To leave a review or to not leave a review?

To leave a review or to not leave a review?

This is the question.  In this digital world it is so easy to get in the habit of leaving a review.  I do not know about the other reading platforms, but I use the Kindle app on my IPad mini 4 and at the end of every book, if you scroll all the way to the end of the book, it prompts me to leave a review, on Amazon and Goodreads, by selecting how many stars I feel the book warrants and writing a 20-word minimum blurb about how I felt with a subject line.  I know a lot of people do not leave reviews for authors because they do not know what to say or they just feel it will take too long, or they didn’t particularly like the book.  I think you should ask yourself several questions when thinking about leaving a review:

•        What would happen if the author had stopped when they didn’t know what to say?
•        Wouldn’t you like to know what someone thought of your book if you had taken the time to write it?
•       It only takes 20 words to leave a review.  Do you use more than 20 words when having a conversation?

Every review is a good review, even a 1-star review, if you take a couple of things into consideration.  Do not bash the author, or their work, just state the facts of why you didn’t like the book or why you loved the book.  It was too long, it got boring in the middle, I didn’t understand the plot, I fell in love with the leading man, the descriptions of locations were like I felt I was there, these are all good ways to start off.  Remember to keep that little lesson your mom always told you in mind, treat others how you would like to be treated.  You can certainly leave a review of your negative thoughts on the book without being nasty.

It is also a good idea to figure out what your standard is for a 5-star review system.  Do not feel that you are wrong just because you are going to leave a 1-star review and other people have left a 5-star review.  We each find different things interesting, this doesn’t make them right or wrong it just makes us human.  Not that you need to use this one, but here is mine:

5-star – I will go back and read these books again and again

4-star – Most of mine probably fall into this area, I may go back and re-read a few of them, but for the most part this book has been a generally pleasant experience and kept me interested until the very end

3-star – I will not go back and re-read these books.  It was either too slow or I lost interest, or the plot was boring.  I find that on these books I often feel the need to go to the last chapter to see if the book at least has a happy ending and it is worth continuing to the end

2-star – I have never actually given a 2-star review, but I would use this for a book that was a real struggle to finish, reading the last chapter was a necessity and gave me no help what-so-ever and I just did not like it at all

1-star – Obviously I have never used this one either, I would only use this review if I just could not finish the book no matter what the last chapter said.  If there were a lot of grammatical and spelling  errors and if it was just really offensive to me in general

I think another common misconception, when leaving a review, is that it must be a book review like you used to write in high school.  That is not the case!  The author already has a blurb written about the book, it must not have been too bad as you yourself picked the book to read, the reader just wants to know how you felt about the book.  It doesn’t hurt to mention the main characters, but there is no reason to re-state the plot.  That’s not to say you can’t, but do it in such a way that you are using the information as a tool to state why you did or didn’t like the book.  I also like to add a line at the end of my review stating if I intend to read the rest of the books in the series or more from the author.  This is a pretty good indicator of how I really felt.  Sometimes I will give a book a 3-star review, but state that I am going to read the next book or another from the author because I have already read previous material from the author that I liked.

I have one final thought on leaving a review, and many of you may disagree with me on this which is your right and, if you can be civil about it, I don’t mind hearing your opinion.  It is not okay to just leave a spoiler lurking for some unsuspecting future reader.  Spoilers are fine, if you can make the subject be “Spoiler Alert” or the first line of the review, but it is not a nice thing to just ruin the story for someone else before they even purchase the book.  Most authors have Instagram accounts, FaceBook pages and author specific groups, some even have chat groups specifically created to discuss books and those are the proper platform for spoilers.  When a reader goes onto one of those they are acknowledging that they may see a spoiler before they ever hit the “Like” button. It is up to them to ignore it and scroll on or to stay and read the post and comments.  Just remember, when you are leaving a review, that we are all looking for our next great adventure and would like to be surprised when we get to the end of it.

I hope that you find this helpful and that it encourages you to write a review in the future.  The authors put a lot of effort into their work and it is very kind of them to put themselves out there and share their imaginations with us.

Happy Reading

Sydney