All Comments on 'Dreaded Days'

Really immersive outstanding valentines tale that captures the heart of love. Great author writing another exceptional tale. I particularly loved the red herring you laid down in the opening snow wreck. I trudged through until Alex’s revelation fully expecting the worst of tragedies which made the happy ever after ending truly the best valentines story ever!

Of course 5 stars

Good but it was obvious from the beginning that Alex was going to be female and they would end up together. I also hated Valentine's Day as a kid (it was the day I found out my dad was cheating on my mom) but just as with the characters in this story grew out of it. Enjoy how this story spans both high school and college. 5*

Excellent story with a wonderful series of twists and turns until the final reveal and finale.

Thank you for your time and imagination.

Five stars *****

This Grant was a useless loser from school days. Dunce

Awesome story! Well-written and feel good. About halfway through I realized the MC had never referred to Alex by a pronoun so I kinda knew what was coming. Didn't spoil the story though. Keep writing!!

Wonderful story touched me with memories of my own. I especially liked the way the details developed and each of the connecting experiences fed the emotions.

Thanks and I have added you to my followers list.

WOW!!! This is truly an enjoyable story! This story is clearly the winner of the 2022 Valentine’s Day story contest. Btw, I enjoyed that significant twist/revelation that Alex is an Alexandra.

I strongly agree with servant111’s comments.

Gorgeous. Very fitting to the category, and the "reveal" was literally a jaw-dropping moment. I had absolutely no idea until their meet-up at the restaurant, and just.... WHAM. Just absolutely perfect delivery, and an easy five stars, SC!

Very nicely done - the story twisted and turned through a series of romantic disasters until you brought it safely home. Really enjoyed it. Thank you

An excellent and well thought out story. A couple of twists that I never saw coming. I thought the accident in the opening was a foreshadow of a sad ending. I was glad to see that it wasn’t the main characters involved. And Alex being a female friend and eventual wife, I never saw that coming. Totally from left field. But as with all of your stories, extremely well written and thoroughly enjoyable. Worth every bit of 5 stars.

Well crafted tale thanks

Your most sensual story yet, SC. (Loved the line about her sucking the essence of his soul from his body through his... ) Really enjoyed this. Well Done. A Perfect Valentine's Tale. Good Luck in the Contest! A favorite and 5 stars!

Good story!

5

A lovely story. Well done!

Great story and I loved the twist! Did not see it coming. So very well done!

Very nice story. Seems though that he could never have a romantic life all those years even "the rest of the year," like he could never date successfully through no fault of his own. It's not like he was waiting for her.... anyway despite that almost seeming too much (year after year after year), it was heartfelt. Early on I kind of thought he would end up with Vicki.

Nicely done, I enjoyed the set up. 5 stars.

And dare I say to other commenters, please don’t give away spoilers!

Excellent! Couldn't ask for a better Valentine story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

This story was indeed a mixed bag. The oft told struggle of young men (boys) with girls and love and the belaboring of the Valentine's Day nonsense was somewhat boring. However, the creativity of Alex being a girl and the dramatic foreshadowing of the story of the death of Alex's father was very welcome. Unfortunately, the story was long enough that I didn't read it all in one sitting and actually forget the opening interactions of Alex and Grant and was only mildly surprised when Alex turned out to be a female. (I actually went back to the opening pages and found that the author had cleverly avoided using any pronouns which would have given away the sex of the friend. And Alex is certainly a name for both males and females - very clever!) And I completely forgot the opening traffic accident fatality and what it might mean to the story. If it is read straight through in one sitting I think the impact of the plot twists would have more effect. 4*

THANK YOU!! Gotta say that YOU ROCK!!

Well done!!

A bit contrived, but then again that's the nature of valentine stories with any sort of fresh take on the subject.

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The Ugly Duckling trope --- the beautiful woman disguising herself a plain girl --- is a tried-and-true crowd pleaser, as is the Best Friend Turned Romanic Interest motif. Combining the two tropes and then adding a clever twist to unite them makes for an entertaining 5 star read.

Lovely story. Nice to read a feel good tale. “5”

The story was okay, SouthernCrossfire.

Gave you 3⭐️s.

Cassie Ortiz looks like a hottest from your description.

What's her story?

😀😄😁 I'm

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AMerryman

I always enjoy reading your stories. Thank you for writing them, and thank you for sharing your work.

Very nice story. 5

I really recommend everyone to take time to read this. It's slow burning, layered and bent in on itself. Fantastic.

Thank you so much for writing it.

Josh

There's nothing to criticise. A good length, well written, decent plotline and a great ending for this contest. You did a good job of hiding Alex's sex and once they'd drifted apart when he/she moved I thought that's Alex gone. Still wondering what the opening passage had to do with the story until you disclosed it. Thank you for sharing.

I doubt if I have read all the stories in the Valentine’s Day stories contest but this has been the best story I have read. I have not gone to the list of all the stories in the contest just the ones that have come up in my select. I will have to do that but time has been a factor limiting my reading.

