The pitch: A king dies on the battlefield and wakes an hour later in his own body — remembering a death that wasn't quite his own, and a life before this one, and one before that. He's died many times before. He doesn't know why he keeps coming back. What follows is less about the crown he can no longer claim and more about four peoples — two kingdoms and two others who've spent generations fearing each other — learning to trust one another before something far worse than the war that just ended arrives from the west. Comps: If you liked The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) or Guy Gavriel Kay's political fantasy (Tigana, Lions of Al-Rassan), this should feel like home — quiet character work and political trust-building carrying as much weight as the action, a weary/found-family emotional register closer to Robin Hobb's Fitz than to Sanderson-style plot mechanics. What I need: A full read-through, front to back Honest reactions over polish — where you got hooked, where your attention drifted, which characters you ended up caring about, whether the ending earned itself I'm specifically curious whether the mid-book negotiation/worldbuilding stretch (roughly the first third) reads slower than the rest — flag it if it does, don't sweat it if it doesn't No need to hunt typos or continuity errors — that pass is already done Logistics: Format: [Word doc / Google Doc / whatever you're sending — fill in] Turnaround: 4–6 weeks, flexible Content notes: [battle violence, [anything else relevant — fill in]] Credit in the acknowledgements if you want it Genuinely happy to answer questions before you commit. Thanks for considering it!

I am looking for a few beta readers that enjoy a high fantasy world, curses, action, high stakes and romance. I'm still working through some revisions in the later chapters, so I am currently looking for readers for my prologue and first 5 chapters. I want an honest readers feedback as this is my debut novel that I'm planning to publish as an indie author and I want the best experience for my readers.

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Here's an unofficial blurb:

Humans and Faeries have a bloodied history that has left both sides vengeful and fearful of each other. Faeries that gave in to the darkness of their heart became fallen, consumed by their wicked desires for power and reign overall.

Saera, a faerie, one of the only survivors who escaped the fall of the Ash Court, is haunted by her lack of memories due to a curse placed on her by the Fallen Queen the night she fled. She is determined to restore her memories and free her people from the Queen’s reign, secretly training to receive magic from their creator, their fae god.

Aslan, an orphan despised by the people of Thessena, is known as cursed by the faeries. He is an outcast amongst outcasts. After an incident following an attack from a dark beast from the faeries’ land, Aslan is faced with a world that he was never meant to enter. In the land of faeries, he is destined to be the savior meant to defeat the Fallen Queen. The only thing is, he’s a human set in a world he doesn’t belong to. 

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If you're interested, feel free to comment or DM and I'll gladly give you more information about the tropes and the feedback I'm looking for!

I am open to critique swap.

Thank you!

Looking for unpaid Beta Readers. Please comment and DM if interested!

121000 words, Preferred Timeline: 2-3 weeks
Open to swap and become your critique partner!

I am looking for honest, big-picture feedback from romance readers. You do not need to edit grammar or proofread. I just want your real reactions as a reader. I want feedback on character chemistry, pacing, emotional payoff, overall thoughts

Synopsis:
Meera is a hopeless romantic who considers rivers, trees, animals and stars her truest friends. She lives among the red canyons of the American West, romanticizes life, believes in true love, and has a terrible habit of giving her heart to the wrong people.

When a diving accident in Hawaii leaves her trapped underwater, a stranger risks everything to save her. Before she can even learn who he is, he vanishes, leaving behind only a bracelet and a handwritten letter signed simply Chris.

She knows his name but nothing else. No contact, no background, no way to find him. Yet she cannot stop longing for the man who saved her life.

When Love Becomes Devotion is a story about the love we chase, the love we sabotage, and the love that finds us when we finally decide we are worth keeping.

Tropes: Strangers to Lovers, Slow Burn, Emotional Intimacy, Medium Spice, Cross-Cultural Romance, Healing Journey

Hello, I'm posting this here to hopefully have some beta readers who might be interested in reading the novel. I have no set deadline for the reading, and I would be willing to switch to beta reading too.

The plot is as follows:
Landon James, the son of a prominent politician, finds himself ensnared in the oppressive expectations of his father's image. The pressure to conform to a predetermined path becomes unbearable, exacerbated by the mistreatment he endures at the hands of his father. Faced with the stifling demands of a facade, Landon makes a daring choice to escape the suffocating environment and seek refuge in a small town.

