February 20th, 2014 at 09:45am
I loved your main character. She is a very well rounded character. I like how as soon as she starts to disobey her family she isn't rude about it and flipping off her parents or something. She's such a sweetheart. That's the only words I can think of.
I like how you started off with interesting scene and then proceeded to start the story. That's was a very good way to pull the reader in and it certainly had me hooked and dreading what was going to happen because I knew it was going to be tragic.
I actually liked the accents more than I thought. I could tell they were in the south before it was even mentioned and the way you described Dane without actually just bluntly coming out and say "yeah he's black" was great.
I was a little confused on what time period they were in though. I know it was the 21st century but I don't think racism today would be so frank. It's usually passive aggressive discrimination. Like her parents would have pretended to like Dane but then forbid her to ever see him again or they would just politely ask him to leave and never come back or something. They were Christians by the way. But I'm assuming you made them aggressive Christians on purpose. It's fine how it is but I think it would have worked better in a time period were these kind of situations (extreme racial hate crimes and arranged marriages) were more common.
This Sam Davis guy is a complete psychopath though. Wtf is his damage? I hate this guy. Hate!
Also, I wish Ellie would have had a more traumatic response to Dane's death. It's like she just so peacefully accepts that she just watched him die and decides to kill herself within seconds. She doesn't even try to hurt Sam first! I would have killed him too...or at least seriously wound.
I kind of expected the Romeo and Juliet ending after Dane dies. I wish you could have described what was going on in her head more. She's clearly messed up if she just watched the love of her life die and she decided to die with him but what about everything that's she's leaving behind? Suicide is still suicide even if it is for love. It's a pretty hard decision to make for one girl. She barely shows any emotion and on top of that..she smiles???
I have to say, I seriously did love the ending though. That last sentence just...wow okay. just wow.
This story was very dramatic and it had me hooked from the summary to be honest. I really liked this a lot! Great job!
Thank you so much! This was my first drama/tragedy, so your criticism on the emotional aspects is very helpful. I think maybe I didn't explain the parents very well, and that affected the perception of the time period, so I'll keep in mind to work on that setting detail a bit. But just in general, thank you very much!