Review 3.5: Knowing His Secret

Note: This is a review from the first round of story reviews, but since the author just gave me permission to publish today, I figured I should post it for this round of reviews, lol. And again: since I clumsily deleted my app during my trip abroad, my story progress was lost, but I did read it before the incident :'). Enjoy!

Author: Vijayata Pal
Description: Lina is a girl living with some bad sufferings from her past. What happens when she comes across her past again?

Knowing His Secret is a drama about a girl called Lina who has gotten a new identity after stuff that happened in the past (still don’t know the specifics, but it seems to have to do with abuse done by her dad). At the start of the story she just broke up with her boyfriend and also just started a new job. Then her first day on the job turns out to be her birthday and her friends organized a trip for her starting the following day. Meanwhile a character named Ian gets introduced, who seems to know Lina, but doesn’t recognize her when he actually meets her on the trip. Honestly, this is just about how clear the story is to me so far. It’s called Knowing His Secret, but concerning me, it could’ve been called Knowing His/Her Secret or Knowing Anyone’s Secret, ‘cause there seem to be so many secrets and stuff going on, I don’t know anything about anyone anymore in this story! Don’t get me wrong – I love a good mystery – but even in a mystery, one needs some anchor points and a main character one gets his or her clues from to actually be able to get into the story and into a nice flow.

So, what could be done to keep the nice mystery-vibe and yet allow readers to get absorbed into your story-flow? Don’t keep EVERYTHING to yourself as an author! Feed the reader some (parts of the) secrets from time to time and let them in more on the main character’s troubles and thoughts. In this story this was done only once in all five episodes by showing a fraction of the main character’s troubled past without really elaborating about it and that just isn’t enough (for me) to stay really engaged in the story.

The directing was done well generally, but in the scene on the beach early on in the story, there is a bit of a layer issue. Other than that, the directing part seems fine, there are some sound effects and a little tune at the beginning of each chapter which are nice and well done.

Note: the author is working hard to improve her story, so some problems may already be solved :)

On the bright side, this really is a mysterious story and if you don’t mind mostly being left in the dark for the first five episodes, this could be a good story for you. It also has some nice friend characters with some typical traits that are amiable, the guys are also pretty funny and the secret story as far as I’m suspecting seems rather interesting as well. So if you’re a major drama/mystery-fan with the patience I seem to be lacking (sorry for that, I’m suspected of having ADD by my bestie already, so maybe that’s part of the problem), please support this author’s story by reading it and if you liked it, recommend it on your Episode profile!

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