Personal Book Reviews…

The Joy and Bane of Every Author’s Life

By Award Winning Author Peggy Jaeger

If you are traditionally published, indie published, or self published, good book reviews can propel your work into the reading stratosphere, garner you bestseller status, and make you a favorite choice of Reese’s Book Club. The opposite, unfortunately, holds true. Bad reviews can tank your sales, destroy your book launch, and generally give you credence to believe that imposter syndrome is alive and well and living within you.

As an author, I know what a good book review can do for my career and my sales numbers. As a reader who writes reviews, I’m familiar with this as well, and am always hyperaware of the information I put in my reviews.

There are certain key elements every reader should consider when penning an evaluation on a book they’ve read. After speaking with several other authors, and professional book reviewers, I’ve compiled a list of what’s best to include and what’s imperative to leave out when you write a review, especially if you are going to post it someplace where other readers can find it.

“Book reviews are, first and foremost, for other readers,” bestselling author of Historical Romance, Clair Brett says. A review “is a place for one reader to give information to another.” And while the author may read the review – okay, let’s be honest here: us authors read our reviews! – it isn’t primarily meant for hers/his/their eyes.

So what goes into a good personal book review (as opposed to an editorial review like publications such as InD’tale Magazine, Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly)? What information is necessary and can help another reader decide if the book is for them, or make them realize it is a pass on adding to their TBR list?

It goes without saying that the author’s name and book title should be included if the review is going on a personal blog or website outside of a book retailer. It’s incredibly frustrating to read a review on a blog for example, and this information isn’t mentioned – especially when the book sounds like it’s right up your reading alley! Remember: basics are compulsory.

Nancy, the Executive VP of N.N. Light’s Book Heaven, feels a good personal review should start off with “a hook. Like the book itself, you need to grab the reader of the review in the first sentence.” In addition to that hook, Mistress of Book Reviews (MBR) likes to “have an idea of what type of romance,” the book being reviewed is. For instance, if someone is looking for a new Sweet Reunion Romance to read, they need to know – fairly soon in the review – that the book they are considering is a steamy, dark paranormal. This will clue the reader into the fact this book might not be what they are looking for.

Book details including the hero and heroines’ names, the setting and time period (contemporary, future, historical) and a few brief plot points are expected in a review. “Plot should be used to tantalize the reader,” MBR says, “but do not give them everything and the kitchen sink” in the review.

Nancy agrees. “Characters, tension, and the overall feel of the story,” are important to determine if the book is something other readers wants to invest their time in.

Naming book triggers has become a widespread element in many reviews these days. The popularity of gritty, dark, and “smut” romance has led to some readers becoming triggered with themes of abuse, violence, and uber-graphic sex. Placing a trigger warning somewhere in a review – if the book deals with themes that might upset a fellow reader – is a good idea. Again, this allows the person deciding to read the book the chance to pass it by if they have issues with certain topics.

Amazon, BookBub, Goodreads, and countless other review warehouses all use STAR RATINGS. For the most part, these are ridiculously subjective, but if you give a book 5 stars, that’s telling the reader you think this one is fabulous, near perfect. A one star will tell them the opposite. But here’s the thing about one star ratings… Personally, I feel if readers are going to give a book such a low rating, they should at least detail why they’re doing so. We all see so many 1 stars with just that – the star and no explanation, which leads others to wonder why isn’t this book liked? What made it so egregious it needed to be rated so low? If someone has the gumption to one-star a book, they should have the same pluck and tell fellow readers why so we can make a more informed decision about reading it.

Including tropes in book reviews isn’t necessary, according to Mistress of Book

Reviews. “Tropes are out there to showcase the starting point in a plot, to allow readers to know the book could fall into line with others they’ve read.” While I do agree, I also think many readers what to know the tropes and themes in a story. They may have specific ones they just devour and knowing a book has those tropes will make the reader that much more willing to read it. If a reader enjoys second chance high school reunion books, or marriage of convenience, or even secret baby storylines, and that’s what you write, a review detailing those tropes could encourage a sale from a new reader.

Book reviews don’t have to be 5,000 word tomes, detailing every chapter and character arc development point. One can just read the book for that information. Reviews should make the reader want to read it to discover, organically, the specifics of the story. They want to experience the hero and heroine falling in love, resolving their conflict, stumbling through their relationship. We all know the ending in a romance novel – the happily ever after. That’s the guarantee a romance book gives us – usually. We don’t need to have every chapter and scene point listed in the review, showing us how the characters are getting to their HEA.

Now, just as there are certain things that should always be included in a review, there are a few things that should never be included.

