So, since nobody else answered, you get no reply from the Gods of Writing, but the Asshole of the SH Forum:
I literally only read the synopsis, because it's not my genre and, going by how little engagement the story garnered, maybe we should start with the obvious parts that should normally draw in new readers - not the chapters inside, that you would need to have any interest in reading, before you open them up. [EDIT: No, SH was fucking with me, it does have engagement. That's fair enough. Showed me on my second tab refresh.]
Three months after running away from home with his best friend Michael, Dani Zeyer is scraping by in a cheap motel—broke, hopeless, with no future in sight. On a rainy night when everything feels lost, he has no idea it will be the last time he ever sees Michael with his own eyes.
Kidnapped by a cosmic entity calling itself The Damned Curiosity, Dani gets hurled into a world that isn't his own. A reality where women hold all the power, gender roles have been flipped… and Michael never existed at all.
As if that weren't enough, his body no longer belongs to him. He's now a girl with delicate features and platinum blonde hair, burdened with an absurd command: conceive a child.
But Curiosity overlooked one thing: Dani is stubborn, rebellious, and absolutely livid. If he's going to have a child in this world, he'll do it on his own terms. He won't be the woman in the relationship. He'll be the one doing the conquering.
Caught between encounters orchestrated by an invisible force, the ghost of a love that never took root here, and the struggle to hold onto his identity inside a foreign body, Dani must decide whether to play the game… or smash the board entirely.
The first two sentences irk me somehow. Like, the first sentence sounds good, it has a good rhythm and tells me something about the protagonist. The second sentence makes me pause, because it just doesn't flow very well. It's hard to explain, but "On a rainy night when everything feels lost" just seems disconnected from the last sentence.
Next part we get an insight into how he is transported to a new world in which he is turned into a girl.
I personally dislike Gender Bender, because it's mostly in order to bring in cheap, lazy fanservice or smut scenes. In reality, just because your body is now female, it doesn't mean you are suddenly into men. Oftentimes, that is not considered by the autor and it seems like it won't be considered here either. Though I, as a gay romance writer and reader, read some gayness into his relationship with Michael, because really, it seems he's far too emphazised to just be a one-off character that possibly never even shows up, if we start the story on that "rainy night".
After that comes the line that broke my brain entirely: "He won't be the woman in the relationship. He'll be the one doing the conquering."
But, he's the woman, right? Didn't we already state that in this world, roles are reversed? What exactly is he supposed to "conquer" anyway? And it seems like that would already be his place, as he is a woman?
And we finish the whole thing with the old "vague interesting things" mambo jumbo - not that I don't use it myself, it's fine, it's just that the story gives me little to carry that interest.
But, again, that's just me. I don't even like the genre, so I wouldn't read it either way. Take it with a grain of salt.
www.scribblehub.com
