All Comments on 'Making Home Ch. 08'

A rather prickly relationship!

5

I had to re-read to better gauge things for my rating and tried to straighten out a doubt in my mind.

Largely a reasonable set of exchanges between Avery and Elijah, and you externalize for us many of their internal conflicts that lead to some of their replies to each other: most of these are cute, understandable and even fascinating...while a few don't match their characters/prior understanding/arrangement. I'll elaborate below.

Elijah knows he'll have to "coach her up," yet he's annoying impatient with her for some reason in this chapter (you could enlighten us more on this next chapter); Avery knew she would get a company car, so for her to take it so personally that he asks her to sell her car is missing the boat and forgetting part of the arrangement. No author can afford to miss these critical elements, since you predicated developing this story on the contract; remember that readers will call you on this. Can you fix it? Absolutely, although I was prepared to dock a star for that very reason...but I will give you the benefit of the doubt here. I would also say I hoped we'd have 3 Lit pages to read, as the story does feel like it needs to be farther along: I'm also seeing how the next installment shapes up.

You polish Clyde well in this story, and his character is a major strength; I enjoy him immensely and his short exchanges with Elijah and Avery are golden. You've seemingly introduced Amy (I assume the one that walked out of Elijah's room and tried to make it look like she'd fooled around with him) to antagonize Avery, and perhaps for the better--Avery needs to develop teeth to keep up with Elijah--because we see her "fume" about several items (her mom, Caleb, Elijah's insensitivity) and she'll need to express them largely constructively--but without holding back too much. Elijah warming to Avery a little with the pumpkin-spiced coffee with whipped cream exemplifies more of what should happen to draw more readers in. Of course I forget that you've proposed "Twister" to solve their physical contact "problem." You could also up the ante (since you opened the door to it) by Avery having enough medical knowledge to save him or someone in the household BEFORE 911 arrives to help, and that would allow her to help him and to continue her studies, because Elijah will realize it's in his best interest.

I rate this 5 more for the potential you hint at in the coming chapter, and once I reconsider the great number of positive elements in this one.

Really enjoying what you've written, please keep them coming!

The closing stanza of this chapter is utterly brilliant.

Since I'm in catch up mode, I'll refrain from commenting as the "future has already been written" to some extent. 5* so far...