Project Athena | Reviews

The Edge of The World (Emily)

Author: anOverthinkingDevil

Reviewer: OutOfMyImagination

Genre: Romance

Hello and thank you for requesting a review from me. As you requested, I focused on readability, enjoyability of the plot and character development, and of course overall impression. I read ten chapters in total, so the review is up to that point in the story.

The Edge of the World introduces us to Bhairavi Sen, a famous politician's daughter who wants to be known for her work in journalism. Keeping her social circle small, Bhairavi mainly keeps to herself therefore, her father arranges marriage to Saurav. Bhairavi hates him, but she has no choice but to proceed with her father's plans. As her birthday approaches, Bhairavi has no desire to celebrate it, and soon she vanishes. Was she kidnapped or ran away from an unwanted life?

I will start with the story description. It's not too bad, but I would hide the kidnapping part since it spoils the story, and character characteristics since it's better for readers to judge and see characters as they read the story. The cover is cute and meets the romance genre through something a bit more eye-catching and related to darker themes in the story would probably fit more.

The story has a good pace and we get to see Bhairavi's life before she is kidnapped. I wouldn't call this story too original since it does have known tropes that are often used, but each story has some uniqueness to it.

The readability of this story is decent, though there are errors here and there, misspelt words, and missing punctuation. The chapter length is perfect, and up to chapter six paragraph sizes. were reasonable, but they got bulkier with chapter seven. Try to split them up since this way it's harder to read.

I would suggest giving a new paragraph to each character when writing dialogue since that way is easier to follow the conversation and know who is speaking. There were parts where it was done, but later the dialogue blended, making it difficult to understand who was talking.

I wouldn't categorize this story as a romance since so far we don't have anything related to that and having kidnapping as one of the topics within the story gives bad vibes if the story is categorized as romance, just my opinion. It's not a thriller either, as you mentioned in your submission.

I would say it's closer to mystery if you make a few small changes which could make the story more interesting as well. Instead of spoiling the plot and revealing Bhairavi is kidnapped, say she disappeared in the book description. And make a few tweaks with chapters as well, so that while characters wonder if she ran away or something else happened to her readers would wonder that too. Because now we know she is kidnapped so when the characters question that we don't care or are interested in reading those parts since we know the truth. There was very little shocker factor which lowered my interest in the story.

When it comes to characters, they don't have unique voices, nor do we understand their motives. Not sure why we got two chapters about side characters doing an investigation into what for now appears to be a random fire (don't want to spoil too much), stuff related to journalism, and where characters in a way to tell readers how great Bhairavi is, that is not how you show characteristics of the characters, because it's still telling and not showing. I enjoyed the writing style when it came to descriptions. They painted good scenery, and the characters are described well enough as well.

I would rate this story three out of five stars since I feel the book is predictable, and it needs a bit more polishing as well.

I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in India-based books, or someone who perhaps likes to read about family drama and doesn't mind darker topics in the book.