Let me start off by calling out the Open Novella Contest this was written for, because I'm still waiting to hear who won. Goddamn, it's been almost two months since y'all added me to the Short List and I'm still waiting for the winner out here.

Anyway, the review.

'SOULMATE COOKIES' is about Ivy, a chef who's desperate for love. She lands a job at the Soul Food Cafe. Then some shit happens with a diary (or a 'dairy', as it's often written, but that's an unfortunate recurring typo) and… love cookies? I read the whole story and I still don't know what the hell it's about. Sorry mate, that ain't a good sign at all.

How come I don't understand? I'll tell you. First of all, the GPS. So many mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, that I can barely focus on what's going on. Sentence structures get wonky every time I blink and tense-switching occurs at least twice per chapter. I just can't keep up.

Second of all, the whole thing feels like it's rushed. Many things happen, but nothing that actually seems significant. At some point there was a mention of Gods being real and the story never got back to that, for example. What the hell? Explain it to me. What am I supposed to do with that info?

I've also often found myself wondering, "where are they right now? Who's talking to who?" There are very few descriptions of locations and worlds and all those things that make a story easier to follow. We barely have character descriptions of the large cast to go on, too! Well, not counting the pictures at the start of the story. A bunch of hot people. That's all.

It doesn't feel quite alive to me.

The characters feel bland, undeveloped, I don't know what to make of them. A character like Livia? Could be interesting, but all I see is that she's a black-and-white bitch, nothing more. Daniel is a hot asshole, nothing more. Kuma is hot crush material… nothing more. Who are these people? Are they people, or stick figures?

What I did like was that the author wasn't afraid to give the characters flaws. Ivy behaves selfishly and others call her out on it (like they should), but at least that means the characters aren't perfect little angels who can do no wrong. If only they were well-developed and more likable too.

From the very few things I've managed to pick up from the plot, I wasn't too impressed. The concept sounds interesting, but the execution, to me, was very poor. If I had to summarize the plot in a sentence, I'd say "desperate girl has beef with other girls over guys who really aren't worth it, everyone is hot, hey look there's love magic or something".

And if that summary isn't correct at all? Well, you know why.

Rating: 4. I'm still not sure what I read here.