Yesterday I shared a negative book review and as always it stirred up a lot of thoughts about writing negative book reviews. I often see a lot of book reviewers say that they don’t review books if they give them under three stars and this is something that I personally disagree with for a variety of reasons. There are a few other things that have been on my mind recently too, so it felt like a good time to get some thoughts down on why I think it’s important to share negative book reviews.

First, what do I mean by a negative review? The most obvious description is a review that is under three stars, however, that’s not always the case for me. I don’t write negative reviews for books that just aren’t, as I quite often put it, “my cup of tea”. Books that have nothing wrong with them apart from the fact that they just didn’t work for me. I do quite often write a review for books like that to talk about the book from my perspective, and they’re usually very complimentary up until the point where I say it just wasn’t for me. I don’t consider those to be a negative review.

A negative review for me is when a book has issues. The obvious one is spelling and grammar, as well as word choices in general, and most often I don’t have to comment on this as most writers use beta readers and editors so by the time the book gets to me, it’s been through several hands and those issues have been fixed. If it hasn’t by that point it’s not going to do an author any good for me to ignore those issues – especially if the book is already available to buy. If that’s the case that means multiple reviewers have glossed over those issues, maybe because they didn’t want to upset the author, and that’s a bit of a problem now, isn’t it?

I read mostly speculative fiction so world-building is a huge part of whatever I’m reading, and if it’s poor that is something readers need to know about. Does the universe they’ve created make sense? Is it plausible? Does the author explain it well enough? I’ve got an academic background in English Literature, including Science Fiction and Creative Writing, so when I’m asking these questions I’m drawing on all of that.

Then there’s the more serious issues of representation. How diverse are the cast of characters? Is the representation accurate or does it feel tropey? If there’s queer or disabled representation how accurate is it? Has there been any cultural appropriation?

There could be a lot of other things that pop up when I read a book. These are just some of the things I notice or are thinking about.

While I review books to help authors and publishers promote books, it is always on my mind that I have a responsibility to readers just as much as I do to help authors. After all, as book reviewers we are readers ourselves and I don’t know about anyone else, but I have had some awful experiences with books where I’ve read the reviews, it’s sounded like a fantastic book, and then it’s been awful. I don’t mean a bad read as in, it wasn’t for me, I mean as in it was full of bigoted stereotypes that no one pointed out in a review.

As book reviewers we have a responsibility to readers to help them navigate the huge amount of books out there. I try to write my reviews from the perspective of a potential reader; what would I want to know about this book if I was going to pick it up? If it has a lot of five-star ratings and no one is saying that there are problems with a book then how are readers supposed to make an educated choice about what to read? The answer is, they’re not.

This is something that has been on my mind for a long time, and I am seeing evidence of it more often on Good Reads and Amazon. Readers have varied tastes, that’s just a fact of life. Not every book is for every reader. As a result most books will have a variety of star ratings. Take for example, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab which was the first book in my Good Reads timeline. I’ve not read this book, so I have no opinion on it. It has a wide range of ratings from 4 stars to 1 star from thousands of readers as you would expect from a popular book by a traditionally published author.

Before I continue I want to state clearly that I love and support independently published authors. I recognise how much hard work many of you put into your books and especially promoting them. The problem is that a small minority are cutting corners and paying for reviews, whether that is on review sites that specifically offer paid for reviews or with dishonest book tour companies.

Unfortunately I know this for a fact because I’ve seen it in action. I’m not going to name the author or the tour company, however, my positive four-star review was silenced because I criticised the author’s handling of their LGBTQIA+ character. They used “magical pheromones” to turn a gay character straight and make them fall in love with the antagonist. I pointed out in my review that this was inappropriate and that was not how being queer works, magic or no magic.

The author called the blog tour owner and complained about my review. I was told that I could keep my review up as long as I removed that part of my review because my review “had been good up until that point”. As a queer reviewer the representation of LGBTQIA is extremely important to me and I was not happy about being silenced, especially as the blog tour company had no guidelines for reviews for reviewers up on their website to indicate what a reviewer should do if they had criticism or negative review (most blog tour companies do). I chose to remove the review and myself from the blog tour company.

I have since seen the same author listed on a paid for review site and both their books have high ratings with not a single mention of the horrible LGBTQIA+ representation in the first book. It makes me wonder how many other reviewers were silenced.

Leading on from above, I started to become wary of Good Reads ratings now that the rose-tinted glasses had come off. After reading a book that was particularly problematic or filled with mistakes I would look at the reviewers who gave it high ratings. I found that many of them gave five stars to every single book they read. Out of all the books they had read in their lifetime many of these serial five-star givers had only ever given under twenty books lower than four-star reviews. Yes, there are a lot of good books out there, but can you seriously tell me that every single book you read is a five star?

