I kinda think the word perusal sounds a bit pretentious. If you want to keep the letter as professional as possible, the first paragraph should just be a greeting with the title, genre, word count and hook. If you have something unique to tell the agent, like you met them at a conference, or were referred by a colleague, then you can put that in the first paragraph too.

The next paragraph should introduce your main character, his/her dilemma and what he/she is going to have to do to overcome it, or something close to it. This paragraph should tell us enough that we want to know more about your character, and want to read your book.

This last part…

Bewildered by the combination of adolescent angst, the confusion of first love, and the onset of strange powers in her, Abby embarks on an emotional journey that tests her choices, risks everyone she loves, and helps her find the strength to stand on her own.

…could be so much more detailed. Test what choices? Tell us. Why is she risking everyone she loves? We don’t yet know anything other than she has adolescent angst, confusing first love and strange powers so why the journey, what choices and what risks?

Also, I know this has been brought up, but when you compare your novel to someone else’s work, it is just as important to get their name right as it is to get the agent’s name right. Also, With the over saturation of people wanting to write the next Twilight, I’m not sure how agents feel about getting queries who compare their stories to Meyer’s books. If the agent reads your book and thinks it compares to Twilight, then let them say that. Right now, it may lose you some agents because it’s so over saturated. Just my opinion.

Hope this helps!

I can’t say much without being an echo. There’s no meat to this query, just bones. And bare, unoriginal bones when compared to every other YA paranormal romance. What happens with your MC? What happens to make the story begin? What must she do, and why? Figure out what makes your book YOUR book and not every other YA book out there and that’s your pitch.

I think it’s good because you see what’s out there in the market, and you see what sales–so I think you have a real pulse on the YA industry, but so does an agent. They will recognize if your book should sell like those others.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t make the comparison… just don’t make that the only thing your query is about.

Good Luck!

And, I’d definitely take the last couple sentences out. End with your publishing credits.

And, if it was me, I’d take out the references to other published books unless the agent you’re querying specifically wants that kind of info. You want your story to stand out as something different, not similar.

Take my comments with a grain of salt. I’m not an agent, like Kate or Colleen Lindsay. Just a recently-agented writer, but I can say that when I revised my query, got specific, put some voice in it, and personalized it in a way that was professional but not necessarily conventional, my request rate shot up.
Good luck. Just keep revising it until it sings.

A query – which is hard to write and requires a skill set of its own – should reflect the style (voice) of the book. This one shows a lot of telling and no plot. What you’re putting out there is not doing your book any favors. What’s great about your story? What detail(s) can you include that shows us what’s going on and helps us care about the characters?

If you can spend two paragraphs on the plot and the great characters you have (from one character’s POV) then you have a better chance of selling your query. Everything I’ve read on editor and agent blogs says they are looking for what makes this particular book stand out. If you can show that in a query, all the other info is optional.

As for the query…I stink at them so I’m not a good judge. But I was not saying, “Man, that sounds great!” Sometimes at a writer’s conference someone will give a pitch and the whole room gasps. We all recognize greatness when we hear it. I think to make me want to read something you have to introduce me to a character I can care about and tell me what kind of trouble she is in.

I agree with Daphne when she says the descriptions here are generic.

I do not, I’m sorry to say, agree with her about those shoes, though.

Except for the vagueness, it seems a clean and professional business letter. I agree that the last sentence doesn’t need to be there, but I can understand her wanting to have some kind of closing sentence. It’s hard to know when something is finished.

The second to last sentence seems like it might have some merit, except that it mentions an unwritten manuscript. If we can brag about our unwritten manuscripts, I gotta tell you, my unwritten manuscripts are incomparable.

I don’t necessarily think that it’s a bad idea to mention if there are sequels. For example, I submitted a novel to a publisher and mentioned it was the first of a series (of which the subsequent novels had already been written.)

I spoke to that editor at a social situation a couple of years later, and he mentioned he had rejected it partly on these grounds; he doesn’t have the budget to do more than a few books a year, and can’t take on a series. That may sound like a bad thing, but my query provided enough information to the editor so that he could make a decision. I would have been unhappy if he had accepted it and told me somewhere down the line that he couldn’t publish the sequels.

When you get right down to it, a query is a business letter. You need to offer all -pertinent- information in a professional manner, so that the agent can make a decision.

In this case, the author didn’t provide enough information, and with a big slush pile to go through, “I don’t know” becomes a “no.”