TITLE: Imperfect Lives
GENRE: Young adult contemporary
To find her sister’s killer, seventeen-year-old Mira must defy her strict Indian parents and join forces with her deceased friend’s brother to connect clues linking the two deaths. Soon they’re in a race to expose a killer before he finishes them off, too.
Nice effort. It reads a bit awkwardly to me, and I think you can get it down to one sentence. No names are needed in a logline; just a "17-year-old girl" is sufficient. A logline is a brief answer to an agent or editor when they ask "What is your book about?"
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if the 'deceased friend' is connected to the sister's death, but yeah this needs a bit more energy. The 'in a race' idiom should probably vanish too.
ReplyDeleteAgree with the 2 above, but I really like this story and where it's going!
ReplyDeleteWell I'm interested. Death of her sister is unfortunate, death of her friend as well is more interesting. I did have to read the first sentence a couple of times to make sure I was getting the deceased person right, but I think that's just the way it's going to come across when you have to keep things brief in a logline like this.
ReplyDeleteI was following along until the second half of the first sentence and then I found "deceased friend's brother," and felt like it was my second cousin's first wife. It just felt too complicated for one sentence. Maybe brother of a dead friend would be easier to digest, and two sentences might also be easier. Word count is worth watching, but not at the cost of creating a confusing sentence.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it could flow a bit smoother, but I like that you've made the stakes clear and written it in a way that's intriguing.
ReplyDeleteSounds exciting! I'm not great at log lines--trying to learn here. So I'll ask--would it be a good thing to refer to a specific inciting incident?
ReplyDeleteGreat job! It hooked me. The last line I suggest axing "soon" and "too" which has been mentioned and also "he"-keep the gender of the killer a mystery.
ReplyDeleteI think you need to start off by telling us why SHE has to do this. Are there no police investigating these deaths? With murder mystery/thrillers, the fact that the killer doesn't want to get caught is implied, but you still need to explain why the main character will risk her own life to do something the police should do.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Holly
What don't her parents approve of - investigating or being alone with the boy? And why does she need that boy to investigate a tie between her friend and her sister? Why aren't the police investigating? I'm not clear on why she has to be the one to take such risks.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but, it seems a bit too busy for me. Also I have a problem with the discovery of the killers being left up to a seventeen year old.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking for a tie between the two deaths or, more specifically, why Mira and '...her deceased friend's brother...' (a terribly cumbersome phrase, btw) would have a mutual involvement in this pursuit. That's not to say it's a bad concept just, from where I'm sitting, I think it could have been laid out in a more cohesive manner.
The kicker line, "...in a race to expose the killer before he finishes them off, too," is, pardon the pun, a killer hook. Unfortunately, everything leading up to it is... muddled and unclear. Just a little more tweaking might be all it needs.
I like the premise but too was confused by the set-up in this logline. The mention of the deceased friend made me re-read to understand that the sister was dead along with a friend. I love a good mystery and the intrigue.
ReplyDelete