Inspired by Criticism, but will it change my book reviews?

There's always something scary about submitting a story for critique. Last month I submitted a scene from Subtraction to our local critique group. Subtraction is the novel I'm supposed to be writing while I set up blogposts and book reviews instead. It had kind of stalled at 45,000 words. I knew how it was going to end. I even knew how to get there. But something was missing and I didn't know what.

Since I couldn't give our critique group 45,000 words to critique, I gave them 2,500 from near t...