Are you a fan of books? Are you a fan of Pokémon? Well then, you've come to the right place! In this book club, we will devote every review purely to Pokémon fanfiction.
Includes:
- Articles on Pokémon Fanfiction
- Specific interviews with the autho...
WARNING: This review WILL be talking in detail about spoilers. If you have not read the story before reading this review, I recommend you do so now.
My overall score is based on the GRA grading scale.
* * *
"This year, I'm going to do it: I'm going to give Annice a red rose."
* * *
PLOT
I think it's safe to say that I'm not the biggest fan of romantic stories, to say the least. However, it's not simply because I don't like romance—most people on this website have little to no romantic experience, and therefore write painfully unrealistic romantic plots. This story was fairly different from that.
The story kicks off with a chase romance, which was annoying until I finished the story. This type of romance is painfully common on Wattpad, and it felt like a generic romantic fic until I started to suspect the twist. I do appreciate seeing a boy chase after a girl; normally, Pokémon fics feature submissive girls chasing after boys with no real reason other than to be with them.
It didn't take me long to suspect the twist; the moment Preston refused to tell Ryan who his red rose was for, I knew it would be for him. I'm pretty sure you were just trying to hint at the plot twist and not give it to us in chapter two, but you foiled the surprise with a number of small slip-ups.
It was apparent when Preston threw away the countless love confessions that he wasn't interested in girls. I didn't expect then that he was gay, but that scene pushed the other scenes to seem too obvious. This particular scene was executed well, and I don't think it needs much revision, but it was the first step in revealing the twist to me.
You mentioned that Preston would tell Ryan immediately if he was interested in anyone. That means that if he didn't want to tell Ryan who it was, it would be either him or Annice. And, knowing how much Preston cared for Ryan, I doubted he would confess to Ryan's crush.
To avoid this, I think you should replace the line "you may be surprised" (written right after Ryan asks who the rose is for) with something more vague, like "Someone I hang out with sometimes", or "A friend of mine". These both can refer to Ryan, without being as obvious as the original line. Since Preston is so popular, it's realistic to think there's people Preston knows that Ryan doesn't.
The climax was very well executed, however. I liked that it didn't necessarily end with a romantic relationship—it's up to the readers to decide if they think the characters ended up together. I think the climax was the strongest part of the story, does not need much revision.
Overall, I liked the plot and the buildup to the climax, but there were a few slip-ups that made the climax a little too predictable.
DESCRIPTION
I hate one sentence descriptions. Cool, he's going to give someone a rose. I could have guessed that much from the title. The description doesn't spark my interest at all; if I wasn't judging short story, I wouldn't have read the book. There's no reason for me to want to based on that description.
I think you could use the description to describe how the event works, so you don't have to use so much time explaining it in the actual story. You could do that, and then close with the sentence that's the current description. You have to do something to give people an idea of the plot and draw in their interest. The story is well-written, but I expected the opposite based on the description.
OVERALL
This book has one detrimental flaw—a flaw so big that I was slightly upset to see it win the Pokémon Watties: the book is hardly related to Pokémon at all.
The biggest taste of the Pokémon world this book offers is the partner each character has, and a handful of scenes where their partners are briefly mentioned. These Pokémon don't even show up for more than a couple of lines—it felt like they were only thrown in so the words "Pokémon Fanfiction" could be slapped on the title. I get it, fanfiction generally gets more attention here than general fiction, and creating your own world can seem a little intimidating. I'm not sure if the latter is the reason, though, because you've created a solid, original world if you take the Pokémon out. That's the biggest problem; if you take out the four sentences worth of Pokémon content, the stories stands perfectly fine as a general fiction romance book.
This was a problem seen across a lot of the one shot and short stories, but I believe your book was one of the worst cases of it. Most people at least tried to make Pokémon or canon characters a significant part of their story, but this felt plain lazy.
Don't get me wrong, the story itself is very nicely written and your effort definitely shows, but the implementation of partner Pokémon was so lazy it hurt. Really, I think you should either make the main characters canon characters (which I don't think is the best option, because I liked your characters), or just make it general fiction. Unless you expanded on the book to show some sort of development before or after the events of the book, I don't think you can smoothly and sufficiently implement Pokémon into the story.
Beyond pushing the hints towards the climax a little too hard and the lack of actual Pokémon content, this was a very well-written book. I noticed a rather small amount of grammatical errors, and the story usually flowed very well. "Boys With Flowers" is an entertaining, quick read.
OVERALL: 5.5/10
The author has a solid grasp on formatting and grammar, and only needs to work on making the foreshadowing more subtle. The author should either make this a general fiction story, or expand on the Pokémon aspect of it.
