Also, happy last day of July! It has been a crazy busy, wonderful and intense month for me - personally- and am happy to finish this month with a bang with a guest post from the fabulous Sara from Harlequin Junkie.
Sara will be talking about dealing with your first (or any) negative review. I think she has great tips and tricks to work around any writing blocks/negative feels you may be having about a [negative] review so.. take it away, Sara!
Dealing with your first negative review:
Reading a book is a piece of cake, most of us probably inhale the book in a couple of hours… but writing a review is much harder than it actually sounds. We as book bloggers put a lot of thought and introspection into our reviews.
So many things to consider: Did we connect with the characters, did the author engage us from get go? Was the author descriptive? Humorous….?
Writing a review for a book we enjoyed is complex enough, trying to write a review for a book we couldn't relate to is flat out exhausting IMHO.
I’m not a big fan of the term “negative”, none of us start a book with the intention of disliking the book. The very fact that we picked up that book to read means we connected with something within the blurb/story line.
So a good place to start your review would be to state why you picked up this book and go from there…
When writing a review for a book I didn't really care about, I ask myself these questions:
- What made this book hard to read? Was it the voice, POV, Characters, Plot?
- What would have made the book better?
- Was there one particular scene that was the deal breaker? Would I have enjoyed the book better without that scene or character interference?
I would try to introduce the parts of the story I didn't care for with "I personally…”
Additionally, the fact that we interact with an author on Social media should have no bearing on our review at all, not if our review is an honest refection of our feelings about the book.
An honest opinion truly does makes for a great review; It also builds credibility within the bookish community.
We are all unique in our own way, we have our own preferences, our moods vary from time to time. We just have to be cognizant about the fact that we can’t ALL Love the same or EVERY book we read for that matter.
I’d like to hear your thoughts, How did you tackle a review for a book you didn't really care for?
Thanks for reading my ramblings
Once I had a book that I literally had nothing nice to say about. The grammar and spelling errors were too much for me to overcome so I just decided not to write the review. Although I do believe we all need to write honest reviews, I think shredding the author and editor to pieces (like I wanted to) was better left undone. lol
ReplyDeleteAs an occasional Goodreads reviewer, I too try to focus on anything positive, but in one instance I hadn't a single good thought about a particular book because the main character was a completely lame dolt who made poor decisions and wondered why her life was in a shambles. I just wanted to give that character a good shake. Bloggers are held to a higher standard, so if I were in the position I would try to take care not to be as objective as possible.
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