This first page of Jess C. Scott’s Eyeleash falls flat, and here’s why: the use of shortened language (“abt”), the suggestion that I’m about to read a series of random blog entries with no particular movement in any direction (“Rants raves and everything else”), and the immediate introduction to a narrator who believes her blog [...]

I live in Tennessee, so there’s much in Sara San Angelo’s opening page of Drift that has me thinking, “Oh, yeah. Yep. It’s just like that.” The suffocating heat, the weeds and shrubs and dirt roads. The cow fields and the horses. I even drive a battered green (-ish/blue) Toyota. Because of this, the first [...]

What I like about this first page is that it makes me ask questions: why is this man hiding in the bushes? What’s he going to do with that crowbar? I also like the simplicity and truth of the first sentence: The good thing about bushes is that they don’t pretend to be something that [...]

The List by Carmen Shirkey identifies itself fairly quickly as chick-lit (light, upbeat fiction marketed toward young women). I point this out only because I don’t read much (any) chick lit, these days, so I was hesitant, at first, to critique the page. Someone who doesn’t read a particular genre may not necessarily be the [...]

[First-glance impression: the font looks like 14 point Arial, which gives the overall presentation an unprofessional/amateur appearance. Also, the page numbers are too close to the rest of the text.] In Search of Aimai Cristen by Phillip Good does not begin with the page above, but with this personal ad on page one: 1.    The [...]

First, I like the sun graphic at the start of each chapter. It fits the title, obviously, but also the genre (fantasy). It’s fun and mystical. I began reading this page intrigued. I don’t read much fantasy and never have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I can’t really explain why I never [...]

Page One Review is a review of a self-published book’s first page.  Read the first installment here. First: This looks like two pages, but it equates to one full page of text. And it’s a cropped cut; Eric Rohr didn’t begin his book with the sloppy look of no top margin. There is, in fact, [...]

If you submit your book for review at SPR, you should understand that means the possibility of having the first page of your book critiqued in this column. Don’t misunderstand: “critique” does not (only) mean “to criticize.” I make no promises that some work won’t be criticized, but for the purposes of this column, “critique” means exactly what Webster says it means: “A critical review or commentary…