January 14th, 2018 at 08:08pm
First, before I get to reading, I absolutely love the layout. It's minimalistic, and that's why I love it. It's not too hard to read, and everything looks gorgeous.
Chapter One - Night Shift
When I finished this chapter I legitimately said "Holy Shit" you left it in such a cliffhanger and I love stories like that. I didn't even want to stop to write this comment about the chapter. You seem to know what you're doing to get the reader hooked on your story, and I can't wait to see what comes next.
Chapter Two - Nativity
Wait Benjamin is already dead and she's basically seeing his ghost? You're giving me ghost whisperer vibes here. Anyway, I really like this story, you can tell how sad she is at the loss of Benjamin, and how she feels about him. At this point though, I'm wondering how he died. What job did he have that he worked night shifts? There are so many questions I have that I hope get answered as I continue to read on.
Just as Johnnie Boii; said below, the layout is really gorgeous. I'm a huge fan of minimalist layouts, and the colour is really soft on the eyes. I love the summary as well -- it has this really mysterious vibe to it, and I just love that it hooks the reader in on virtually nothing. It's so bare, but also so telling. I love that.
Content
Okay so I love your writing style, to begin with. You've got this perfect mix of dialogue and description, but you don't go overboard with either. There's this really easy-going vibe to the first chapter, too. You give us this perfect snapshot of Juliana and Benjamin that's really just... it's everyday. I can imagine everything playing out, with him pottering around and her throwing back these snarky little comments. We get this amazing little snapshot of both the characters and their relationships in such a short space of time.
That cliffhanger, though, wow. I hadn't imagined that this was going to have anything to do with ghostly happenings and then you just switch it right up at the end with that reveal. But even throughout the latter chapters, you've got this idea of everything being absolutely okay, but then you suddenly remember that Benjamin is dead and all of a sudden you just get this massive pang of sadness for Juliana and the fact that it must make it so much harder that she's seeing her man around everywhere even though he's no longer there.
Another thing that I think I noticed that was pretty subtle -- is this set in Scotland? I noticed a bunch of inflections in the language used that I definitely picked up on. If so, this just makes me love this even more. There's so many stories set in London / surrounding and not enough set up here, and I definitely love that I get the Scottish vibe off of this. We need more stories set up this way. Also, there's nothing overboard on the Scottish a la Trainspotting, which I like. Too many stories try overly hard to try and pop accents and colloquiums in and it just doesn't work, but it works perfectly here.
I think what I love most about this is how strong your characters are, though. Instantly, as a reader, I found myself connecting with Juliana and it just made everything so much stronger. By the time she's putting up the decorations I'm literally so sad for her, and it breaks my heart that she's doing that and then seeing Benjamin at the same time. I can't imagine having to go through that and it, honestly, just makes this story so much better.
Concrit
I usually have a bunch of stuff to say here but I literally have nothing. I didn't spot anything spelling / grammar wise and your writing is pretty flawless, really.
Overall
This is incredible. If I could recommend this a million times over, I definitely would. I love everything about this -- Juliana and Benjamin's characters, the nonchalant everydayness of the stuff in the chapters, the entire plot. It's all perfect. I can't wait to read more of this as it comes out. Keep it up, because this is amazing.