The surprise that everyone saw coming! Its time to smash!

My history with this story is long. It was among the first books I 'started' among these reviews, but did not finish at the time. Rather than continue to do a huge review, I decided to stop an sit with the author on improving the first set of chapters. The author is a relatively new one, and is humble enough to learn from others hungrily, and so soaked up my experience and explanations and assistance like a sponge. Its been slow going, but after nearly a year I felt she, and her edits, were good enough that I could struggle through the story without wanting to stab myself in the process. So I read the entire story, which is no small feat with its 50 chapters, and am prepared to give my final analysis.

I may have a bit of history with the author and a vested interest in it with my involvement, but trust me, that only makes me analyze harder. There will be no mercy!!

I am new to the whole werewolf/changling/whatever genre so I will be fair and account for ignorance on my part for what amounts to an alien culture.

The story is unedited past chapter 30-ish and is the first story in a series and will be treated as such. She plans for 4 stories and is almost done with the 3rd. Overall, impressive speed both in writing and in editing.

TLDR; A werewolf/changling/something slice of life romance filled with drama and, eventually, politics and even more drama.

Main Characters - Smashing! - The main character is easily the strongest part of the story. She follows the hero's journey very well and is a breath of fresh air after reading so many mary sue stories. She is strong and capable, which is shown through her actions, rather than people putting her on a pedastel and worshipping her. She is talented in certain areas, and this is shown, by the very fact she practices often. She doesn't magically get good at gardening or archery or pain tolerance, she gains those skills through practice, hard work, and more practice. She isn't a magical being who tames assholes with max'd out charisma, but it is so funny how she shuts people up with something as simple as cooking well and putting it in front of them. Its almost cheating at this point how realistic it is that you can shut most men up by putting food in front of them. Its funny, its of humble origins, its simple, it makes sense, and its stuff like that which makes the story stand out to me as being somewhat slice-of-life. The story basks in the simplicity of daily life, how something as basic as prankily throwing someone into a pool for laughs is more romantic than a huge gesture. This simplicity defines the character so much it boggles the mind and makes her relatable easily. Then as you see the source of her strength and lifestyle, it is again relatively simple. Its nothing epic like "im the last of my kind", but it is small, personal, and something many many many people have gone through on some level, yet obviously, and is clearly shown, in how it affects people to their core.

The next thing that is great about her is how she is learning about the culture. She starts as an outsider. She needs things explained. So if the reader doesn't know squat (*cough*) then its like being in her pocket learning things along with her, rather than assuming you know everything. This adds layers to the story because the werewolf/changling/whatever-the-hell-they-is people treat her like an outsider, in a nice way, and try to integrate her well. For this reason alone, so long as everything else holds up in this review, it makes the story a good introduction to the genre as a whole.

Then two things happen which annoy me. Its not so big as to diminish her long term value, but its strong enough in the short term to possibly avert readers. First, the MC has an extreme emotional connect to Chris, the romantic interest. Now, thats not a problem. The fact that it is largely based on a spiritual arranged-marriage bond thing is on par with the genre and so, isn't really a problem. The problem comes in how her reaction, as going heads-over-heels for him suddenly is in complete contradiction to her independant nature, her experience with abuse (Chris is almost as abusive as her ex for half the story. He gets better in the second half.), every vow she has made up to this point, everything that made her stand out against the 'pack', and, frankly, makes her look like a brain-dead masochist who purposefully wants to be abused. He triggers every PTSD she has on a regular basis, is an angry asshole in 90% of their enagements, a stalker, physically hurts her (context dont matter to the abused), and it isn't until after she completely falls for him that he starts to change any of this in the long term. This. Is. Backwards. In many ways they remind me of Vegeta and Bulma from Dragonball, they have similar dynamics, except Vegeta actually started to change and humble himself for her sake before they became a couple and even at his worst and cruelest he never laid a hand on her. The romance might have worked for me in this story if he had started to change as a person in the long term and let her get to know him outside of being an asshole, but these moments either dont exist or are so small and meaningless that when the time comes for her to think 'omg i cant lose him or i will die from sadness!' then it actually makes me think she is brainwashed or drugged. Thankfully they did start to be semi-couple-ish after this moment, but this is like eating raw food and then cooking it. Second thing is the vision she got at the end changed the tone of her from simple to... well not. basically she engaged with gods. This has the impact of a dues ex machina and took value away with the tone shift. It felt like the author had written herself into a corner and needed 'something' to dig herself out.

Side Characters - Smashing! - There is a fair number of side characters introduced very quickly. Thankfully the number of them doesn't really grow much after you first meet the main group. You get a few small editions, but its much later when you have spent plenty of time with the primary group. The SCs are dynamic, different in many ways, and each offer something unique to the table. You got a joker, you got an asshole, you got a cute couple, you got a nice kid, you got a sister-type, you got a brotherly-type, you got a grandmotherly-type, you got a non-rogue rogue and a rogue non-rogue (i swear those two are gonna be a couple), you got a navy seal commando type, and at the end of the day you should be able to tell this is quite a cast. Their interactions are full of drama and inter-personal relationships. They each act amazingly human in that they have good days and bad days. They trust or suspect. They have fun or cause problems, and sometimes the person having fun and the one causing problems will surprise you. Yet, despite this, the most amazing thing, is that they never. Ever. Break character. They feel like a big messed up family and with the integration of the MC it feels like an episodic television sitcom like 'How I Met Your Mother' as things happen as simple as going dancing, hanging out at a barbeque, swimming, and other things. They easily do exactly what they need to do with giving the MC different people to interact with and bounce off of as the story needs it, and each in different ways from their own wisdom, their own experiences, and their own perspectives without the slightest sign that the author messed up and confused them. Several of them have enough character within themselves to warrant being an MC in any other story and can carry their own weight in chapters from their exclusive point of view. It truly shows strength of characters when you have entire chapters without the MC, and it works fine.

