Gina's Take

Let me start by saying, you have mechanics down. Good job. You also have a penchant for metaphors (I loved the floor tiles that twisted like a rope of licorice. Wonderful.) I didn't read the other's critiques when I wrote this, so I'm sure I'm repeating something they will say. I apologize.

I do have a few suggestions which may or may not improve this:

1. The openening sentence would have made me set the book back down. "Useless", "data" ... this may be the most important sentence of your book. I may only read the first line before moving on. The rest of the opening was fine.

2. She chews through her ponytail, spitting out hair--icky.

3. The cotton candy analogy is good, another idea might be: "like cotton candy on a child's tongue". Just a thought.

4. You overuse "Montana." She's the only woman in the scene so you can keep it "her".

5. I suggest mixing up the sentence structure. What lost my attention wasn't the story which got off to interesting action right off the bat, but the same sentence structure over and over. Mostly beginning with a pronoun. Include some compound sentences and don't always begin with a "She" or "Montana". Of course you don't ALWAYS do that, but enough that it was noticeable. Once in awhile it's cool to use the "ing" trick. So instead of "Montana sat the board down" and sighed, it would read "Sighing, she picked up the board." (Just a lame example.) This should be used sparingly.

6. "A grin framed her lips". This reads like a pov glitch. We're in her skin and this reads like she's getting a visual of her own mouth. Maybe "She felt a grin frame her lips" or better yet.. "she smiled."

7. The still evening air exploded--You give an immediate reaction of the environment to this but not through Montana's skin. A simple fix would be: Shock waves rolled through her.

8. Where did I read that editors cringe when they see "What in the ..." ?

9. She heard the ceiling roar. Better to be "the ceiling roared".

10. Jerked roughly. A jerk is rough. You don't need the adjective, and in fact it makes for weaker writing.

Good job, a few minor fixes will polish this up nicely, author!