Title: You Never Know

Author: sweetbooklover25

Reviewer: GnomeMercy

Summary: 3/5

I like how you introduce your character, and I can already get a bit of her personality and ideals from it! I was interested in finding out more, and what happens in her love story! There are grammatical errors, which I will explain in more detail soon.

The biggest thing that I feel is missing from your blurb is your dilemma. What is your main character's problem? What does Ananya have to go through? Will her love be put on the test? I think if you mention your problem in your blurb, you'll have a good summary that will draw more readers in!

As for the grammatical errors, I understand you don't want me pointing out all the typos, but there were some recurring errors in your blurb, which I'd like to quickly discuss.

Here is the beginning of your blurb:

A story of a simple girl leading her life with her friends and family . Nothing more important to her then them . she never expected any romantic connection in her life but she never knew what the destiny had for her in store !! ???

To begin with, before every punctuation there is a space—which is actually unnecessary. Secondly, in the third sentence, you didn't capitalise the "s" on "she". Also, more than one punctuation mark (for example, a "!" or a "?") is actually grammatically incorrect. Here is a corrected version (I rearranged the wording a little so it sounds a little less clunky, and you used "then" instead of "than" in the second sentence):

A story of a simple girl leading her life with her friends and family. Nothing was more important to her than them. She never expected any romance in her life, but she never knew what destiny had for in store for her.

Lastly, I suggest the message you had for your readers to be in your first "Disclaimer" chapter—but I'm just nit-picking here.

Overall, I was interested in reading—but I would have liked to know the stakes and the problem of your story!

Grammar: 2/5

(As requested, typos will not be mentioned/corrected—but there were quite a few so be careful about that!)

Firstly, chapter one was one, big paragraph. You had three spaces every time you needed a new paragraph (and it was on a new line), but it didn't have a double line break between each paragraph. If you do it like that (to make this explanation clearer, I just mean to layout it it in a similar way to this review—every time you are on another paragraph, simply press the "enter" button twice) it makes it much more clearer and easier for someone to read.

Another grammar error I noticed was that after commas, you would capitalise. Take this example from the second sentence of your story:

Mothers are packing tiffins for their children and husbands, Husbands are getting ready for their offices, Children are getting ready for their school or colleges.

To make this sentence grammatically correct, just don't capitalise the "h" and the "c" on "husbands" and "children". The correct version would be:

Mothers are packing tiffins for their children and husbands, husbands are getting ready for their offices, children are getting ready for their school or colleges.

This is something I saw often, but you don't need to put a space between the letters and the brackets (and, sometimes "I" wasn't capitalised).

You also used the phrase "I and my mother". Now, I never suggest doing this as that phrase is grammatically incorrect. It should be "my mother and I".

As well as that, there were times where you used emojis in your narration (which is usually only advisable to be used in text messages—or, preferably, not used at all) and also abbreviations of words such as "plz" instead of "please" and "ur" instead of "your".

Her friends' names (Samaira and Shanaya) weren't usually capitalised. They're names so they should. Neha's and Vihaan's names were, on the other hand.

When it comes to speech, you didn't capitalise the beginning letter of the speech (which you should, as it is a new sentence) and there was a space between speech and speech mark. Speech should always have punctuation at the end of it (and the punctuation should be inside the speech mark). Also, with every new speaker, there should be a new line.

I don't want to keep mentioning mistakes as you don't want this to be a focus point. I do think you need to work on grammar, but that's completely fine (and normal) as grammar is unnecessarily complicated and very hard!

Writing Style: 3/5

This was the part you wanted me to focus on most, so I will do so!—I want to point out some run-on sentence, repeating words, and other writing style errors I found before speaking generally about the way you write.

Firstly, the course of your story, the tenses change. For example, the story started in present tense, and then if quickly slipped to past. It stayed in past tense for a while, and then it would switch. I suggest sticking to one so it's more easier t understand and grammatically correct.

I noticed a run-on at the beginning of chapter 1:

This is the usual scenario of an Indian middle-class family to which I belong.  

In my case, the scenario is the same...

Here, you repeat the same thing. I suggest taking away the "in my case, the scenario is the same" and simply carrying on with your narration.

