Are Honest Book Reviews a Thing of the Past?
The internet has brought many amazing things but it has also brought many bad things. One of these is the online Bookstagram/Booktok community. Before you run off and be like “how dare she”, hear me out! This is my super, on fire, hot take.
Answer this question to yourself: How many books have you seen all over it, hyped up so much, and when you read it felt it was pretty bad of a book?
I honestly feel like I’ve read a few of these. Fourth Wing was one, Mexican Gothic was another. I felt like as a book they were okay but as hyped as they were they really didn’t meet the mark.
Now, I will recognize that these are my opinions! However, I will also note I’ve seen similar comments made on these books and others that I had these feelings about too. So I’m not alone in this.
So what is going on??
We all know on social media, there is a heard mentality. I mean that happens in life too. You see someone doing something, and then another, and suddenly you get FOMO and you have to read it. If everyone has loved something, you need to as well right? Society creates a bit of a fear from swimming against the current and saying “you know…this wasn’t that good.” Unfortunately this just then adds more to the hype and it keeps snowballing!
Before you know it a book has taken over social media and EVERYONE absolutely loved it.
There’s also a fear of leaving a bad review. Social media, modern day and everything else has told us we are all perfect. We can do no wrong. But sometimes…a book is just really bad. The writing may be atrocious, the story may go nowhere, it may have just been a waste of your time. I am all for supporting authors and indie authors, but if a book is bad be honest. There’s a way to provide negative feedback in a positive way without saying “you’re a terrible author, don’t write again”. But giving a book 5 stars when it really only deserved 3, or less, is a disservice to the author and to other readers.
There’s an oversaturation of books on the market with the ability to public ebooks and self publish now. And I’ll say it loudly – there are a lot of terrible books out there. Just because you can publish and have the ability to string a sentence together does not always mean you should.
There’s a difference between writing for yourself to be creative and writing to publish and make serious money.
Heck, I love writing stories and have so many being written. Would I ever publish them to make money? Not in a million years because I am not a writer and I know it wouldn’t do well.
Additionally, there is a bit of a fear about giving a bad review when you’re asked to review a book. Support those authors, read their ARCs, give them the support they need. But be honest. I know it can be awkward because the author asked you read their review (in ARC cases) but honesty is the best policy. This is why I’d never take money to review a book because then you have this weird want to not speak negatively.
This leads to the next point – paid reviews can result in questionable reviews. I never trust a paid review for anything. A reviewer can say it is their personal opinion, however there was money involved which will of course have subconsciously altered their thoughts. They may not even know it. You also may have a fear about being honest in reviews since there was a financial transaction. I don’t count reviewing a book for free as financial benefits. I’m talking where they send the book and pay to have the book reviewed. That’s a big no no to me.
Finally, I no longer trust a book blindly that states that it was on the NY Times Best Seller List. With all the information above, the payment of promotions for books to get people to buy them and lots of other factors, a book on that list doesn’t necessarily mean it is an amazing book. It just means that it sold a lot of copies – which is not an indicator of how good a book is!
Ultimately, I have started a policy of no longer jumping on the bandwagon and reading a book when I see it all over Bookstagram, Book Twitter or any other place. Reviews will always influence our decision to read a book and that is not going to change. What can change is peoples honesty in reviewing the books to not waste time. I have wasted so much time on bad books because of questionable reviews. If I read a bad book by my choice that’s my decision. If I read it because it had a 4.8 average because of “false” reviews, that’s when I become a little annoyed.
I absolutely recognize that this is not easy to change but I do feel that something needs to change. I’m personally a little bored of reading books that weren’t worth it because they took over for some strange reason. Will it change? Who knows but we can hope.
This is certainly one of my pet peeves and hot take opinions.
What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear some other view points in the comments!
