TITLE: The Best Part of Me Is You
GENRE: Young Adult Romance
Everything might have been much better had my father remained in my mind - an accidentally discovered photo - a college kid leaning against the door of a beat up dark blue MG Triumph. The Polaroid is dated September 1989. He wears a black Ramones T-shirt with sun bleached spiked hair, a tiny hoop earring in one ear, and he has what looks like green eyes.
Not hooked. The opening sentence doesn't flow for me, going from keeping a father in mind, to a photo, to a college kid. It isn't clear to me what the father has to do with this photo, or if the father is the person in the photo. It just feels jumbled.
ReplyDeleteLoved it! I could picture the father perfectly in the photo. A stranger to the daughter? I would read further.
ReplyDeleteWording so too awkward to be hooked. I'd drop the much; it's unnecessary. An accidentally discovered interrupts the flow and image. Are his eyes green?
ReplyDeleteI would read on for sure. However one thing bugged me. Tthere is no such animal as an MG Triumph. Triumph and MG are two seperate car companies. I'd stick with the Triumph. The TR-6 in particular was a cool car, especially the rag tops. (I had one in not so distant my past!)
ReplyDeleteMy husband will kill me. He loves MGs and will disagree with me for sure.
Not hooked. The first sentence is wordy and confusing, and it's the one that should be doing the grunt-work of luring your reader in.
ReplyDeleteThe description that follows is nice, but description needs to imply some tension, foreshadowing or conflict to work as a hook. If you improve your first line, what follows can probably be left as is.
I usually really don't like this kind of opening, where the character is reflecting on how everything went wrong, but I did like this. The photo pulled me in, and I have questions that will keep me reading for at least another few paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteNot hooked. Convoluted sentences. Verb tense issues. Don't understand the reference to "in my mind" and "discovered photo." Physical description of the dad doesn't seem like a very significant bit of info to be starting the book.
ReplyDeleteSorry
I'm a little bothered by a romance starting with thoughts of a father. And this opening feels disjointed.
ReplyDeleteDon't like the title and what it implies, especially with romance. But I suppose a lot of people think they have a 'better half' out there.
ReplyDeleteFirst sentence took me awhile to parse. Not hooked as I don't like to work that hard when reading.