This paragraph—

Ophelia longs to be free, free of Diabetes, free of her ex-boyfriend, free to live. She loves Adrian, but she loved Martin once too. She knows it’s only a matter of time before he succumbs to the same intoxication. It’s an alien virus which transforms them. For every infection, there’s a cure. If Martin has his way though, she will never achieve the freedom to find it.

—seems to be missing something. It’s the paragraph where we should be getting to know your character(s) and their conflicts. Unfortunately, because I don't know the story, I can't really say what could be filled in, but something more needs to be said. It makes me think that all parts with Martin could be excluded. Let the story focus on Ophelia, the virus and Adrian’s quest to find his sister.

And I think I have to disagree with Kate a bit. She said: I get that you’re setting up some kind of Beauty and the Beast-esque story, but with a virus instead of a curse. And Ophelia needs to believe she’s strong enough on her own before she can accept help from the guy she loves, and help him in return. Is that close? And then there’s her brother, who’s looking for her, and ALSO falls in love.

I didn’t get that it was Ophelia’s brother looking for her and falls in love. I understood it to be that Adrian came to town to find his sister and fell in love with Ophelia. Is that correct? But you see how confusing it is? Ultimately, somebody is always going to be confused by something, that’s just the way the world is and you can’t do anything about that, but more people should understand it than are confused and right now, I think it’s the other way around with this letter.

Also, you should tell us what the virus does. It doesn’t have to be long a drawn out explanation, but saying monster is not very descriptive. There could be any number of things that could happen to make someone a “monster.” I didn’t immediately go to something like Beauty and the Beast (but maybe that’s because Kate has had Belle on the brain recently ?) I was thinking more Invasions of the Body Snatchers or 28 Days Later type thing-lol. Kate and I could both be wrong, but simply saying something like “the virus transforms them into monsters” is vague and could mean anything from a princely beast to a fast running zombie.

I hope this helps. The story sounds like there is good stuff in there. Hope you can find a way to bring it out. Oh, and telling the ages will let us/the agent know if it’s YA or adult? How old are they?

Good Luck…sorry this was so long.

I agree there is a lot going on so it feels kind of disjointed.

As for the costume, hmmm, do you have any titles called, "37 year old mean mom punishes bad 5 year old by not allowing him to trick-or-treat" because that is my costume this year.

It does sound interesting. I have a thing for romance, though I prefer YA and this doesn't come off as that genre. Maybe for the reasons outlined by Kelljones.

More generally, I'm confused about what things are. Does Ophelia have an alien virus in addition to diabetes, or are they the same thing? Is it called the Sweet, or is that the monsters Adrian references, or something else altogether?

Good luck with the rewrite — I'm also really interested in a protagonist with diabetes and how that affects her story!

But, I think your story probably isn't that way. It's all intermixed and twangled (yeah I made that word up just now) into one great book. The story sounds pretty interesting, but you need to hook me somehow. As it stands right now I don't see anything that really draws me in. Explore those three characters and their triangle–but do so in a way that naturally describes the story. (I know, also–I need some oceanfront property in Arizona, please.)

I think you have something here, and I'd be interested to see where you go with this query!