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Okay, that’s long 😅

I love it! I didn’t yet read all of the chapter – there are lots of words I don’t know there, so I’m just translating it. It’ll take time, but I promise you a plot critique.

 

As always, I speak as a reader, not at all as a better writer or something like that. I hope I chose the right words in my critique, but if not, so sorry if I offend you in any way.

 

For now, I have only two points:

 

1. Break paragraphs. For example, this:

Smog spilled into the sky from the smokestacks overhead. It was an endless cycle, infiltrating through the air until it all blended together into a murky haze that hung over houses like a shroud. Automatically my mind went to the funeral of Aunt Marga only a week previously. A week? It seemed like an age. She was young, only forty. They said she had a rare heart condition. My thoughts traced the well-worn path as my feet climbed the front steps of the two story house that had been hers. She had left it to me, her only niece. I’d moved in quickly, partly because I had nowhere else to go and partly because there were things that needed to be taken care of. I winced as the door banged shut behind me. The sunroom was cluttered with plants. A message was taped to the front door: Please water the plants. As if I had time for that. Their drooping leaves accused me, but I continued in to the kitchen. The faint scent of floral perfume greeted me. The kitchen was small but cheery and all the hand towels in the drawers were embroidered with different flora and fauna.

Should’ve been this:

 

Smog spilled into the sky from the smokestacks overhead. It was an endless cycle, infiltrating through the air until it all blended together into a murky haze that hung over houses like a shroud.

Automatically my mind went to the funeral of Aunt Marga only a week previously. A week? It seemed like an age. She was young, only forty. They said she had a rare heart condition.

My thoughts traced the well-worn path as my feet climbed the front steps of the two story house that had been hers. She had left it to me, her only niece. I’d moved in quickly, partly because I had nowhere else to go and partly because there were things that needed to be taken care of.

I winced as the door banged shut behind me. The sunroom was cluttered with plants. A message was taped to the front door: Please water the plants. As if I had time for that. Their drooping leaves accused me, but I continued in to the kitchen.

The faint scent of floral perfume greeted me. The kitchen was small but cheery and all the hand towels in the drawers were embroidered with different flora and fauna.

 

2. The punctuation is generally very good, but there were some places I felt it isn’t punctuated enough. For example:

Automatically my mind went to the funeral of Aunt Marga only a week previously.

or:

Nan quickly grabbed the one with the more subdued colors and I was left with a green and yellow one.

My advise is to put a comma between different parts of the sentence, and after adverbs. For example, those two sentences should’ve been (I marked with bold the commas):

Automatically, my mind went to the funeral of Aunt Marga only a week previously.

Nan quickly grabbed the one with the more subdued colors, and I was left with a green and yellow one.

I hope it has helpful! 🙂