★★☆☆☆

Moving Walls is about a girl with special powers who falls in love with an aloof, emotionless, and duechebaggy boy. The majority of the tensions comes from the protagonists journey in attempting to woo the affections of the boy. She blindly follows him on his Doomquest of Evil.

This story uses a tried and true plot of a girl finding a bad boy and trying to fix him. The idea of him being an evil bucket of emotionally stunted rattlesnakes who watched way too much anime when they were snakelings is a fresh take on the concept. I enjoyed the idea of the protagonist realizing what was wrong with the picture and strove to correct what she had done. All in all, fans of Twilight should enjoy the plot.

I took a star off for the occasional missing word and incorrect word for the context of the sentence. Another star was lost from overuse of adverbs and said-ism. The occasional shortcut can tighten up prose, but in this case the over abundance distracted from the story and knocked me completely out of the flow of the narrative. The third star was removed for issues with dialogue. The lack of the word "said" is not always a deal breaker in dialogue. However, more often than not I found myself confused as to who was speaking. The dialogue beats, while serving to show characterization, were so cluttered that it slowed the pacing to a crawl. Lastly, the color difference on the color was too dark to make out the title on my monochrome kindle. Although, I'm red green colorblind so that might just be me. Because of that I won't ding the book for the oversight.

An interesting story idea with elements of horror. A little polishing would make this a gem.

Side Note: I much would have preferred to give constructive feedback rather than a two star review, but I was reprimanded by the mods the last time I didn't post a review. I want you to understand that it is not my intention to dishearten you as to my reaction to your work. I'd like to give you some feedback as to how I think you can improve.

First off it's awesome that this is your seventh completed book. That blows me away that you have the will power and the self-discipline to write that many. I've only written three books and two novellas. I wish I had your dedication to the craft. 90% of the people who want to write never complete a thing. The only difference between a failed author and a successful one is perseverance and you have that in spades. So do not be discouraged at all by this review.

The writing in Moving Walls is about where mine was a little over two years ago. My voice was passive and you couldn't take a step without slipping on an adverb like literary banana peels. What helped me was an editor who was able to see what was in the way of the story. Through studying the issues she pointed out I was able to mostly remove them from my writing. Still struggling with comma splicing and awkward sentence structures, but I've started getting offers from editors for my short stories.

I think you can get there and I want to share some of the resources that I used to try and understand what was wrong with my writing and how to eliminate it. I know how frustrating it is when people just say "ah man it sux, lulz," (actually something someone said to me) and don't help you try to understand why it doesn't work.

Writing the Short Story by Jack Bickham is the best hands on manual of the mechanics of writing I've ever com across. It's written by the teacher of the teacher who taught Jim Butcher how to write. His Live Journal is a great Cliff Notes to Bickham's process. The Hemingway App is a free online tool that flags bad grammar, adverbs, confusing sentance structures, and passive voice. This is what I used to highlight the issues with my prose and try to work out what would be a better way to word it. What I learned was if it might get in the way of the flow of the narrative, cut it. Just cut it. Almost every time the story will be better for it.

I hope you're not too disappointed and I am very jealous of you self-discipline in writing.