As book reviewers we get a lot of books for free. We get advanced reader copies (ARCs) and we get sent hardcopies in the post to review. It can feel natural to rate up to say thank you, especially if you’re part of a blog tour, and I was guilty of this when I was first starting out. I stopped doing it because I felt that I wasn’t being authentic to myself as a reviewer. If you’re working with a blog tour host that doesn’t talk about what to do when you don’t enjoy a book then that’s a problem. Good blog tour hosts recognise that not every book suits every reader and book reviewers voices shouldn’t be erased. The blog tour hosts I work with now all have a guideline that says it’s ok to post a review under three stars as long as you do it after the blog tour as finished. That means your voice gets heard, and it doesn’t affect the promotion that author has paid for.

A negative review is not always a bad thing. Rude and petty negative reviews filled with insults that exist to be nasty for the sake of ruining someone’s day are never a good thing. To an author any negative review probably feels that way, and it’s their responsibility to find a way to handle reviews, whether it’s not reading them at all or finding a way to deal with the negativity.

One way you can help with that is not to tag them on social media because tagging an author in a negative review is essentially the electronic version of posting it to their home address. Remember the first part of this post? Your review is not just for the author, so they don’t need to know that you didn’t like their book or what didn’t work for you. A general rule is if you put anything critical or negative in your review, or if it’s three stars or under do NOT tag the author. If you want to get exposure use hashtags, do not tag the author. Publishers also love to share positive reviews so tag them too.

I’ve also heard from some authors on Twitter that bad reviews have actually gotten them more readers because people have read a bad review and thought “hey, that’s actually exactly what I’m looking for!”. It’s the whole one person’s trash is another person’s treasure idea.

Constructive reviews also point out to authors where they have made mistakes when it comes to important topics such as representation. In recent years books that shouldn’t have been published have been called out for their terrible representations because no one spoke up when they were being published or at the ARC stage. As book reviewers, especially those of us who are members of marginalised communities, we have a responsibility to use our voices to say “no this isn’t right”. Ignorance is not going to change if we just keep quiet because we don’t want to rock the boat or because we don’t share our negative reviews.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about authors harassing reviewers and a few months ago I had a traditionally published author contact me on Twitter to discuss my review and their “creative decisions”. I very quickly blocked them. I knew that was code for trying to convince me to change my review because I had written a negative one. It is extremely unprofessional for authors to contact reviewers. Reviewers need to remain impartial otherwise the authenticity of our reviews mean nothing.

The first negative review I wrote I haven’t even transferred to my blog yet because I was terrified about how negative I needed to be in it. It was a fantasy novel by a male writer who chose to write a female bisexual protagonist and the representation was awful. There was also unnecessary sexual assault scenes and horribly ableist representation in it as well. I have had such an amazing response to the review, especially from female readers, and it is one of the reasons I keep writing negative reviews.

There will always be a worry of backlash when you speak your mind, but there are tools to protect yourself. If you’re concerned then take the time to go through settings on the site where you post reviews and social media so that you are in control of who comments on your reviews and who can contact you. At the first sign of contact from someone make sure you block them, do not engage. You do not owe anyone an explanation. It helps if you have a book review policy on your blog or a note in your review profile about writing negative reviews. You can read my book review policy here, and you can see my Good Reads profile here.

I’ve often wondered whether writing negative reviews might be a waste of time. If it’s under three stars why don’t I just skip the review and save myself the time? I think that might be why some reviewers don’t review books under three stars; it’s an easy way to lighten their load. Again my mind goes back to me as a reader. If someone didn’t finish a book I want to know why, and I’m not alone in this thinking, I know other readers who do too.

I think it’s also important to remember that things are tight for a lot of people right now. If you’re outside the UK you might not be aware that we’re currently having a cost of living crisis over here. People are struggling with low finances and if they are able to buy books to help take their mind off life’s stresses they’re not going to want to end up wasting money on something they won’t enjoy. Please keep things like that in mind next time you consider not sharing your views about a negative review.

Thank you for reading some of my thoughts on why it’s important to share negative book reviews.

Where do you stand with negative book reviews?

As a reader do you want to know if a book has issues or the reason why someone DNFs (didn’t finish) a book?

If you’re a book reviewer do you post negative book reviews?

Please remember to keep the conversation civil and the discussion constructive. We all have our own opinions based on our unique experiences, and while it’s important to share them there is no need for insults or passive-aggressive tones.

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