A friend once asked me to review on Goodreads a book she was planning to indie publish in a few weeks. Like a shmuck, I said, “Sure, I’d love to” with no further details. I had briefly workshopped stuff with this friend (before dropping out because I had no energy to write at that point in my life). Her stuff had been mostly fantasy YA, and I had enjoyed it. I was sure I would have no problems reviewing this book positively.
I was so wrong. The book turned out not to be SFF but a romance novella. For me, romance is like salt. I don’t mind a little in my books. Occasionally, it really hits the spot like a good salted caramel. But would I ever eat a pile of salt? Nope.
Not only that, but it turned out that the book was, well, just okay. Like, if my friend was still workshopping the book, I would have had lots of questions and feedback. But my friend was ready to ship the book and just looking for some reviews to get the ball rolling. I had no idea what to do.
I ended up leaving a pretty short and ambiguous review stating that it wasn’t my usual genre and it was “fun and light.” I gave it four stars because I didn’t want to hurt my friend, but it didn’t reflect my real opinion. I tried to brush it off as doing a favor for a friend and put it behind me, but it gnawed at me (and still does).
A few weeks later, my friend received a really devastating one star review. Though she kept it together on social media, I could tell she was really hurt and mad about it. When I went to read the review, it pretty much said all the things that I had thought about the book but didn’t say. Feedback that could have been helpful when the book was still being written, but that now just served to drive people away from the book my friend poured her heart into. Since the book has few reviews, this bad review is a major chunk of the ratings, which I feel pretty horrible about.
It’s been a while since then, but I still think about this situation a lot. Was it more ethical of me to leave a falsely positive review or for this person to leave a one-star rip-fest? Should I have just declined to post a review at all? I know a lot of professional authors only leave positive reviews or don’t give star ratings for this reason. Perhaps this is the safer path if you want to be a professional author. Other authors are your coworkers, and no one likes someone who talks smack about their coworkers in public. And I understand how Amazon reviews can make or break an author’s livelihood.
However, after thinking it over, there are a couple of reasons I continue leave negative reviews and utilize the whole star rating scale.
For one, as a reader, I find negative reviews to be almost as helpful as positive ones. If I’m on the fence about reading a book, I’ll browse through the negative reviews. I already know the reasons I want to read it: marketing is pretty good at highlighting the positives about a book. But a well written negative review lets me know if a book is going to hit my personal hang-ups. If several negative reviews say the book lacks the things that I was going to the book for, then I know it’s probably not going to work out for me.
Another reason I hold on to negative reviews is that I feel my candor means that my positive review of a book really means something. Goodreads says two stars means “it was okay,” and I’m gonna stick to that! I’m not going to pretend to like something just because everyone else did. I’m going to tell it to you straight.
The other reason I hold on to writing less-than-glowing reviews is my background as an English major. Lit crit is in my blood! If a book fails for me, I want to dissect why it failed. I want to take it apart and see how it works and remember the lessons for later. Maybe I shouldn’t do this in public but how else are we all going to learn?
If you, like me, are a negative reviewer, here are a few of my personal guidelines to posting ethical negative reviews:
- Always include something positive. Anything. Even if just the idea of the book was intriguing. You don’t want to destroy the author’s soul, just help readers know what the book is like.
- Phrase negative comments from a readerly perspective. If the writing style wasn’t what you expected or the plot confused you, no one can disagree with that.
- Likewise, stay away from personal attacks. It comes off as bitter and rude and leaves you open to counter attack because your writing (beautiful as it is) isn’t perfect either. Talk about the writing, not the person.
- Explain your personal hang-ups. You want people reading your review to know if your perspective aligns with theirs. I don’t like romances, so I always state that when reviewing a romance. Lovers of the genre can (and should) feel free to ignore my opinions.
I hope anyone receiving a negative review from me will understand why I did it. I hope that anyone reviewing my (as-yet-hypothetical) books will be honest about their flaws, but also remember that they were written by a real human with feelings. And I hope that I can also take that criticism gracefully and build on it. No one wants to be that person vanity publishing books that everyone thinks are terrible, yet no one will tell them.
The truth is important but also dangerous. Use with care.
