Blather, rinse, repeat

(my damn comment was too long)

You reference JK Rowling a lot, too, which i think she's better than Meyer as a writer, but she's writing for a similar market: youth. YA books have had crossover appeal in the adult market for so many years because frankly, our culture celebrates youth/adolescence and puts in on a pedstal, so vast swaths of the Western world are drawn to nostalgia about it, and that directs their readership. Your book is not aimed at that reader, so again, not the person to be comparing yourself to.

If you dream of THAT level of extreme success, you need to look seriously at the writing of someone who has it, but with an adult supernatural/horror readership. You should be comparing your work to that of William Gibson, or Stephen King, someone who has zombies and other worlds in their book but has gotten masses of people to read them. And what would THEY do to address these critiques? Because, it might be something formulaic, but it might not, but they would find a means to address them. Clearly they have, because of their success, y'know?

I am actually not a fan of Stephen King's writing at ALL, but the man can write a mofowing bestseller. Of course, he said in "On Writing," that some of his early books he doesn't even remember writing because he was on so many drugs, so y'know, that's not the best advice. But the rest of that book is worth reading.

I don't know what the point of this comment is, beyond that these are things i struggle with as a writer, too, writerly intent vs readability, and how best to serve the story. When to cling to convictions and when the best way to serve the story is to rewrite. So ultimately, you have my empathy and solidarity, and i feel certain that you ARE a talented enough writer to find a way to make your work work.

Have you taken a writing class recently? If not, it might be something helpful. And, i mean, to write something NEW with the class, weekend workshop, etc. TBH, it feels like you are too close and too twined up with this novel to see it objectively, but that perhaps in the writing of something new (short stories, or memoir for example) you would in the process have some epiphanies about Haecceity that you could bring back to it. Sometimes the best way to see something is to stop looking at it, y'know?

<3 and luck to you, wherever the writing leads.