Throughout your story, your character switches from Hindi to English—now, as someone who can understand quite a bit of Hindi herself, it wasn't too much of a problem to understand, and your translations weren't too far from the literal meaning, so well done! However, I did feel as if the Hindi just came out of nowhere, and quite randomly.

I suggest, perhaps, incorporating the Hindi in speech (and maybe even the texts) and not the narration as it's kind of surprising to have Hindi come out of nowhere? Then, you can have the translations as well? I felt as if it was kind of awkward to have to read Hindi when it was English the word before.

Another thing I think you didn't need was the, for example, "after seven hours" or "the next day". Instead of typing that, you can show it with narration.

In general, your writing isn't too bad. You do, however, do quite a bit of telling. For example, when she first meets Aryan (lovely name by the way, it's one of my favourite male names), she instantly calls him "arrogant". You didn't show us he was arrogant by making him to do something that would show he was cocky. I think it would be better if you took your time to explain things and show them instead of info-dumping at times.

I think the biggest tells where when it came to Ms Ahana. From her actions, I felt she was nothing but polite, but the way Ananya told me she was being rude and a "bitch" made me feel as if Ananya was being childish. I didn't believe that Ms Ahana was being rude because I was told that. If you showed me she was being rude through her actions, I think it would be more believable.

Overall, your writing is pretty decent in terms of vocabulary and spelling. Your grammar does need work, as well. I think your writing is a bit "telly", it tells us things instead of using characters' actions, emotions, and dialogue to convey what you want them to. I think you have a lot of potential, however! So keep trying!

Characters: 3/5

Firstly, can I just say that Vihaan is my most favourite character? At first, I thought he was going to be some sort of like "love triangle" person and interfere in Ananya and Aryan's relationship, and then I realised he was the matchmaker. I like that you don't have a love triangle and that Vihaan was a true friend.

However, I do think that Ananya and his relationship didn't have enough development. You skipped an entire month after they met and then said Ananya and Vihaan were friends, which missed a lot of development that would have made it easier to make me believe that they're truly friends.

Some of your characters were mentioned in a chapter (or in a few sentences) but then they never actually had an important role, they were just filler characters that you didn't need. I suggest either removing them or, perhaps, giving them a bigger role.

Ananya was your main character. At first, I thought she didn't really have much character to her, but when it came to Piya and Ms Ahana, I thought she acted quite bratty. See, Aryan was only talking to them—like any normal person—and I found it weird that she got mad so quickly. I understand being possessive and jealous of that, but I did feel as if she could have acted more mature. I would have loved some more character to Ananya, I think she would have been a much more fun main character if you showed me that.

Before I begin, I am always critical of the love interest (and main character). This is because they have a larger criteria to fill, as they are the most important people in the story.

Aryan, to me, was someone who I couldn't bring myself to like. His personality was always changing. He could be arrogant one moment, sweet the next. I found myself wondering if he was generally a nice person as he seemed to be really rude at times. I think if he had more of a fixed personality, it would make him seem more realistic and a nicer person. His and Ananya's relationship, I felt, didn't have much development to it. All that happened was Ananya had a crush on her boss, he found out and liked her back. I think it would have been better if there was more reason as to why he liked her, as it would make it more realistic.

Overall, I think you should take your time to make sure all your relationships are developed. This makes it more fun and real when they have arguments or funny banter. You know their personalities and how they click, and that makes it more fun! I think your characters do need a bit more work, but good job on Vihaan as he was quite a nice, easy-going character with a cool sense of humour!

Plot + Originality: 3/5

Overall, I have heard of the "office romance" storyline before, there wasn't something that I found entirely unique. However, I really liked that the characters were POC, and it was set in a country that was not America, for example.

I also didn't feel as if there was much plot. This was probably because of pacing. You didn't give enough time for relationships to develop, so Ananya and Aryan started dating quite quickly. I think it would have been easier if you took time to develop their relationship, which would have given more plot but also given it a more realistic feel. Throughout your story, I did feel as if the plot was lacking a little bit.

OVERALL SCORE: 14/25

I think your story has potential! If you work a little more on grammar, plot, and characters (and try to tell a little less) I think we would have a sweet story in our hands. I adored the humour, and found myself laughing quite a few times. Good luck on your writing adventures, and I hope you keep writing!