I'm annoyed that those chapters often have recaps, but thats not on the characters. I'm not a fan of recaps. If you are fine with recaps of past events from other perspectives, then it wont bug you. This opinion is too personal to my own taste to warrant affecting the rating. Its not a guaranteed problem on a professional, unbiased level.

Grammar and Word Usage - Semi-smashing - The first time I attempted the story the way the story was written was my biggest problem. It was structured oddly, confusing, and filled with so much telling-over-showing that it pulled me out of the story before I could get into it. That problem has largely been resolved, at least in the edited parts. It is smooth and easy to follow. There do arise chapters that feel extremely rushed and cluttered, but those are later chapters, including the ending arc. The chapters that are confusing are unedited and she is editing more as I speak. The edited chapters are not perfect, as it would be at the stage for a professional editor to fine-comb it. I cannot give it a smashing, but I can definitely say that at the author's current pace, as well as her improvement, I think this problem is temporary.

World Building - semi-smashing - Along with the previous attempt with its telling-over-showing, then the author has made huge strides and resolved most of it. Some is acceptable. There is also information dumping, but they come at proper times when the MC herself needs an explanation for something that confuses her. In this way, as stated before, we learn alongside the MC and so relate to her even more. This weakness is turned strength because of her. After the edited chapters, going into unedited-land, then the amount of telling-over-showing, and the information dumps start to rear their ugly head in small bits. The time frame of events start accelerating and events that would be nice to see are put up as summary to make room for more epic, more important, and not-so-slice-of-life things. This is a tone shift in the story that follows semi-smoothly with the pace and act structure as its episodic background reaches the season finale's. I imagine most of the problems here will be resolved with the edits, as the edits have shown thus far, though I imagine many things will still be summarized. Its an acceptable loss with the pacing and tone, as well as just a need to not take 50 years to tell the story. Its a simple choice: Have a story that will take 100 chapters or summarize a few less essential things later on? Neither choice is perfect and its better to accept losses in the pursuit of a flawed story that is the best it can be, than to destroy it trying to be perfect and remove all flaws.

Beyond these things the world building is great, dynamic, and grows smoothly. You got a small circle and small scope, that grows slowly and smoothly with the more characters you get. It is within the characters that the world building exists. Its not so much a world so much as it is a region that the story puts all of its focus on, with its local problems and drama, made all the more impactful by how incredible the characters are to be involved in it. The world building takes advantage of the stakes we have in the side characters as its foundation, utilizes this, exploits it properly, and so is unnoticeable if you aren't paying attention but is a truly solid foundation for the rest of the series to build up from.

Plot - Smashing? - The plot is difficult to explain. It is so simple, and so character driven, as to be invisible. the plot that girl with ptsd meets group of people, they hang out, there is a romantic interest, there is interpersonal-drama in an episodic format, and... yeah thats about it for 35-ish chapters until the final act when some shit hits the fan with some nicely done seeds coming to fruition. On a large scale perspective its about her coming out of her shell, but its so smoothly done over such a long period of time as to be unnnoticable if you aren't paying attention. The transition of character in her strength of how she handles certain matters is polar opposite from chapter 1 to chapter 45-50 and yet, because of the time and care and gentle pushing, is exactly what one would expect from a story, from a hero's journey, and from a person in real life who, despite being of humble origins, shows herself to be much more by sheer will.

There is a little bit of annoying praise given to her, and putting her on pedastals, but its based on events where she has earned it, and in reference to the same, that it isn't mary sue-ish. Its just people giving praise where it is due. She doesn't really even want it nor seek it. She did things because it was the choice she made in the moment based on the circumstances, with accepting its consequences, which is character-driven plot.

Overall it is hard to rate the plot because there isn't too much of one. The plot is small and weak, with just enough to keep a thread tieing the many chapters together, but is not the strength of the story that is embraced. Instead the plot is overridden by other elements that do so by their sheer strength. The events are simple but feel powerful because of the stakes behind them, stakes reinforced by strength of characters, by how they come alive. Something as simple as a guy being told to buzz off in the midst of a war feels stronger than the war itself because of the stakes we have in the guy, and us knowing what it means emotionally for everyone. The story embraces people, not epicness. The plot, in simplest terms, is substituted and replaced. Gone, but not missed or needed.

Overall I can't give it a solid rating. It is both 4/5 and 5/5 at the same time, because the story knows what it wants to do, it knows its strengths, and it sacrifices things that are worth sacrificing in the name of making its strengths that much greater. When you have a story this long, that is written at such a fast paced as she has done, and continues to do so in both editing and pushing forward into the 3rd story in the series, then yes there will be problems. There will be paragraphs summarized and details overlooked. Yes, there will be flaws. But those flaws I see as so small and minute as to be as human as the characters themselves. Many stories strive to be perfect, to reach for that 10/10 jump, so much they destroy themselves by not knowing, accepting, and appreciating what makes them great and so builds cracks in the foundation in sheer desperation to be something its not. This story doesn't do that. It never forgets nor loses sight of what makes it good, what draws people in, and what people want. It never forgets its vision.

So rather than rate it, I'd say it is perfectly imperfect. It has a lot of fans and it is worth every one of them.

I'm out with a smashing!

If you are interested in learning to write, mastering the craft, want some really good reads, or just to chat and hang out with a mature group of adults, feel free to hit me up for a smashing discord book club that has lasted years.