August 8th, 2013 at 02:41pm
This was truly beautiful to read from start to finish, and had a really good twist which I think no one expected. You are such a talented writer! Just wanted to put that out there...
Having a Lang Leav poem as your summary, and basing the story off a Marina & the Diamons song, was just wonderful! It set the tone nicely, so a very good choice. I also really like how the chapter titles were rules. My favourite was probably 'wear your heart on your cheek'.
Willa does aggrivate me a little but I kind of understand her situation since my sister was in a similar one. So I think you've written her very well and have written Charlie in the way to make the reader love him and hate him. Bravo!
Even though this is short, every chapter has an impact and I love that! The way you ended it was bittersweet. You felt really bad for the poor girl but at the same time she was getting her fairytale ending. It just made it a more memorable story.
Moving onto the story itself, I like that you portray Willa as this girl just out to have a good time in the first chapter, and then have her out the fact that she does have feelings for Charlie within the second chapter. It's almost like one of these fairytales where the girl starts off not believing in love and ends up completely infatuated with someone, almost like the guy changes her. I thought that was going to continue and be a slight cliché, but of course, you completely turn my expectations in the third chapter. It doesn't seem like as much of a fairytale as it did before. I was really surprised to find out that she was going to marry Charlie at the end but, like a few people have said, it does seem so overly realistic. I've known a few people in abusive relationships who delude themselves into thinking it will stop and that their partner is the only person who would ever truly love them, so that kind of hit really hard during the last chapter, especially when it's pointed out that Willa thinks that herself.
The last line really had a big impact though. Getting married is probably one of the most important decisions ever, and everyone always says you should be sure about it. Unless I'm reading into this too much, having her just think Charlie loves her kind of makes me think that even she doubts it, so she's not completely sure of it herself.
It's all very sad, really, because this does happen in real life. You've managed to portray something so real in such a beautiful manner, and I don't think I've read many pieces that can do that, so really well done.