There, Landon meets a diverse cast of characters who shape his journey, each playing a unique role in his evolution. However, it is Pascal Wyatt who stands out amidst the vibrant tapestry of Landon's new life. Pascal, a budding chef with aspirations that diverge from societal norms, becomes the catalyst for Landon's self-discovery.

As Landon and Pascal's connection deepens, a poignant and heartfelt love story unfolds. Through their struggles and triumphs, readers are taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, witnessing the transformative power of love in the face of adversity. The novel explores themes of identity, acceptance, and the courage it takes to forge one's own path in a world that often demands conformity.

The story of a teenage girl in the 90s who had a crush on a boy from school that got famous. It follows their story in the next twenty years, across coasts, breakups, other people’s weddings, and every version of themselves they grow into.

Feedback I’m looking for: overall pacing, whether the shifting POVs land the way they’re meant to, and whether the ending feels earned rather than out of nowhere.

Timeline: flexible

Critique swap: yes, glad to trade reads if you’ve got something of your own. Doesn’t have to be the same genre. I just love reading

Hello r/BetaReaders!

Who else can’t believe it’s September already? Time flies!

Here’s this month’s prompt: what are some examples of unexpected beta feedback you’ve received? Or what have you unexpectedly encountered in your beta reading?

Welcome to our ninth monthly check-in thread!

These monthly pinned post aims to help the community connect with other writers and betas!

Share how your WIP is going, or how your current beta read is going, or other relatable beta reading topics in this thread!

This is a great thread to talk about writing, updates, accountability, trends, vents, and more.

It is not the right thread to post first pages as there’s another pinned thread for that, but you can link to your beta post if you wish.

Do NOT advertise any beta/editor services here, and no free samples to later ask for payment are allowed. You can try r/hireaneditor or r/freelance_forhire instead.

We also ask that self promotion of completed works do not contain links. Mentioning success is completely fine!

And we’d like to take this opportunity to remind people that works generated with AI, and AI-generated feedback is not allowed here, either. r/writingwithAI or r/betareadersforAI are better subreddits for that.

And because scammers are now targeting GDocs: please DM them and not leave them up on the sub publicly to avoid harassment

I’d also like to note that we have additional flairs available to help people know what specialty you have: traditional publishing, self-publishing, and fanfic. Please consider using them to help people match with you.

Also, it’s best to subscribe to our sub before commenting or posting to help avoid Reddit’s filters sending your content into the spam queue

Please ensure you comment in good faith and do not break any other r/betareaders rules.

Thank you, and happy writing/reading/editing/beta matching!

Hi everyone! I need beta readers for my lyrical memoir with an experimental structure. It’s about returning from a lifetime of dissociation through the music that saved me only to be left to grapple with the unbearable memories that my body was protecting me from. It moves between the 90’s Seattle punk scene and present day reckoning.

It follows a 25-year undefinable relationship of near misses ending in the death of an irreplaceable man by fentanyl overdose.

I’m looking for someone who can:

1. Critique the hook
2. Tell me where the story sags
3. Tell me where you get lost
4. Tell me what works

Trigger warnings:

- IV drug use including using scenes
- Overdose
- Sexual assault reported obliquely
- Child abuse & neglect
- Trauma-dense

I’m not in any hurry but can work around your constraints if you need a quick read.

I can trade, I prefer Literary Fiction or Literary Nonfiction, but I also like Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

I'm looking for alpha readers for an unfinished grimdark fantasy novel currently at around 135,000 words.

The story follows two protagonists, Morg and Vhisker, with the narrative alternating between their perspectives. They come from very different circumstances and live on opposite sides of the world that are gradually unfolding around them.

Rather than following a single hero and presenting one side of the world as unquestionably right, the story allows both protagonists to exist independently, with their own lives, relationships, ambitions, problems and decisions. Their stories gradually become connected to larger events, but the novel isn't intended to be simply a war story.

The early parts of the novel are especially focused on character, ordinary life, society, relationships, travel, politics and worldbuilding. The darker and more brutal elements develop as the story progresses.

The genre is heavy grimdark fantasy, but I'm trying to approach it through a fairly grounded lens. My priority is that people behave like people, consequences actually matter, and the world doesn't conveniently bend around the protagonists.

Pls dm me if interested , I just want honest advice.

Genre: New Adult contemporary romance 
Length: 85K words, complete second draft 
POV/tense: Dual POV, first person, present tense. Alternating between the two leads, one POV per scene. 
Book 1 of a planned duology: It has a complete arc, but it ends on a hook and Book 2 picks up from there. Flagging that up front so nobody feels ambushed.

