Title - Spotlight Kiss (Chapter 1-25)
Author - Flying
Reviewer - sadnitez
Story Link - http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/19633/spotlight-kiss-jonghyun-key-minho-onew-romance-shinee-taemin


Title – 4/5
The title was eye-catching with the idea of a Spotlight. It suggests possible character development for the long-forgotten female lead as she plunged under a Spotlight’s attention. This piques my curiosity because I became interested to see her potential development/growth. The title also conjured a romantic imagery of a Spotlight Kiss and this increased the story’s attractiveness to me! Lastly, I find that the title also goes well with the foreword provided and is relevant to the story’s content. This is a sweet title that complements well with the dreamy story content!

Poster – 4/5
The poster is sweet, nice and dreamy. The pictures of the girls are sweet looking and Minho looks exceptionally cute as well! What slightly confuse me are the multiple pictures of girls on the poster. Are the pictures portraying the same girl or different girls? (I’m sorry about this. I couldn’t tell for sure whether the girls have the picture belong to a same face or different faces) ^^b

If the pictures are used to portray different female characters, who is who and who is the main lead? No worries though, this minor problem is usually solved by adding the names of the characters in the poster ^^

Foreword – 8.5/10
The foreword is clear and easy to understand. Extra credit for taking the time to adjust font sizes and colours to increase the display’s attractiveness!

You might try to describe a bit more about the step-sisters though. They do appear quite consistently throughout the story so it might be better to introduce them more descriptively in the foreword. This way, readers can understand more about their different characteristics when the story progressed further on. This is especially so since the portrayal of the step-sister(s) will likely differ from readers’ assumption of typical step-sisters.

Originality – 7.5/10
I like how the story is somewhat inspired/based on the storyline of Cinderella. This gives the story a slight Disney-dreamy touch! I can however, tell the general outline simply because well, it’s Cinderella! So I’ll be expecting step-sister as love rivals, Cindy receiving fairy godmother’s help etc.

But that’s not to say the story is unoriginal. You have created twists and turns here and there that I can’t really tell how the story will be carried at some points. This is naturally a good thing because unexpected drive readers to read!

Flow – 13.5/15
Each chapter is short, simple and easy to read. A few chapters were too short for my liking, but overall, the pace of the story is fine. I like how you seem to take your time to develop each character by providing a specific chapter/section to concentrate on their POV. This may slow down the pace of the story at certain points. But you solve the problem by throwing a twist at the end of a chapter to arouse reader’s interest again. Good job on that! ^^

Plot/Characterization – 16.5/20
Though a Cinderella-themed story may be cliché, you manage to throw in your own touch by altering how each character act and feel. Minho seems like a typical prince at face-front, but his characteristics proved otherwise. Cindy is portrayed as a damsel in distress, but her determination to become happy (in subsequent chapters), makes her into a character that readers wish to support. Hee-Jin and Hee-Lin are the twins yet each has her own unique characteristics. Depictions of each character are quite realistic, especially when you attempt to differentiate them from the conventional portrayals of Cinderella’s step-mother and step-sisters. Thumbs up on this different approach!

Clever manipulations of the plot have also prevented me from judging the characters rashly. I can’t bring myself to confidently state that the step-sisters and step-mother are hateable/dislikeable/evil since they have been trying to be nice to Cindy (so far). So even if they do something bad in later chapters, I may be able to emphasize or justify the reasons behind their actions. But then again, I can’t say anything for sure with the current chapters. However I will be curious to see how the subsequent plot will intensify conflicts between the characters!

Writing – 15/20
Your writing style is simple and easy to read. I can see that you attempted different writing tones for each character’s perspectives.

E.g.: The tone of Cindy’s perspective tends to be more formal and serious while the tone of Hee-Jin’s perspective tends to be more casual.

I find this to be a good method to use because this enabled me to grasp a better understanding of each character’s personalities through their own words/thoughts/perspectives ^^

However, I find myself a bit bothered by alternating POV styles in the chapters. At the start, you may describe Cindy from a 3rd POV. But in between, you alternate to Cindy’s 1st POV.

E.g.: Chapter 13 content – If the entire chapter is about Cindy’s perspective, I suggest that you keep to one type of POV instead of using different POV style. This way, the story format will become more consistent and this will be less confusing to the readers and make the story flow better ^^

Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling/Vocabulary – 7/10
The start of the story went well. I do enjoy the writing style of 3rd-point of view. However whenever you change to 1st-point of view (E.g.: Hee-Jin, Minho etc), you switched to present tense. It seemed a bit inconsistent against the past tensed you used in 3rd-point of view.
There are some vocabulary errors here and there that are rather...eye-catching and amusing. =X

E.g.: Replaced by the sound of cockroaches and birds, and leaves being pushed by the wind. (Chapter 6)
Replaced by the sound of crickets, birds and wind-blown leaves.

E.g: A pair of feet was going through her closet.
A pair of hands was going through her closet.

Do take note of your typing errors and some minor mistakes that appeared occasionally in each chapter.

E.g.: she cried at everything there was to cry at.
She cried at everything there was to cry at.

Quite a few sentences structures are awkward as well. But I find them okay as long as they are understandable. ^^ However if you revise the sentence structures, I’m sure that your story will flow better to the readers’ eyes!