I've now read the full manuscript (all 24 chapters), the story bible, thread ledger, canon sheet, reading guide, revision plan, and Phase 8 strategy. My assessment follows.

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VERDICT: MACRO-FREEZE / LINE PASS

The book is structurally complete. Batches 2–4 added ~1,128 words total (758 + 287 + 83) — they redistributed and varied, they did not expand, because there is no high-leverage 13K of new *scene* to add without diluting the thing the book is good at. The remaining defects are line-level and one scene-level meaning fix, not architecture. Expanding again would import exactly what the reading guide bans: "cozy low stakes becoming inert."

HIGH-LEVERAGE FINDINGS

**Phase-8 re-test scorecard (Q6):** middle care-move/Tasker repetition → *residue only, line-level* (Finding 3); Mara/Luis originality → *paid, protect* (DNT 5); Odile consequence → *paid more subtly than the trackers claim, but under-landed* (Finding 1); June's stay not boyfriend-driven → *paid robustly, protect* (DNT 6); ending payoff/standalone → *holds, protect* (DNT 1–2, Length Position).

1. **Odile's cost is on the page but under-landed — Ch24 (assist Ch21). Scene-sharpen, do first.** The tracker says Batch 3 gave Odile "a real route-cost." On the page, Odile's total on-page reckoning is two two-word concessions — `"It was partly your fault."` and `"No," she agreed. "It wasn't."` — and June absorbs the rest: `"I'd have made most of the same choices. They'd have been mine."` The route-cost (`"I'm done being the route"`) is Theo's to pay, and Odile is retiring, so withdrawn errand-convenience costs her almost nothing. **BUT** the real cost is already written and the narration walks past it: June `"tore the page clean out along the perforation… because if anyone was going to decide what that first night meant, it was going to be the one whose name got written down without her."` For a woman whose entire life is the record — catalogs, ledgers, condition reports, `O.M.` on the loan sheet — losing the one page that proved she was right *is* the cost. Failure/risk: as framed, it reads as June *claiming* meaning, not as Odile *losing* her proof, so the central manipulation reads as rewarded. Fix: line-level re-angle of the tear so it registers as taking something from Odile (her archive, her version), not just June's gesture. **Not a new chapter.** Revision order: FIRST.

2. **Ch18 is the weakest engagement stretch and is where the length question actually bites.** It is the book's one true montage chapter: `"On Wednesday June washed Mara's scarf…"` → `"Thursday was Thanksgiving…"` → `"Friday she primed two more sheets…"` → `"Saturday she de-pilled the scarf…"` → `"Sunday was bright and ordinary."` Five solo days rendered as summary, at the point of maximum rupture tension, with no scene partner and a low-surprise outcome (hurt, paints, keeps going). Failure/risk: highest skim-risk in the book. Fix: line pass to tighten and cut one of the five day-beats. **If** the user treats the 75K floor as binding, this is the *single* most defensible place to convert one montage-day into a dramatized beat (the Thanksgiving beat, or a brief non-Theo cohort contact that dramatizes the rupture's social cost) — but it is lower-leverage than the polish and must never become a June/Theo couple-scene. Revision order: line pass; expansion only if length is ruled binding.

3. **Care-move staging repeats near-verbatim across chapters — Ch7 / Ch10 (Ch19 pays it).** Ch7: `"I filled your jars," he said. "The sink line gets long after seven."` Ch10: `"You filled my jar." / "I filled all the jars." / "Sure," she said.` By Ch19 the jars do new work (two filled jars = a place laid for the absent June), but the Ch10 echo spends the device before it pays. Failure/risk: Theo's signature care-move should escalate in meaning; instead it recurs as duplicate blocking. Fix: vary or cut the Ch10 echo. Revision order: line pass.

4. **"Squared / already-straight" control-motif is overspread, and significance flags caption beats the image already carries — book-wide.** The squaring tic is load-bearing for *one* character's control but is spread across June, Theo, and Ruth until it dilutes: `"She squared the stack against the edge of the desk. It did not need it."` (Ch1); `"straightened a crate label that was already straight"` (Ch1); `"squared the fork on the napkin"` (Ch4); `"squared the newsprint twice"` (Ch8). Paired with narrated significance flags — `"a thing she would think about later more than she meant to"` (Ch1), `"He didn't ask if she was sure. That helped."` (Ch1), `"That was new."` (Ch13), `"She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for."` (Ch22). Failure/risk: exactly the rubric's "over-managed emotion / house-style polish" cap; the tic tells the reader what the object already says. Fix: reduce squaring instances to the one or two doing character work; cut significance flags where action carries the beat. Revision order: line pass.