The pitch:

Delia Delamar has been in love with the bass player of The Ruiners for two years and has never said a word to him. The first time she saw them, they were opening for another band in a Bushwick dive on Halloween. She watched the quiet one come alive the second the music started, and was so overwhelmed she left before the headliner she’d paid to see. 

She knows every song. She follows the band’s account, not his — following his would be wanting something out loud for a change.

Then, as an early birthday gift, her best friend hands her a fake ID and an astrological forecast: it’s time to embrace what your heart truly desires. The next night, Delia walks up to a table at work, order pad out, and it’s him. At dinner. With his mother.

She has no idea Eli Chapman has been carrying her around for six years. One childhood field trip. One fight he lost badly. One girl who crouched on the sidewalk, pressed a handkerchief to his face, and was kind to him for no reason at all. He’s never told anyone he’s been looking for her in every crowd since. And now, she’s standing at his table trying to take his pizza order.

He has three weeks before his band leaves on their first real tour. She has three weeks to stop apologizing for wanting things. Neither of them is going to use that time well.

Content notes:

Explicit sexual content · strong language · a past assault referenced and revisited

What I'm looking for:

READER or WRITER POV feedback:

• Where you got bored, skimmed, or put it down
• Whether the right character's story feels finished by the end
• Whether you’d actually read Book 2, and what you’d want from it

I've got a short question set prepared: Four one-minute checkpoints inside the book plus a questionnaire at the end. It's built to be low-effort. You will never be asked to explain the three-act structure to me.

Timeline: four to six weeks, and I'd rather you take six than rush it. 
Format: Google Doc for comments

Critique swap availability: Open but limited.

If you’re interested, please fill out this form.

Hi! I'm looking for beta readers for my funny, spooky YA Fantasy story. I'm also happy to do critique swaps. Please find the blurb and the first 300 words below.

Blurb:
Panha is absolutely done with dead people. They scream and howl at odd hours, have unhealthy attachment styles, and never, ever shut up about the way they died. But when you live in a house full of necromancers, there's no escape. Until you repeatedly fail at the one thing necromancers are known for and get kicked out, that is.

Panha is determined to prove to her family that she might be a failed necromancer, but she isn't a failure. Her passion is chakra arts – building blood-powered constructs that do wondrous things. Like fly across the sky, sing mostly in-tune, and half-heartedly chop vegetables before revolting against their human overlords. Someday soon, the world is going to know her name.

The great university of Takshila gives her that opportunity. Here, she'd get to study chakra arts under the infamous Prof. Rama – chakrasan extraordinaire, and public enemy number one for those who believe in traditional magic, and not the profane hanky-panky with blood and needles he practices.

If Panha can pay the outrageous university fees, of course. Fortunately, there’s a “scholarship” available from a corrupted god of wealth, in exchange for merely one terrible promise. 

With just a bit of moral compromise, the unquiet haven of Takshila opens up to Panha. There are friends to be made, mandatory necromancy classes to fail, and all kinds of incredible gadgets to build under the tutelage of the brilliant Prof. Rama.

But there’s also a promise to be fulfilled to the corrupted god – that will see the price of her dreams being paid in the blood of those she has come to cherish the most.

First 300 words:

It was a green-moon night, and it was time to feed grandma again.

Panha walked down the steps to the immense iron door of grandma’s lair, the feeding pail heavy in her hands. Crickets crawled over each other in the pail, their shrill chirps melding into a nauseating drone. She gave a shudder as one climbed over her fingers. Panha dropped the pail to the side and shook it off.

The place had originally been built to hold captured lightning wyrms, but after grandma’s ‘accident’, they’d shifted her here. Panha’s suggestion, to release grandma into the wilds of Kumarakom, had earned a whack from Mom. Grandma trying to eat the entire family was apparently not enough of a reason to abandon her.

With a grimace, she brought out her testing needle and pierced her thumb. Beads of pearl-grey blood oozed from the puncture. She pressed her thumb against the chakra design of the door, and rivulets of blood ran down its circular lines. The cogs in the design whirled into motion and a series of clicks ran through the entire mechanism. The door swung open.

Panha quickly pulled her pail in through the door and shut it behind her.

If it had been up to her, she’d have shoved the crickets in, slammed the door shut, and run all the way back to the land of people not being munched on by their grandmas. But Mom insisted that grandma needed human interaction to keep her from losing touch with her humanity, and since Mom couldn’t bear to look at grandma in her current state, the task fell on Panha. Just another addition to the many kinds of awful her life already was.

