My first question is whether the character “shuttered” (as in closing a window) or “shuddered” (as in reacted negatively to a comment)? The first might suggest a desire for privacy, the other for relief!

The main issue here is that this author is not “showing” the reader, but rather “telling” what is happening. Not only does this (perhaps unintentionally) insult the reader’s intelligence, it also makes for a less than satisfying read.

I’m not sure what I’d comment as right without reading the actual piece, but I do have a friend who would say (from her personal experience) that the name Sara is spelled correctly :).

It’s difficult to tell what’s going on here, but according to the descriptives, something involving a great deal of emotion–unless the author is choosing descriptives that don’t match the intesity of the moment.

I would advise the author to express some of the emotion in the body of the dialogue and therefore eliminate a number of the attribution tags all together. Another way to do this is to offer “pictures” of the character’s body language. For example, instead of the tag, “I wondered”, the author could have the character scratching her head or wringing her hands (or whatever is appropriate to the content of the dialogue).