I was happy to follow the author reading direction and got the story ran a full circle. Well written good characters and no I didn’t suspect Alex so the author got me!

Well worth the time to read and comment!

Please do keep writing and I will keep reading!

Well done. A sweet tale of love and loves lost. The story dragged at times, but overall well worth the read. Nice twist at the end, and I too had to go back and re-read the first two chapters again to make sure I just didn't miss something. A sweet Valentine's story. "5"

superb! Really nice hook - two of them, actually; the opening scene had never left my mind, but its place in the story still surprised me, as did Alex's gender. Nice job!

I really enjoyed this. But there were several times that as I was reading, I had a sense of deja vu. Your story is very similar to something that I already read on this site. I'm NOT accusing you of plagiarism. But it was curious to me that after I read the prolog that I knew the dead guy in the car was either Grant's father or Alex's. Too weird.

I didn't suspect Alex being a woman! Great job 5*

Great call back to the beginning of the story as the twist of the tale. Didn't see that one coming.

What a great ending; and the entire story kept my interest with what I considered very believable characters and situations. Keep getting the inspiration, writing the stories; and I will continue being a devoted reader. Thank you!

I was surprised when Grant and Alex had their reunion get-together and discovered Alex was female. I thought I missed something so I reread the first 2 pages and found no reference to Alex as she/her. If there was, I totally missed it. I honestly thought they were guy friends. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the story.

A great read - loved how Alex was assumed to be male through the store up until the end. Also I was expecting the ending to much different because of the prolog. Nicely done!

Nice job- 5 stars all the way. It had the one thing that defines good fiction for me...it grabbed my attention and kept it, without causing me to "fall out" of the story. It touched on getting a bit repetitive, but definitely made the Alex reveal that much better.

To be honest, when I first read the name Alex, I immediately suspected a female, but the dialog and misdirection made me forget about it, and by page 6 I was surprised when he was a she.

Shame that, for obvious reasons, it will never make the Hallmark channel, but a great story with believable plots and characters I actually cared about. The opening scene seemed disjointed when I read it, but tied in nicely to the pot,

At one point I was ready to call this a story about gains and losses in the love life of the typical pseudo-nomad created by the recent state of evolution of the capitalistic society, affording and requiring utmost flexibility and mobility of it's highly qualified work force. I was wondering if, when and with who our hero would sale into the harbour of a lasting, loving relationship

But obviously Grant just had to go through a number of figurative fires to become the man he needed to be for his intended, his old friend Alex. It's a small wonder Grant didn't evolve into a cynic along the way.

I like the timing, the alternating between acceleration and deceleration. As a result the story stays reasonably short, considering the number of romances that Grant encounters, while going into enough detail to make the character development comprehensible.

Since in continuing my comment I couldn't avoid to mostly repeat what other readers have already expressed in previous comments, I hereby make it my point to make a •

A dozen years ago, on a business trip where the sales specialist and I were delayed and wound up having to stay an extra day, I asked her if that might cause problems to be missing Valentines Day at home. Her response changed my marriage. She said that she and her husband of thirty years decided twenty years before to just skip the Hallmark Holidays. Having known some fundamentalists that believed Christmas, Easter and Halloween especially were forms of devil worship, I gently probed for a cause. Her response was that she and her husband realized that they were constantly stressing to figure out plans and presents for Vday, Mday, Fday. And now they don’t, and didn’t miss it. When I got home, over a belated Vday dinner, I shared that philosophy with my bride of 18 years. She looked at me, and at the little gifts we’d gotten each other, and suggested that would totally suit her. Haven’t bothered with any of those since, and for the most part, Christmas and birthdays just dwindled as well. Thing is, we’ve both got anything we need, and don’t need or want tokens and if we want to go out and do something really big together or for ourselves we can do it. We’ve saved not just money on 5$ cards, but innumerable hours and stress trying to figure out yet another gift to be unused, or somehow surpass the over the top event from last year. We are much calmer now together, and get along better than ever. So yeah, a passing comment from a colleague on Vday changed our lives.

-rwh

A serious five stars. Quite a story. You sort of tricked us regarding Alex though. We read along from Grant's point of view, but we didn't know what Grant knew, and it was central to the story.. You're forgiven though.

This was absolutely amazing. I cried and laughed, and I want to thank you for writing this. I am so glad I found your profile the other night.

Smart twist in the end. One has to go though the ultimate simp's failures in love to reach it though. The story tries to convince us that his horrible love life was because of a poor choice in partners. But all I could see was a simp putting women on a pedestal and wagging his tail until they throw him a bone. These are personality traits that don't vanish with growth. His childhood sweetheart will soon realise that's not a man worthy of respect. The problem with his Vdays was him all along.

I've read this a couple of times and each time I like it a bit more. What I would have liked was an epilogue a couple of years in the future where he meets up with one or more of his 'dates' and find they've all had good lives with no regrets.

Fun, sweet story, and the characters felt very real. Reading along with Grant's growth really cemented it. Thanks for sharing!