Reviewer: Sadie twoshortnails
Book: Of Sun and Nightmares
Author: Stresshorse
Chapters read: All

Cover:
I like the face claims in your cover, as well the glitch effects, but I do feel like it could be executed a bit better.
For one, the images stand out starkly against the background, and it’s clear that the images have different backgrounds. To fix this, you can use a handy website called ‘bg remover’, that will remove the backgrounds of these images quickly. But after removing the background, there is still the problem of the ‘cropped’ state of the images. What I mean by this is that the t-shirt and some of the hair is cropped off, which means that it looks like they got their limbs chopped off… Not the look one likes.
If you have the full image, where their shoulders aren’t cropped off, then you don’t have to read what I’m about to write, but you probably should for other book covers you make in the future.
The first option to help the ‘cropped’ images is to disguise them. Dividing them with a line would be the easiest solution, but if you wanted to be more creative, you could try windows, or other elements of university life, or their apartment. The second solution would be to try and find a better image that isn’t cropped, or add the missing stuff by yourself (aka drawing it). Whatever you want to do depends on you, but I do believe that the book cover would look a lot better without the cut-offs.
[3 hours after writing ^^: I just realised it is your own art, so just add some shoulders and don’t be bothered with that weird stuff I said. I just can’t be bothered to edit it!]
Whilst I like your glitch, I have to question some things. I feel like glitchy text/images are commonly associated with sci-fi, and whilst your book has some element of sci-fi, the primary focus is comedy, or just university life in general. The glitch might not be suitable. Also, adjust the placement of the text, you never want to divide a word across several lines!!
If you change the colour of the text, make sure that it stands out, it’s very important. The author’s name should be the same or contrasting colour to the title. In this cover, I would suggest using the same colour, because there is no reason to complicate it by trying to find a suitable colour! And also try and find a better font — the font currently used for the author’s name doesn’t contrast well with the title font. Either stick with the same font, or search up some good font combinations.
Also remember that it tends to be the title in ‘cursive’ font, and the author’s name in a ‘serif’ font.
Overall, there’s a great idea emerging from your cover, but I feel it could be improved. Feel free to PM me if you want further explanation!

Title:
Your title, ‘Of Sun and Nightmares’, sounds cool and is cool. The format ‘Of ___ and ___’ is quite generic, but the two words you’ve used seem to be unique, after I googled the title. The only problem I have with it, is the way that it’s presented in the cover.
I don’t like the fact that you use that ‘&’ sign instead of the word ‘and’, it interrupts regularity, and doesn’t fit well as well. If you take my suggestion of reformatting the text and images, then you could definitely use the actual word ‘and’, and still fit everything in.
Other than that, I like your title, so well done.

Blurb/Description:
Your blurb is funny and cute, similar to the vibe your book gives. I wouldn’t change much about the content, which surprised me, because I usually hate it when authors point blank explain the main characters to the readers. But your funny writing style means that the blurb still works well.
The only thing I want to pick you up on, is the formatting. I’ll mention this several times throughout this review, but paragraphs are very, very important. Very important. Don’t underuse them, and please don’t overuse them. In your blurb, the irregularity of the paragraphs distracts my eye from focusing on the actual text, which is something you don’t want. I think you got a little confused with the dividers, so I would like you to remove them, and simply use a double paragraph to separate the three different sections.
(// is a paragraph) It will look something like this, ‘Nox was leaning close to Eris. From this angle, it almost looked like they were kissing. // But in reality- // “Goodnight you little shit,” Nox said, flipping off Eris. // // And also the situation between Nox and Eris, on any given day- // Eris: screaming in fear // Nox: screaming back at him angrily** // Ray and Chris: We’re just watching a couple fight. // // When Eris Lee, a 20-year-old ambivert studying at a Physics University meets his roommate, Nox, he doesn’t expect his past to be stripped raw as a chicken, while crushing on him. // Or rather, his past comes back from the depths of hell again. // // Nox Hayden, a 21-year-old student, was surprised to have an idiot like Eris as his roommate. While putting up with him, he knew this guy was going to turn his life upside down. He just didn’t know just how literally.’
If that didn’t make any sense, DM me and I’ll write it all out for you! If you haven’t noticed, I also made some small changes to phrasing, because I felt it would work better the way I phrased it. (‘flipping Eris off’, to ‘flipping off Eris’ and etc.)
Overall, good work on content, just double check paragraph use and how you format it!

