Review: Illumine by Alivia Anders
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2012
First of all, I would like to congratulate Alivia Anders for writing this story at such a young age. That is a huge accomplishment! Unfortunately, there are entirely too many mistakes in this novella. The point of this review is strictly to offer the author constructive criticism and to warn readers; I am not trying to insult anyone.Cons:-Too many grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors-A good many of the sentences have a very awkward feel to them. I got what the author was trying to say, but it was a distraction from the story.-Brand-name's throughout the story. (This is one of my personal pet peeves and I realize it won't bother some)-The protag not asking more questions or thinking things through is highly annoying.-Some of the descriptions are overly detailed, and it felt like the author was working from some checklist of various words for different colors.Perhaps the worst offense of this book is that the author tells the story instead of showing it. I really cannot think of enough good things to make a Pros list. I will say that the author successfully changed my original opinion of Kayden - which is quite the feat considering how his character is introduced. However, I didn't like Kayden's voice. **Minor Spoiler** He is supposed to be hundreds...if not thousands of years old - it is never clarified...but he speaks like a modern day teen. **End of Spoiler** The most cringeworthy mistakes in the book: the author actually wrote "I'd of" instead of "I would have" or at the very least "I'd have"; and several times someone "took a hold of" something or someone.Being from the south, the characters seemed very "southern" to me, but the book is set in the northern U.S. and the author is even from the northern U.S., so I'm not sure what happened there.I wish the author the best of luck, and hope she is able to correct her mistakes and grow as a writer in the future