The dungeon was lit an eerie green by the full moon, which shone bright through the grates above.

Something large and spidery dropped to her side. Fear crawled down her spine as she turned to face grandma.

Grandma skittered up to Panha on her numerous legs and peered at her with the one eye she had left.

Hello everyone,

First time posting here and I'm amazed how helpful you all are.

I have a short/novella about the inception of the end of the world as we know it (in 1994). Its a fun little story with retro techno babble and Merkle Trees. Please check it out and let me know where it stands.

Please DM me for Google link to pdf.

Here is a beginning excerpt

This is the exact site where Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor inside a squash court half a century earlier. History is a heavy, suffocating blanket in the room, which is packed shoulder to shoulder with over fifty people. UN diplomats mop their brows in damp wool suits, intelligence directors whisper urgently to one another over open briefcases, and Pentagon brass nervously tap their pens against redacted dossiers. It is a captive, sweating audience.

Dr. Gunther Genzel wipes condensation from his wire-rimmed glasses. He is running on four hours of sleep spread across three days, fueled entirely by black coffee and the manic energy of a man who believes he solved the human condition. He stands at the head of a brushed steel conference table, gesturing toward the terminal array where Project Oracle hums.

I’m currently drafting a dark epic fantasy novel titled The Shadow Resurgency. This is the 3,583-word prologue.
The story opens with a survey party traveling through the Veiled Expanse, a region where maps and distances are unreliable. They discover a village that should not exist, and the situation becomes increasingly unnatural after sunset.
I’d appreciate reader reactions on pacing, clarity, atmosphere, character engagement, and whether the ending makes you want to continue into Chapter One.
I’m especially interested in knowing whether any part feels confusing rather than mysterious, whether the horror escalation works, and whether the prose and paragraph flow are comfortable to read.
Content notes: supernatural horror, character deaths.
I’m happy to exchange feedback with another fantasy writer of a similar length.

Hello everyone

Looking for betareaders for a contemporany romance/ western cowboy

Cosy vibes and that 90's comfort. It’s an adult cowboy romance set in Colorado in 1992, featuring a grumpy rancher, a British-born children’s book illustrator, forced proximity, and a slow-burn romance.

I’m a Portuguese author, and although the manuscript has already been translated into English and revised, I’m looking for American readers who can help me identify anything that feels unnatural, culturally off, or simply doesn’t sound like something an American character would say or do.

If you’re interested, please comment or send me a DM and tell me a little about the kind of romance you usually read.

Thank you! 🤎

Hi! I’m currently drafting my first adult M/M romantasy and looking for 2–4 alpha readers willing to read the manuscript as it currently stands. 18+ readers only, please.

The Song Without a Choir
Cassiel Voss was once a celebrated magical prodigy. Now stripped of his magic and exiled, he’s spent years avoiding the kingdom that discarded him.

Then a chance encounter in the wilderness puts him in the path of Prince Regulus, heir to the kingdom Cassiel wants nothing to do with. What begins as an unwanted rescue soon draws Cassiel into the prince’s orbit, and toward a journey that forces him back into a world he’d rather leave behind.

About the book
Adult M/M slow-burn romantasy
Single POV
Fantasy adventure and mystery
Magic centered around music
Queer-normative setting
Adventuring-party dynamics
Character-driven, with banter and a developing romance alongside the larger fantasy plot

Heat level: Slow burn with a planned open-door sex scene later in the novel. The manuscript hasn’t reached that scene yet, and the final level of explicitness is still being determined.

Content notes: Fantasy violence and injury, blood, depiction of a dead/mutilated animal, trauma, past suicidal ideation, and religious/institutional abuse.

Current status
The manuscript currently stands at 52k words across 32 chapters, and I’m actively drafting the remainder. I’m expecting the completed novel to land around 90–100k words.

I’m specifically looking for readers who are comfortable reading an unfinished manuscript. You absolutely don’t have to finish if the book loses you. I only ask that, if you decide to stop, you let me know where you stopped and what made you put it down. That feedback is genuinely useful to me.

What I’m looking for
I’m primarily interested in your natural experience as a reader rather than line edits or an editorial report. Things that would be especially helpful include:

Where you were especially engaged or where your attention dipped
Character and relationship reactions
Anything you found confusing
Predictions or questions you had while reading
Places you felt tempted to skim or stop
Anything you particularly loved or disliked

I’m deliberately keeping the questions fairly open-ended because I don’t want to influence anyone’s first read.

