In Our Reverie (IOR) is currently a very short story. Currently it stands at a Prologue and 5 chapters. With that in mind this review is a tiny bit complicated for me. The first thing I always keep in mind when reading and reviewing is what potential the story has based on its central idea, its themes, and anything particularly unique and interesting to add flavor and uniqueness it might have. Then with its full potential in mind I consider what the story has going for it and what mistakes are holding it back. However, being 1+5 chapters in length, it is just finishing its beginning start. So I have to both consider the story as it CURRENTLY IS as well as WHAT IT CAN BE, and grapple both the problems and strengths in both scenarios.

I will be rating it on its current standing, but I will still discuss problems the story will need to resolve going forward that have not been accounted for as of yet.

TLDR; Someone suffering from heartache and depression finds a bullshit magic cafe where miracles happen

Plot - Semi-Smashing! - The plot is, at its core, a complicated one, but most of all the author recognizes that and takes care to acknowledge the complicated aspects without blowing them off. Within this acknowledgement and time given to story beats comes a strong maturity I quite liked.

The plot so far on a basic level is: A guy loves a girl. He is betrayed by girl. He tries to move on, but can't. He gets depressed. He tries dealing with the depression, but can't. Then some magical bullshit happens (for no reason) where he hears voices and sees things from the perspective of a random girl at random times. He takes the oppurtunity to track her down and see if he can heal himself. In the process he stumbles on a cafe where the only people that can find it are people in need of a miracle. (Despite the dark tones of the story, the cafe itself has a tone of healing, holiness, and refuge from the world.)

What we have is a lot of story and character arch types rolled up in one. A wounded character. A depressed character (which is an anti-story, normally.) A romance. A positive curved character arc. What combines all of this is something where I wouldn't go so far as to call it a hero journey in the typical sense, but an internal heroic journey all the same. He has an inner dragon he is facing.

In previous reviews I have touched on depression as a story mechanic and how easily it is mis-used. Depression is an anti-story because by its nature it forces nothing to happen, which is an antithemia to story. However, this story handles depression, perhaps, perfectly, as a story. Unlike most stories that start depressed and end depressed, ultimately moving nowhere, while claiming to be a tragedy and failing at this, this story is a real tragedy as you start from a good place and decline into a bad one. There isn't a reason explicity given as to what his mistake is in causing his own tragedy, but a closer look can determine a couple of lies the MC held: 1. Girls are perfect angels to be put on pedastals. 2. You can stick your head in the sand. 3. She is all he needs in life.

Reality hits hard as his lies bite him in the butt. Girls aren't angels, as she cheated on him. You can't just assume everything is good because from her brief portrayel it seems to have been a long time coming as she was bored of him. And you can't just turn this girl into your entire identity or else you cannot recover if it fails and become too clingy either way.

Its a brief tragedy, but then it is followed by a second tragedy as he gains a new set of lies: 1. Love is a lie. 2. He cannot recover.

The depression kicks in based on these lies, which is excellent, but he tries anyway to deal with life because just because he 'cannot' recover doesn't mean he 'shouldn't' recover, which while not explicity stated is his clear thought. This is an excellent portrayal of depression. He isn't dead, but he is falling. Depression is slow, silent, binding, like a slowly intensifying gravity on everything. Every bit of effort is made, but fails in its result and becomes more difficult to attempt each time. From this the anti-story and story have a conflict of raw energy that is exactly how to do it.

Now, the first problem comes here. The story picks up five years later. Five. Years. That is far too long of a time gap for him to be at this stage of the narrative in its struggle with depression and his struggle with the trauma. Esspecially as, seemingly within the story, he hasn't been attempting very obvious things like counseling, therapy, moving to a new location, or even trying to go back into the dating scene (and failing, but give us something). There seems to be no effort made beyond allowing time to pass for recovery, and after 5 years it holds him on a daily basis as strongly as when the trauma first starts. I know people carry PTSD for a lifetime to varying degree, but the story makes the MC completely stupid to make up for this time spent doing jack all. If he had tried and fails therapy and multiple psychologists, fine. If there were repeated reminders beyond his own stupidity, like the ex-girl flaunting how big of a Smasher her new boy toy has, but we have nothing here. No being with friends. No being with family or extended family.

But yet the rest of the story has him attempting things with oppurtunity presents itself. Beyond his seeming stupidity of wasting the last 5 years doing jack all, this creates a character contradiction as someone who won't even any attempts alongside someone who makes every attempt.

Personally, what I would have done is shorten it down to one year only. Spend a year being stupid (now within normal, reasonable, and relatable human paramaters) of thinking time alone will do it, only to fail on the first anniversery of their relationship and therefore realize "time didnt heal this".

It wouldn't change a single detail of the story beyond keeping him from being incompotent.

Now, the event that triggers a harder depression is his birthday and the reminder of being alone. During which he hears random voice. The voice is completely random without anything lead up to it, but that is okay. The story has a 'thing' for randomness within its omnipotent miracle feeling at times, so the fact that it was random and came out of nowhere is acceptable.

