Hello Amethyst Angel 💐,

my name is Tiggy and I am reviewing your story as a judge for "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" . Thanks for entering! Please bear in mind that my comments and suggestions are only my opinion. Other reviewers might see it differently.


First Impression:

The beginning drew me in straight away. A story told from the point of view of a horse is quite unusual, and I was looking forward to the unique voice of the narrator.

The plot was quite straightforward, and it was clear from the beginning that this unhappy, nervous girl was in some kind of trouble that would surely follow her to the ranch. That doesn’t mean it was boring; on the contrary, the way the girl and the horse bonded was quite heartwarming (I thought it was especially sweet how the horse tried not to frighten her at the beginning), and later on, you threw in enough action to make it quite exciting.

The story wasn’t heavy on dialogue and there were a few lines that didn’t feel particularly natural, but I liked how you filled in some of the blanks by having the horse overhear words that didn’t mean anything to her. By having her mention those phrases, the readers could follow what was happening.

I also thought the descriptions were nicely done, especially of the horse, and again, you weaved this into the narrative quite well by having Justin explain things to Connie that might otherwise have seemed like an infodump.


Suggestions:

The story was very polished and I didn’t notice any technical errors. I do, however, have a couple of suggestions:

I felt that the prompt for this contest was used as little more than a one liner that didn’t really fit in with the scene. Drake might have told her The devil's in the details, girl, but I didn’t see how the rest of the story related to the prompt. I would suggest embedding it more and showing how a small, overlooked detail caused problems or difficulties because it didn’t seem to apply here.

And I assumed from the way Connie hung her head and seemed to be ashamed at the beginning that she was doing court ordered community service and wasn’t there to volunteer, so Justin’s comment how she would love doing community service at the stables seemed a little insensitive. I was wondering if there might have been a better way to express this, maybe along the lines of, “It won’t be as bad as you think, and who knows, you might enjoy working with the horses.”


Final Thoughts:

I thought this was a well written and interesting story. I might have rated it half a star higher had it not been for the use of the prompt. Ordinarily it wouldn’t matter but as I am reviewing this as a judge for the contest, the prompt is very important and I felt the story didn’t really fit it particularly well. Apart from that, this was a good read!