Dear QueryShark:
Loren Blake is taking down the patriarchy one revenge plot at a time.
Well I'm all for that, but this doesn't give us any sense of of what's at stake.
As long as she can get away with it.
And this doesn't help. It's too abstract.
When she starts dating school goth Alexa their relationship is like pouring gasoline on the fire and she finds out just how far she is willing to go for the people she loves and what she's willing to sacrifice to protect them.
Too abstract.
Gasoline on a fire is a cliche.
She discovers that a boy in her school has raped her closest friend and knows that the only way to stop him is to kill him. Loren doesn’t believe in second chances.
Aha, finally!
Here's where the story starts.
Why does she think the only way to stop him is to kill him?
And you can bet that by now, she knows how to get away with it.
The Gospel According to Loren Blake is my first novel, it is YA contemporary complete at 84,000 words. It has an lgbt protagonist and is #ownvoices. I am a thirty year old private tutor with purple hair that made me a poor fit for my previous career in teaching.
Your main character's name is an oddity. Laurell K. Hamilton wrote the Anita Blake vampire series. That info was just a squiggle in my brain as I read this, but my first thought was you were paying homage to those books, or that author. (The Goth reference above probably got me thinking like that.)
If you ARE, fine. If you're NOT, you might consider a name change.
I have included the first ten pages and a synopsis below. I
Of course you hope I enjoy it. That's like saying you hope I'll keep breathing while I read it. I'm picky about this stuff because I like to see a query that doesn't state the obvious. If you do that here, you'll do it in the novel. Yes, persnickty and nitpicky. But there's a reason for that.
The only way to close a query is Thank you for your time and consideration.
The answer to your question is yes, this query doesn't do the job.
You've got the goods, this is an interesting plot, and you've got voice (I know that from your description of yourself) but this query doesn't show that well enough.
Revise, resend.
