Title: RedCloak

Author: SiNC0STaN

Cover: Your cover is awesome! I am in love with it. The startling red contrasts so well with the gray tones. The title is clear and the font is unique and fitting. I am curious about your author's name. Is that your real name or another pseudonym? And it's faint but there is an SG on the nose of the wolf in the background. What is the reason there?

Blurb: Your blurb is intriguing. I have no comments or complaints about it. It is well written, tells the reader what they need to know, and it draws you in. You can't ask for more.

Aesthetics: The aesthetics shown are of the MC aka Rachel Lee aka Redcloak and her three friends: Yiyi, Soniya, Alina. Each have their own color and quote. These quotes can get pretty interesting and I can't wait for more of their characters to be revealed so I can see how relevant these quotes are especially since there's a promise in the blurb of Rachel not being the only schoolkid involved with criminal activity.

Introduction: I will talk about Introduction in the two parts: prologue and first chapter.
Prologue-- You open this story in a third person narrative through the eyes of a cop who feels a bit threatened by the younger recruits in his career. He introduces this new system in its early trials of actually tailing select criminals to catch them red-handed to a young boy. The young boy seems pretty confident.
I like this prologue. I like how you introduce the RedCloak character through the eyes of the authorities and then cutting to her doing a heist in the first chapter. It played out in my head like a movie.
I am so curious if the young boy in this prologue will have a significant role in this story (is he the fumbling amateur in the museum? Could he possibly be the Wolf (no I doubt that but it's still a possibility)? Could he possibly be Aiden, Rachel's school crush?)
In the first chapter, we see RedCloak in action. She sneaks into a museum to steal a bracelet, its value and the reason for its retrieval a mystery. But Rachel doesn't much care for the reasons living solely for the crime itself and the anonymous glory.

Characters: With only a Prologue and three chapters to base this review on, I haven't seen a lot of characters to do in depth analysis on all of them. I mostly see Rachel so I will focus on her and throw some breadcrumbs to her friends and family and her relationships with them.

RACHEL LEE: Rachel Lee is a ballerina with what seems to be a close friend group. She leads a secret double life as the infamous thief/assassin RedCloak.

As Rachel Lee, she seems like your typical teenage girl except for the fact she sleeps a lot given her late night activities. When not sleeping in school, she enjoys being loud and rambunctious with mainly her equally loud and teasing friend, Yiyi. Yiyi likes to tease her about her crush on the silent Aiden. Soniya, her other friend, seems like the more mature, responsible one of the group whilst Alina is the blushing cinnamon roll with her own little crush on the prepubescent class monitor. Aside from this, Alina also has a fascination with RedCloak, whom the authorities have correctly speculated is a girl their age. Other characters influencing her life is a mom and little sister. There seems to be some tension between Rachel and her mom due to her being scolded about just accepting her younger sister's torments. (Yes I would call being woken up by having cold water being dumped on you a torment.) I double this tension with the fact that Rachel is doing illegal things and is hiding this fact from her mom. I'm very curious as to how Rachel got involved with the Core in the first place. Given we are only on chapter 3, it's okay if this remains a mystery for now. All things have a certain place and a certain time to be revealed to make the story work.

From her thoughts and interactions with the two gatekeepers, under her Redcloak persona, she is cocky and ambitious. She has an ongoing rivalry with another criminal entity, the Wolf. (A touch I love since it correlates with the whole Little Red Riding Hood motif.) As mentioned before, she has no qualms about the moral consequences of her criminal life. We haven't seen her murder yet but I wonder if she is just as objective with that undertaking as she is with her heists.

All in all, with this story just starting off, I see nothing lacking in character development thus far.

Grammar: There are some minor technical grammar mistakes that I have pointed out in your book. The only consistent mistake I have seen that I did not comment on everytime I saw it was you not using a comma in your dialogue when adding a tag.
"You should always have a comma right here," I explained, "not a period."

Consistent or Coherent Narrative: while the story itself is coherent enough to follow, there is some confusion with some unfamiliar terms like the food in the second chapter and whatever Parcelboy said toward the end of the third. This however is okay since I could figure it out through context. But just be aware of how confusing the mixture of foreign words can be. I pointed out that Rachel's Chinese name was thrown in there without any context that it was her name. This is due in part to two mistakes: 1.) I was not informed Rachel was of Chinese descent. Nothing in the dialogue or descriptions gave me this impression. 2.) You suddenly switched from doing 3rd person narrative in the prologue and the first two chapters to doing 1st person in the third chapter. This was disorienting to me. If you write the rest of the book in 1st person, consider rewriting your first two chapters. (The prologue can remain the same) Or if you want to do 3rd person, rewrite your 3rd chapter. Do whichever you are most comfortable with but you have to be consistent.

Plot: I have an idea of what the plot may be due to the blurb but since we are only three chapters in... It's mostly guesswork at this point. We have lots of ingredients here to work with: her rivalry with Wolf and possible reveal of who he is, a boy who is part of the police tailing Redcloak who may or may not be Aiden or who may or may not be the amateur in the museum, we have a mom who is totally oblivious to her daughter's secret life, we have school drama that could always impact our MC, and we have a possible assassination and "Robin hood style" heist awaiting in the wings. Just so much is just boiling under the surface right now and I'm just wondering which pot will boil over first. BUT despite all this going on, I do not feel overwhelmed. Your writing is precise and the story thus far is paced well.

Promo/tags: All tags are relevant and appropriate.

Ending**: ongoing status

Great story for anyone who likes stories with strong heroines leading a double life, spies and thieves, and a possible love story. I wasn't able to give more on this review with only 3 chapters to go on but with the promise of the plot and how well it is written, I would recommend it to others with no hesitation.