The number one thing to NEVER put in a review and which every single person interviewed for this article agrees on, is a SPOILER of any kind. A spoiler is just that – something that, if known out of context, will spoil the overall story and ending for future readers. I’ve had the misfortune of a reviewer recently detailing every single spoiler in my book in her review – and there were several. My thought when I read the review was, “well, no one needs to read the book now because they know everything.” Nancy agrees, saying, “what’s the point in reading the book if I just read everything about it in the review?” MBR puts it this way: “You can make a reader curious without giving away the bank.”

A good end goal when writing a review is to give other readers just enough information to make them want to read the entire book; to whet their appetite.

Because I am such a visual person, I see life through my own movie lens, so I think of spoilers this way. Would you have been happy knowing the ending to PSYCHO, or THE USUAL SUSPECTS, or even the first STAR WARS movie before you went to see them in the theatre? Yes, I am that old. I saw every one of these in an actual movie theater. Had I known the endings before going in, the experience of learning and watching everything evolve on the screen would have been tainted.

Many readers feel the same way about book spoilers in reviews. They ruin the fun of learning everything in the book for themselves.

If a spoiler must be added to one’s review, then just like adding a trigger warning, a SPOILER ALERT must be posted prior to sentence 1 of the review. It will give other readers the chance to skip reading it and just look at the star rating, or move down to the next review.

According to Nancy, something else that should never go in a review is “information not relevant to the book. This includes anything having to do with the author. Never bash an author.” Mistress of Book Reviews agrees. “I’ve known authors this has happened to, badmouthing and such. Attacking the author is something that should not be done,” and has no place in a review. Unfortunately, more reviews lately are guilty of having author bashing in them, especially reviews of books by indie authors. There is no reason for any review to get personal. Merely stating the book wasn’t for you, or it wasn’t something that appealed to your reading desires tells the person reading the review enough. Name calling or calling out the author serves no purpose other than building animosity.

Another thing that should never be done in a review is the re-writing of the book. That may sound silly, but reviews have been seen where the reviewer has written, “I would have ended the book this way,” or “this is how I think the book could have been better.” Without sounding snarky, if the reviewer feels this way, they should write their own book and end it the way they want to. Rewriting the book, or giving hypotheticals is a no-no and, simply, bad form.

A word concerning the DNF – did not finish. We’ve all DNF’d books. For whatever reason, it happens. The book just didn’t resonate with us, or we didn’t like the characters. Whatever. Not finishing a book doesn’t make the reader a bad person, nor the author a poor writer. An issue pops up when a book is DNF’d and then a review is written for it, stating only that it was a DNF, and then it’s given a 1 star rating. There are certain professional review sites that allow this. Why is this allowed? The reader has already stated they did not read all the way to the ending, therefore they can’t, objectively, give a solid review or rating on something they haven’t completed. It would be like a food critic giving a 1 star rating to a new restaurant without ever trying anything on the menu. Sure, he came into the place, but he didn’t eat anything.

My personal thought is, what purpose would leaving a DNF serve? I’m the one who didn’t like the book and I’m the one who didn’t finish it. Putting into a review all the things that made me DNF it seems like a waste of time that I could be spending on a book I do want to finish – or writing my own.

The thing we, as authors, must remember about book reviews is that they are the reviewer’s opinion. So many factors went into the writing of the review on that particular day by that particular reader, that we have no real control over how they perceive or depict the book.

As Clair Brett states, “…reviews are a reflection of a reader’s subjective reaction (to the book), which also includes their state of mind or mood when they wrote the review.” MBR agrees and feels, “a review is a treasure and hopefully should acquaint fans and future readers with the content between the covers, characters that leap off the pages, and a reluctance to have the book end.” To this end, book reviews are a necessary element in every author’s life.

As authors, we can’t control how readers felt on the day they finished the book and then wrote the review; we can only ever hope our words and stories resonate positively with them. Yes, authors will always have a one or two star rating, and there’ll always be someone will not like what authors have written. Even industry powerhouse authors have a few of those. Clair Brett says, “I am always thankful for reviews because they help a reader decide if my book is for them or not. Even 1 star reviews can offer information to a reader, and the more information they have, the more satisfied about their book purchase they will be.”

Authors may shudder every time they see a new review for one of their books listed somewhere, fervently praying please don’t let it be a bad one, but we recognize that at least someone read it and took the time to tell others about it.

As I said in the beginning – reviews are the joy, and the bane, of every author’s life. Thank you to all those who willingly spoke with me and allowed me to interview them for their perspective on reviews.

Clair Brett

https://www.clairbrett.com/

Mistress of Book Reviews https://www.mistressofbookreviews.com/

N.N. Lights Book Heaven https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/