One small problem. The random voice is written in , while the MC thinks the person is nearby. This is an easy mistake to make. What it does is give the readers information the MC DOES NOT have. This takes away from the initial impact as the narrative begins around it and the revalation that the voice isn't actually someone nearby. Once this knowledge is established, then yes, bold it, so that the clear contrast can be made between those speaking within the scene and this random ghost voice can be seperated. But for the first few times the random-ghost-voice is done, while the MC thinks it is an actual person in his immediate vicinity, I think the font should be the exact same as everything else so we can be within the MCs mindset with him. It might be confusing, but that is okay because the MC is also confused and that relatability will be important. (If the goal is to purposefully give the readers information the MC does not have, then ignore me. but I do think it diminshes the initial impact of the revelation.)

So the MC hears the voice and at first it annoys him, but he comes to realize its an actual person and so he reacts to it by... well studying her. The girl isn't speaking to him, but he hears things anyway. So he picks up on things like her name, what kind of food she likes, etc. Its a nice way of beginning a romance for those with a creepy-as-shit-stalker fetish like half the women in my discord. The only thing missing is her favorite shampoo in his shower. *cough*siber*cough* Joke and trolling aside, its half true, and this is based on his perspective and approach. Its one thing to want to meet her to see why her voice is in her head, and have an interest in her as a person having come to know some things about her. Its a whole different thing to go from "all girls are angels and im so in love" to "i cannot love, its all a lie" to "all girls are angels and im so in love [version 2]" within a few chapters. While I love the idea of taking the iniatitive to heal when oppurtunity comes and going on a journey, the way his bipolar mind spins in circles so hard on this core central theme and lie makes me facepalm.

I both love and hate the pacing. There is wasted word space as we get the emotional and tone defining reality of his depression and the reason for it not once, not twice, but many many many times in short succession. Its one thing to having reminders spread out, its another to beat a dead horse. The way he interacts and makes efforts while failing on its own easily speaks for his mental status, so easily 1/2 or even 3/4 of the amount of paragraphs spent analyzing that wound is excessive. Despite this the pacing is pretty quick becuase the story doesnt waste scenes on anything but what is important to the main story, but, on the ocassion of his choice to go from "love" to "love me not" to "love" it is far too fast pacing. We need more story beats in there on his mental level, even if he decides to be stupid and return to the first lie that made him suffer eventually, otherwise he comes across as stupid because he learned nothing from the 5 years and SHOULD suffer until he learns his lesson.

With a lot of stalking-facts on hand he goes off to meet her and finds the bullshit miracle cafe. Which is fair enough. From this we get some world building to the idea that fate/God/karma is at work in peoples lives, which works well in making the 'random' events to occur at times not so random. I quite liked it.

Then we meet the random-ghost-voice girl and some of the reality comes crashing down. Not near as hard as before, but enough to show that the MC still very much has the very same lies in his heart that made him suffer from the start.

Overall it was excellent at story beats in fusing romance with a wounded character. The second girl had a first impression, the guy went to a place where they will meet on a regular basis, and now that first impression has been ruined to be replaced with a more truthful and mature impression and he will have to come to terms with the difference, and that within the difference might be the truth that can help him finally recover from his trauma. Its an excellent fusion of two different arch types. However, a problem arises, that will need to be remedied, in that she has no first impression of him. This relationship is by far not a mutual thing, so the romance will need to be very careful to keep from being creepy as shit and also not feed into his perceived lies if the story has any hope of healing him from his own tragedy. The pacing will need to recognize that the second-girls current position in the story narrative is different from his and so you will have two seperate narratives going on at the same time despite them having a very similar thematic plan. You do not have to rush her to reach where he is, as them consistently being at different places along their own path only increases the juicy conflict and how much of it will be around from beginning to end, but it still needs to be recognized.

Main Character - Semi-Smashing - Despite how hard I bashed him for being stupid, I quite loved him. He has a lot of heart, empathy, self-control, and most of all is self-aware enough to know he has a problem and the desire and self-motiviation to do something about it even if he doesn't know how.

Now if only that self-motivation didn't completely conflict with his utter lack of motivation for the last 5 years, then he would be excellent. Not perfect, but close.

Can't say anything about the random-ghost-voice girl yet. We just met.

Side Characters - Semi-Smashing - There are a few side characters that work well in the places they are put. They do their jobs and then disappear from the narrative. While the important thing is accomplished in pushing/pulling the MC out of his comfort zone and showing us different sides of him, I do worry about the future of the story in this aspect as the side characters come across as disposable. Either we will be needing a lot of side characters over time and 90% of the emotional resonance will be on the main characters, or we will need the disposability to be diminished so we can keep a couple around long term and build up some emotional connections with them. The latter will be more important as otherwise we really wouldn't care at all about them and too many side characters gets very confusing.

Grammar and Word Usage: Smashing! - The author is not a native english speaker. However, this doesn't show. The story was very easy to read. Good job. :) The only things I would have to say here I already did, and I consider them more relavent to the plot than to grammar.

World Building: Smashing! - The world building is rather minimal so far. The focus is on the relationships and internal stuggles, so that is proper. The only world building added outside that is the nature of the bullshit miracle cafe, which was done very well and added things to the story that made it not only make more sense, but made it a little better.

Overall I would rate it, at its current standing, 3 smashing out of 5. With a few VERY VERY easy fixes I explained, then easily 4/5 because the tiny things had a larger impact.

Again, at its current standing. This is a complicated story in its execution and if the ball is fumbled it easily can fall to a 2/5, but, you know what, even then, I think it would be good. The story has enough charm and potential that a 2/5 would still be a good read I would happily recommend to anyone who likes a good juicy romance.

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.