Timeline & feedback
I’m flexible. I’d rather you read at your normal pace than rush through it.

Feedback can be as involved or casual as you’d like: comments while reading, reactions after individual chapters, or a set of thoughts afterward are all useful to me.

The manuscript will be shared privately via Google Docs.

Critique swap
I’m also open to swapping with another fantasy, romantasy, or queer SFF writer, including another WIP. I’m happy to exchange samples first to make sure we’re a good fit before either of us commits to a longer read.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, feel free to comment or DM me!

Looking for beta readers for a gothic horror manuscript. Willing to swap critiques! Here’s the pitch:

HYSTERIA is a time-loop paradox with a contemporary heroine traversing worlds akin to those of The Bell Jar and The Crucible. HYSTERIA would appeal to readers of Johanna van Veen’s My Darling Dreadful Thing and Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear.

Liz knows as well as anyone that history has rarely tolerated a woman with a mind of her own. The problem is, she’s not sure if her mind really is her own or if she’s sharing it with two other women.

The first time it happened, they said it was a side effect of the sedation. One minute she was a teenage girl in the emergency room with a broken arm, and the next, she was in Colonial Salem on the cusp of the Witch Trials. The incident was forgotten among the excitement of medical school, anesthesia residency, and marriage - her perfect life taking shape. But after a defibrillator accident at work, the time slips return. This time, they’re more frequent. More intense. First, she wakes up in an insane asylum in the 1960s. One electric shock treatment later, and she is back to her life in 2019. But now, the horrors of the past have contaminated her present.

“Neural interruption,” she realizes, is the key to her movement between minds. An electric shock, a seizure, or an anesthetic will send her consciousness careening through time. Turn her brain off for a moment, and it turns back on again, sometime else. But no matter the century, she is always in the same place: on Hathorne Hill. Just as she begins to learn to control her movements through time and correct the wrongs of the past, she starts losing sight of which reality is hers. 

Soon, she finds herself back where her travels started: in the 1690s, as witchcraft accusations abound. A blissful life awaits her back in 2019, but, with no access to anesthesia or electricity, she’ll have to rely on her intellect and memory to save herself before the festering suspicions of the villagers grow too dangerous. She’s been here before, and she fears she already knows how it will end.

Hi there!

I've received some really great feedback since my last post 3 months ago, and after a few more rounds of editing, I finally have a polished version of the whole novel to share.

This manuscript now sits at around 127,000 words, and if you enjoy themes like grief and the weaponization of faith, as well as settings that blend hard magic systems and political intrigue, I think this could be an interesting read for you.

Blurb:

Pawn is a thief-for-hire who's earned himself the moniker of "the luckiest man alive." Enemies slip and things break exactly when he needs them to, granting him a nearly perfect success rate across all the jobs he takes.

What no other person alive knows is that such luck is manufactured. Pawn holds within him a long-forgotten magic that allows him to exchange material properties between one thing and another—turning swords to glass, roof tiles to sand. By carrying the right supplies in his satchels, he can always turn the tide in his favor.

Following the death of his wife, Pawn falls into a routine of taking riskier and riskier jobs for small-time nobles. That is, until he finds himself coerced by a powerful lord into accepting a job no thief would dare touch. And, in doing so, he unwittingly steals the most precious of the Theocracy's possessions.

Only Pawn doesn't steal from a god.

He steals the god itself.

As Pawn discovers that the Theocracy's true purpose is keeping mankind imprisoned, he sets out to destroy an institution that has ruled for over three thousand years. The hard part, however, is figuring out how to do this without becoming as wicked as the Theocracy itself.

Content Warnings:

Violence. Death of a loved one.

Feedback Expected:

For this final round of beta reading, I'm mainly interested in the following topics:

- Did any part confuse you?

- Did you feel bored or feel like dropping it at any point?

- How did you feel about the ending?

Timeline:

I've already set a date for release and will probably need some time to go over the feedback and make final adjustments (if necessary) before going to the ARC phase, so ideally I'd like feedback within 4 weeks, but I'm flexible both in timeline and in feedback format.

Critique Swaps:

Unfortunately, I can't promise I'll be able to do critique swaps, as I'm still going over some manuscripts I've received for critiquing. If you absolutely require a 1:1 exchange (which is totally fair!), I probably won't be the right fit. However, if you're okay with partial critiques or an extended timeline, then perhaps we might be able to work something out.

If the blurb interested you, please comment or send me a DM and I will provide the manuscript in whichever digital format works best for you.

Thanks in advance!