Characters:
Not going to lie, Nox is kind of an arsehole. I mean, he fully knows that he’s going to spend the year with Eris, but he still behaves rudely? Give him an excuse. Maybe he has these periods of moodiness when he doesn’t get enough sleep, and he explains this to Eris somewhere along the way, so his character seems more realistic. I’m sure his attitude will be explained later in the story, but I just haven’t really had a firm grasp on why he behaves this way with the chapter published.
Your characters, as a whole, are entertaining and funny, both in their thoughts and their words. This is great to keep a reader interested, but sometimes I feel the characters are a bit two dimensional.
The first way to improve this is to develop their university life. You mention random lectures and this drama project, but it doesn’t make sense. I didn’t know that both Eris and Nox did drama, and I found it hard to keep track of what was going on, especially when Eris got two main characters? The whole few chapters about the drama stuff confused the heck out of me, so I feel like that could be cleared up, and help improve Eris and Nox’s characters.
Secondly, I would like you to focus on smaller details. For example, in the second chapter from Nox’s POV, how does he study? This will help the reader gain insight on his character. Your writing style relies a lot on the thoughts of your characters, and not enough on their actions. Be subtle in hinting the reader, let them learn about your characters without being blunt and direct.
And just a final, smaller, point, is to make the thoughts more realistic. You often forget to omit using apostrophes so the thoughts are more informal (and therefore more realistic). An example would be ‘I have’ to ‘I’ve’. There are lots of situations where this happens, just go through and read the thoughts aloud. Where you put two words together, do that in your actual writing as well.
Overall, I love how funny your characters are, but try to round them out and make them more 3D!

Plot/Storyline:
Your plot confuses me. There are some points that I understand, but not enough to make the whole plot completely cohesive. I’m sure that a main part of this reason is that your book isn’t finished, so the mystery about Eris’ nightmares will be solved. But regardless, I find it very hard to follow your plot, and I think it could definitely be improved.
Firstly, you writing style makes it hard to follow along. It isn’t that I don’t understand the thought process, which you considerately explained (italics), in the author’s note, but more that I don’t like the different POV changes. You might feel it is necessary, so that the reader can explore the thoughts of both characters, but it slows down the plot and interrupts the flow. Plus, there is a small likelihood that the reader would actually properly read the other POV because all the events have already happened, and they know what conversations they had.
Secondly, the part of your story that confused me the most was the fever dream. It has no sense of direction or… anything that makes it nice for the reader to read. Whilst it is a dream, and therefore it doesn’t have to make sense, I, as a reader, quickly got bored of the randomness and skim read the whole thing. What you, as an author, need to do to improve, is properly plan what happens in the fever dream, and write according to that plan. The plan should include enough that an outside reader who can’t read your mind (aka not you), can understand it.
This ‘planning’ idea applies to the rest of the book as well. You need to sit down, and write a sentence for each chapter, before writing the chapter itself. An example of such a sentence would be: ‘Chapter One: Eris chats with Ray, explaining his pink hair and eyes, then meets Nox, who acts rudely.’ This is a really simple thing to do that won’t take you ten seconds, but will help you express your ideas in a non confusing way. Please try this with all the chapters, and future characters as well.
Because your book is unfinished, remember that you need to make all the mystery and confusion clear before you finish! You can ask for another review when you finish the book if you want me to have another look at your plot, by the way. Overall, just take your time making things clear.

Grammar:
To start off with, please, please, please use properly separated paragraphs. Go through everything you have written and separate it all. If you don’t want it separated, put it on the same line like this: ‘Blah blah blah. Blah blah di blah.” Also, a properly separated paragraph looks like this:
‘Hello, my name is Sadie… …I have a cat.
[PARAGRAPH]
I also like reviewing books, and reading, as well as writing.’
Paragraphs are so important, especially for readers, because they want to be able to comment in line with the sentence that they found funny, or just want to comment on.
Secondly, you need to punctuate speech properly. I’ll give you a quick crash course on this! (Initiates teacher mode…)
FIRSTLY: “You don’t need a space between the opening speech mark and the first word,” The random otherworldly voice says.
SECONDLY: “You rarely need to finish the speech with a full stop. The line of speech should end with a comma, exclamation mark or question mark,” The very unprofessional teacher says, frantically typing because she’s running out of time to write this.
THIRDLY: “Avoid using ‘said’, ‘asked’, and ‘called’ repetitively. Try and vary the reporting clauses you use!” She says, trying to remember her English class.
FOURTHLY: “Each new speaker starts on a new line, but you’re doing that already, so don’t worry,” She also says, now resorting to Google.
FIFTHLY: “That’s it!” She cries triumphantly, quickly scanning the remainder of the KS1 article she’s reading. “I’ve done it!”
Apply these rules to your writing, and your speech punctuation should be good to go.
Thirdly, label your chapters properly. The first chapter should be ‘Chapter 1: University, oh my university!’, and so on. Use question marks and exclamation marks in your chapter titles and avoid using ‘part 1’, ‘part 2’ nonsense, just make up a new chapter title. Your chapter titles are silly and fun, but please correctly punctuate everything!
Finally, in order to help you with your grammar, I suggest getting an editor, or downloading Grammarly. I know I hate the Grammarly ads as well, but it works!!
Your grammar might not be the best, and it did put me off when reading, but I still love how fun your story is!

Summary:
To sum up, I’ll make a few points of things you should aim to do!
Work on grammar and punctuation (mainly punctuation)
Experiment with your cover, but I do like the art
Clarify what is going on with the plot, and plan before you write
Develop university life and things going around the characters, beyond the characters themselves and their behaviour
But you did so many great things with your writing as well!
Your writing is pretty funny
Your characters are funny as well
Your story is entertaining in general
Your art is really good!
I hope you appreciate my feedback and use it to benefit your writing.