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Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
It's for that novel I've been posting the cover from. Saving Baby. It's suspense. Thanks!
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Sure, but never forget: you get what you pay for. I keep telling folks to join critique groups--yes, I know it hurts--but if you persist in asking here...well, ya pays your monies, you takes your chances.
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The biggest challenge facing seventeen-year-old high school student Annie Rebarchek is getting a summer job. It’s a long shot but she interviews for a nanny position with billionaire Houston Monroe and is shocked when she gets the job—and even more shocked by what she finds.
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It's not dreadful, but it feels a bit "done." As in (sorry) "Lifetime Movie of the Week"-ish. I'd lose the TELLING: "...is shocked.....she finds." After all, why tell? Isn't the point of a description (which is NOT a blurb, folks), to tease, rather than tell?
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Monroe’s baby is terribly ill. It’s yellow-ish, crying constantly. Monroe insists it’s healthy but refuses to hold it and won’t let Annie hold it either. He asserts he’s only practicing a form of ‘self-soothing’ child-rearing, but Annie thinks something more sinister might be happening. Just as she discovers there is she’s fired.
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Definitely kill this. Again, you're giving away pretty much the entire suspense build-up to your book, aren't ya?
What about something more in line with how the girl wonders if she's qualified,when she believes that the baby MAY be ill, and that the father's eccentricity seems to be affecting the baby as well? Wouldn't it be more realistic for a 17-y.o. to vary wildly between typically know-everything-ness of a late teen to rampaging questioning herself? Wouldn't it be more suspenseful if the protagonist HERSELF doesn't know what she doesn't know, as in, the unreliable narrator? No? yes? Maybe?
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Up against Monroe’s overwhelming money, power and influence can Annie summon the courage to heed the baby’s cry?
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Yeah. See, today, you can get child services out to see pretty much anybody from Barack Obama on down, so you need to think that part through again. I mean...what's the THEME? Courage? Tenacity? Honesty? Is she going to fight for the baby? SHOULD she? Does a 17-y.o. know enough to know if the baby actually IS sick?
Just thinking out loud, here, but....I think you need to stop giving away all the plot ahead of time. Firstly, the discovery that the baby is allegedly ill should be for the reader--not the browser. You need to rework this, to add in suspense, mystery, danger--and NOT all the spoilers.
That's my $.02. We take checks, money orders and Paypal :-) We don't accept chickens or goats.
Hitch