also repeated this mistake multiple times throughout the book.)

“He pulled me flush against him by my waist…” [what does ‘flush’ mean here? ‘He pulled me against him’ makes sense but the word ‘flush’ makes it incomprehensible.]

“ Oh, so you’re longing for physical contact now?” [you put a gap between the quotation mark and ‘oh’. There won't be a gap there.]

“I love you so so so sooo much Alton.” I said…’ [I'd suggest making it ‘so, so, so, sooo much…’ with the commas. Because that makes the sentence grammatically accurate.]

Infiltration:
“Valeria stop squirming, you’re bleeding all over the place” He yelled , his voice filled with panic and concern.” [there should be a comma after ‘place’. You also don’t need the space between ‘yelled’ and the comma.]

“Yes yes it is. May know who you are and why are you calling from my husband's phone?” [I'd suggest adding commas to the first sentence, ‘yes, yes, it is.’ and for the second sentence it should be ‘may I know who you are…’]

Emotions in Check:
“Valeria's expression softened slightly as she shook her head in amusement as she crossed her arms as she looked at me smugly.” [you used ‘as’ too many times in this sentence to connect multiple actions. This feels really repetitive and breaks the flow of the story.]

Paint for Walls:
“Desperation clawed at me as I desperately tried to remember where I had left my car.” [you used ‘desperation’ twice here. You could try changing one of them with a different word.]

Little Lady:
“Oh, that's right! Thank you for reminding me Mrs. Rose,” I grinned mischievously. [After ‘Mrs. Rose’ it will be a full stop/period rather than comma. If you use an action tag after a dialogue, you use a full stop/period. But if you use a tone tag, then you use a comma.]

“You think you can take us all on, little lady?” he taunted. I smirked back confidently.” [in ‘He taunted’, ‘He’ should be capitalised. Also the ‘I smirked back confidently.’ should be in the next paragraph with Val's dialogue.]

Bullet Wounds and Broken Bones:
“Oh for god sake I'm the Viper…” [it should be ‘for God's sake…’].

I'll also give you a tip. When writing multiple paragraphs in the form of a dialogue, each paragraph will start with a quotation mark but only the very last paragraph (when the person stops speaking) will end in a quotation mark.

You use the phrase ‘I couldn't help…’ quite often. And although it's fine to use sometimes, using it too much can make it stand out and disinterest the readers.

Also I have noticed that for ellipses, you use two dots (‘..’) rather than three (‘...’), the proper ellipsis contains three dots (‘...’). And the way you break off paragraphs feels a bit off to me.

I think you could definitely improve there. I'd suggest proofreading the story (and asking someone else to do it too if you want) to fix these mistakes. Otherwise your grammar is really good.

Plot and pacing:
Individually, the plot points are all really interesting. But when you put them all together in the story, they felt really disjointed to me. I can tell that the main plot line is Val and Alton's romance. The mafia and the mysterious organisation seem to be the driving point of the plot. So it's good that you established that. But we learn absolutely nothing about the mafia except for the facts that Valeria was their leader and she made them all kill each other to escape that life. I personally think you should give a little more detail into Valeria's life as a mafia leader and also into Alton's life before the incident. It'd add depth to the story and make it more immersive. Moreover, your chapters also feel disjointed. Each chapter should connect to the next to form a coherent story. And yours feel like scenes that are stitched together roughly. I don’t know a great way to explain it but it doesn’t flow very nicely. You jump directly from the mafia to Alton and Val's past and then from there you jump to the incident. It all feels a bit disjointed. I'd suggest trying to improve the pacing of your story. I think it'll greatly improve the story.

And on a similar note, a few plot beats seem to be missing. You mention Val's amnesia in passing before completely elaborating it. But I would personally love to see you foreshadow it a bit more frequently than you did. I think it'll shift the focus of the story to the direction you’re trying to take it to while also intriguing the readers.

The romance also feels a bit rushed to me. I feel like it's missing more depth. I'd suggest showing more in-between/filler moments between the characters from their previous lives or in their current situation. It'll make the readers root for the romance even more.

Also two things I noticed from specific chapters:
In the chapter titled ‘Mine’, Valeria corners Alton and gets really into his personal space and calls him ‘hers’. Considering the fact that Valeria thought Alton had amnesia during this scene, it felt borderline like harassment to me. It wasn’t exactly romantic and pretty iffy to me.

In ‘Neon Pink’ Valeria had the keys to her house. Why did she not open the door and had to wait for Alton to open it for her?

Characterisation:
The character voices all feel the exact same. It's like every character is speaking in your voice rather than their own unique voices. They all use the same exact words and see the world in the same way. Every character will have their own unique view of the world and their own unique words (doesn’t mean you need to change every single word but give them words that only that specific character uses and no one else.

This will really flesh out their voices). And two characters will describe a place in two very different ways depending on their world view. Maybe one will notice the bright colours in a place while another will notice the body language in a person. Stuff like that. You do have many characters so it can be a bit hard to nail character voices but I'd suggest at least differentiating the voices of Val and Alton since they're the main characters.

Furthermore, your characters feel a bit flat. As a concept they're great! Val is the strong, fashionable and formidable main character and Alton is the caring and loyal husband who's also fiercely protective. But that's exactly it. At the moment they're concepts rather than fully fleshed out characters. We don’t know their fatal flaws, their misbelieves and we don’t know how they'll develope over the story. Every character has a fundamental flaw in them. And that hinders them from achieving their goals. Over the course of a character driven story, they can learn to overcome that flaw. And characters also have a misbelief about the world. It defines how they view the world and their actions. They'll do anything to avoid facing their fears and a good book will make the character develope by overcoming their fears and misbelieves.

So these are some things you can try doing to make your characters even better.

Conclusion:
I had fun reading this story! Valeria has a very fun personality and I love the premise. It sounds very promising. I'd say my main criticism was the pacing. If you can manage to improve that, it'll greatly improve the story. Otherwise, it was a really good story!

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