Thoughts On Book Reviews

My goal for posting here is to post, at a minimum, Monday/Wednesday/Friday. My current thought process is that Friday will, in all likelihood, be a book review of some sort (meaning not necessarily Christian fiction – I read a lot of different books, most genres, all types, and if I think a book is delightful and others should read it, those are the ones I’m more likely to review here.)

The book I had hoped to review this week was…disappointing. And here is where I hit my conundrum: do I post a review anyway? On the one hand, it wasn’t fabulous. It wasn’t terrible by any stretch, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations based on previous installments in the series . On the other hand, is the better part of valor to just choose something that I can be positive about? I don’t want to come across as someone who loves everything she reads because then, well, what good really are my reviews? On the other hand (how many hands do I have here?), I don’t want to be a negative Nelly…and just because something didn’t sing for me doesn’t mean it won’t sing for you.

Then we have the perspective of me as an author (vs. book consumer). Would I want to know? I’m torn. I think that for the most part, yes, I would. Especially if it was a constructive (or at least polite!) criticism. Lots of what I read is something I’ve downloaded for free on my Kindle as a chance to give an author a try with little investment. I’ve found some winners that way and gone on to purchase other titles of theirs. I’ve also found some real stinkers. The common thread for both though are the negative reviews that are along the lines of “Don’t waste your time – this is the worst. book. ever.” And I want to say, “Really? Why? What made it bad? Why didn’t it sing for you?” Because I imagine there’s nothing worse than seeing that and a 1 star (especially if there are more than one or two of them). Now, I don’t necessarily put a ton of stock into a review like that as a buyer – though if there are more than a handful I might pause, especially if I was paying money and the author was an unknown quantity. But, if I see a review with 1 star and it says something about how the characters weren’t developed and seemed flat, that the end was rushed and trite, and that a spell checker would be a worthwhile investment for the author, well, I’m inclined to give that review considerably more weight. (Though I’ll also caveat that I’ve read a number of freebies – clearly self published – that had horrible spelling and grammar and were still delightful reads. Well worth overlooking the lack of an editor.)

For now, I suspect I’ll stick to the “If you can’t say anything nice” tactic…but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.