DO NOT TOUCH

1. **Ch16 fear canvases — the thesis rendered as craft, zero speech.** `"You made it mine," she said… "In the memory painting it was just a roller. You made it mine." / "It was always yours," Theo said. "You told it that way. I just heard it late."` And June's canvas: `"she'd put the room's one hanging bulb directly over the blank canvas, so the brightest light in the painting fell on the only thing in it he hadn't done."` This is the book's argument delivered without a sermon and it arms the discovery. Any line-pass near here risks explaining it.

2. **Ch17 discovery — the asymmetry that is the whole book.** `"Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't."` Plus the "attribution revised" wall-label analogy (`"Same paint. Not one thing on the canvas had moved."`). Protect the compression; it earns its speed.

3. **Ch7 racked-portrait asymmetry — established wordlessly.** June `"wrote THEO BRENNAN on the tape in block capitals… She set the panel on the communal rack, face out"` while Theo carries his hidden `"face covered."` The exposure-asymmetry engine is built in action, not statement. Do not annotate it.

4. **The withheld-rescue / "don't be useful" through-line.** Ch6 `"Two," he said. "Ask her first."`; Ch22 `"Don't be useful right now," June said."`; Ch24 `"To the corner," he said instead… "You're not carrying anything," June said.` This is simultaneously Theo's arc and June's autonomy; churning any node degrades both spines.

5. **Mara/Luis un-translation payoff — the best cohort arc.** Ch19 `"Move it or paint it," Luis said. "Don't half do both."`; Ch24 `"There," Luis said… Mara… start to explain him and stop.` The Phase 8 originality concern is genuinely retired here. Leave it.

6. **June's stay-decision — the earned-stay test passes.** `"I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you."`, made Friday *before* his texts, with the full Dana/Kessler/W-9 scaffolding dramatized in Ch20. Any churn risks re-introducing a boyfriend-driven reading. Protect the sequence and its order.

LENGTH POSITION

Being ~62K is not a craft problem and the compression is defensible — with one honest asterisk. The shortfall is not thinness *inside* scenes (the scenes are dense; there is essentially nothing to cut and no padding to find) but *fewer dramatized beats by design*: these two careful people never spend unstructured time together until the confession, because the class is the only channel they'll allow themselves — Ch12 and Ch14 are framed as logistics precisely because that is the only way they let themselves be alone. Forcing a couple-hang to reach 75K would break the engine and defuse the confession, which works only because it is the first time they talk with nothing to do. The book's register is calibrated to its *quiet* comps (`Before the Coffee Gets Cold`, `Days at the Morisaki Bookshop` — both short) rather than its warm-romance comps, and at 62K it delivers every promise it makes: romance (together, terms set), found-family (cohort textured, Ruth's private read pays), vocation (June painting, Theo's first finished thing), and a reveal that rewards rereading. No promise is *broken* by the length. The asterisk is commercial, not craft: 62K sits below the conventional floor where romance acquisitions bounce sub-70K manuscripts, and the line pass will not close that gap — so if the target is the trade-romance market rather than quiet book-club fiction, the user should accept the length as a business decision made with eyes open, not paper over it with generic scenes.

NEXT ACTION

Run the Batch 5 line pass — do **not** open a new chapter or resurrect the Ch25–28 map. Sequence: (1) re-angle the Ch24 torn-page so it lands as Odile *losing her record*, not just June claiming meaning (Finding 1, meaning-level, before any polish); (2) sweep the jar-filling duplicate (Ch7/Ch10) and the "squared/already-straight" + significance-flag residue (Findings 3–4); (3) tighten the Ch18 montage. Assemble the final candidate only after the line pass **and** a fresh cold read confirm the coda's Odile-cost registers — and only after the user has explicitly ruled whether 62K is acceptable for the intended market, since that ruling, not another batch, is the real gate on final assembly.
