Hello Jill,

Wow, what a powerful piece of writing. This story was so engrossing I am grieving for having read it. The characters were so real and believable. You made me feel their confusion and pain. I am still shaken by it. Amazing job.

The characters and story are so true to life that you become immersed without even being aware of it. I genuinely care about this family. I feel true sorrow for their loss. I WANT to comfort them myself. But most of all I want to be Alyssa's rock so she can properly grieve her father's death. Bravo!

I am not a grammar or punctuation master so I hate commenting on that stuff but there are a couple things about your usage that jump out at me. They are these:

1) liberal use of adverbs-- ly words seldom add anything important to a sentence but always slow the pace of the story and sometimes distract from what is important. Here are some instances where I think you can eliminate or rephrase:

Paragraph 1 Sentence 4

Paragraph 2 Sentence 2 & 3

Paragraph 6 Sentence 1

Paragraph 10 S6

P11 Last Sentence

P14 S11 This is also a sentence fragment so should be rephrased or attached to the sentence before it.

P16 Last Sentence

2)your use of the word "toward"-- I don't know if there is an actual rule for this but in my mind you walk or look 'toward' things that are immeasurable like a horizon, a mountain, an ocean, the unknown. Everything else you walk or look "to" things like people, places, objects. Keep in mind this is just my opinion and I could quite possibly be full of s*** hehe.

P4 Next to last sentence

One last observation, I know right. Sorry. I noticed in the first half of the story there was A LOT of 'pulling into embraces' very close together. It started to sound repetitive. I understand there is A LOT of hugging going on but you might want to consider alternative wording for some of it.

Man, I feel like I just ripped your story apart but that is not how I meant it at all, Jill. This things even if there are several of them are all really really minor. None of them detract from the beauty and depth of this tale.

These are things that I look for and try to eliminate from my own writing so I tend to notice them when I review other people's. Please don't get the impression that I did anything but LOVE this piece.

In my opinion the storytelling is perfect and with just a bit of polish so is the writing. I loved it and I wish I had read it sooner.


My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .



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