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 Review #4828141 |
 | The waves below, the stars above  [13+] When the tsunami washed away the dreams.  |
| (4.5)  A review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"  First Impressions: I thought this was an excellent take on the prompt. The main character lost his siblings in the tsunami, and with them his sense of direction in life. His parents pined away soon after, reinforcing the total collapse of his original family. Something like that cannot be ‘fixed’, and yet he tried in small ways with the Monday rituals, flowers and dressing in yellow - gestures towards repairing something irreparable. He looked for a sense of belonging and home, first through cultural customs not his own, and then through his husband. The stars, too, seemed to represent an attempt to find guidance again. In the end, he tried to learn to live without it. He can never regain his siblings, but he learned to carry his grief alongside a new life, a chosen family and his husband’s love.  Suggestions: You said you were going to add to this story to make it fit the contest requirements. The story is quite complete as it is, but if you are looking for areas to expand, here are a couple of ideas: Some of the paragraphs feel a little dense because they pack in a lot of family history, cultural customs, and the husband’s background all at once. You could intersperse some dialogue between the main characters (or even with the other characters) to reveal those details more gradually. That way, the readers learn about their lives through interaction rather than being told everything in one block. I noticed that there was very little dialogue, so this could help make the story feel more rounded. The story sometimes leaps quickly between time periods and ideas, for example moving from the main character’s siblings to his husband’s family, to their wedding, and then to the children in rapid succession. To give the reader more time to process these emotional shifts, you might slow the pacing by breaking these sections into shorter scenes or adding brief reflective pauses. You could use something like a memory triggered by a ritual, a comment from his husband, or a detail in the present moment. This would help the emotional weight of each revelation settle more fully before the story moves on. I also have a couple of more technical suggestions: But, no matter how many times he tried to flee his memories waited patiently for him to return. I think this sentence would work better with a comma after “flee’ - it needs a slight pause there to make the sentence smoother. Gung always differed to him I think that was meant to say “deferred”. Their fragrance fill the room Just a typo, “filled”. He'd driven driven towards the mountains You have a repeated word there, “driven”.  Final Thoughts: I enjoyed the mixture of Thai customs and Scandinavian heritage, which I assume are based on your personal experiences, and the hopeful ending with a moment of quiet intimacy between the main character and his husband, hand in hand beneath the stars. The story was poignant and captured grief and healing without being melodramatic, with lines like The skies weren't the same as in Upsala showing the main character’s emotions well. The contrast between loss and love was very powerful. I hope you get to work on the story to make sure it meets the contest rules!
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