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My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
Complete at 78K words, THE WORST OF US is a romantic suspense exploring a conflicted love story tangled in past trauma and lingering guilt, similar to All the Missing Pieces by Catherine Cowles. It also mirrors the morally gray character and the found-family dynamic of The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. Good intro! You're clear on your genre, comp titles, and audience.
Against her better judgement, thirty-year-old teacher Emma Johnson provides a false alibi when her troubled but beloved brother Tony is accused of a minor drug-related crime. However, a week later, Tony kills a single mother in a hit-and-run, leaving the victim’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Brianna—one of Emma’s students—completely alone. Overwhelmed with guilt, Emma vows to offer the girl support and a stable home, carefully concealing her brother’s involvement in the accident. Normally I would say that I need to know how the two crimes connect to each other, but that becomes clear later on, so I think this para is good as is.
Detective Nathan Stone has made it his mission to dismantle the drug organization Tony is tied to, committed to live up to his father’s reputation in the Narcotics Division. Despite his sharp instinct for reading people, he cannot determine whether Emma is a victim of her brother’s manipulation or a masterful liar hiding his whereabouts. Either way, he knows she could help bring Tony to justice.
Bound by their mutual concern for Brianna’s struggle with grief, Emma and Nathan find themselves unexpectedly aligned and slowly drawn to each other. Soon, their nightly conversations Nightly conversations seem like a lot. How did this develop? Did they cross paths as part of his investigation? shift from formal to intimate. But when Tony threatens to expose Emma’s false alibi But wouldn't that implicate him in the drug related crime? I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense in terms of something he's holding over her head; he loses his alibi if he rats her out if she doesn’t help him stay hidden, she must choose between the man she’s falling in love with, the girl she promised to care for, and the brother who protected her throughout their abusive childhood. Technically these are three things, so she's not choosing "between" them, because that implies two things.
Overall this is in pretty good shape in terms of plot. What it needs is a little more character injection. We don't have any feel for who these people are. Sad or scrappy? Doing great or pretending? We don't really have any idea what they are like as people, just what their purpose in the plot is. The last line says that Emma had an abusive childhood, which needs to be developed more and metioned earlier.