Hey guys! So today, I wanted to discuss a topic which I think is quite important?? I have noticed around the blogosphere that book reviews usually tend to get less likes and views. Now obviously, everything isn’t about likes and views, but I’ve also occasionally seen less comments on review posts, meaning that people don’t find them of much value, or I’ve seen some bloggers complaining about how reviews aren’t “interesting”. Now obviously, that is a personal opinion, but I for one, love reading and writing reviews! The main reason I started a blog was to write book reviews, so I thought I’d talk about this, and talk about why reviews are important in the book blogosphere and why people should read them!
1.You discover new books
I personally think reviews are the best way to discover books you might me into. I have discovered some of my all time favourites like Six of Crows, Strange the Dreamer, and They Both Die At The End through book reviews. You get to see what are people’s opinions on books you’ve been thinking of picking up, and you even come across books you think you won’t enjoy, but end up loving.
2. I genuinely find reviews really interesting
Is there anything more fun than seeing someone fangirl about their favourite book? I love seeing people flail and scream about a book they love, especially when they get all passionate about it. And even funnier is seeing people rant about books they hate, because I love all the salt and sarcasm that comes into those reviews.
3. You get multiple opinions about a book, so you can decide whether you will enjoy it or not even before picking it up
When I’m confused about picking up a certain book, I always like to go and read a couple reviews on it, just so I can get opinions from people I trust and then decide whether I want to spend my time and money on that book. Positive reviews always make my choice easier, and negative reviews tell me which books are problematic and better to avoid.
4. I get to see what other bloggers like
I love finding out what my blogger friends enjoy reading. A lot of you guys have really good book choices, and I love seeing what kind of books interest you. It also helps me find books which wouldn’t be my first choice, yet are really good and helps me get a better variety of books to read.
5. Reviews take a hell lot of time and effort
It honestly takes so much time to write a good review. Summarising, talking about the pros and cons, making graphics, collecting gifs (if you do that), and even writing coherent sentences which can actually help a person decide whether to pick up the book or not- it’s not easy and takes a lot of time and effort. I spend hours writing my reviews, and I actually have a lot of fun writing them, but it does take a lot of thinking to frame what I want to say properly, and to not be repetitive and boring in whatever I’m trying to say. So I think it’s important to appreciate all the hard work that goes into writing reviews.
So, what do you think? Do you enjoy reading reading/writing reviews? Do you think reviews should be appreciated more? Lets discuss in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Rhea
Hey! Rhea! I absolutely love reading and writing reviews!!
Well! writing them really takes a good effort and time!! A little appreciation just boost up the morale!
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Yes exactly! Some support and appreciation goes a long way, especially because reviews do take a lot of effort. Glad you agree!
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I love writing reviews! Putting my thoughts about a book into words is really satisfying – I love your discussion posts! They’re always super interesting 💕
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Aw thank you so much!! ❤ Yess, reviews make me really satisfied, especially when they give me a proper way to pen down my feelings!
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I love reviews! Both writing and reading them. Everyone highlights different aspects of a book, so it’s a good way to see if the book is for me or not.
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Yes precisely!! It’s great to see people point out different things in a book, and I honestly much prefer knowing whether i will like a book beforehand, rather than reading it and being disappointed
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I really enjoy writing reviews and as you said it takes a lot of time if you want to do it properly with graphics etc. I try to erad as many reviews as I can if I think that the book could interest me. Sometimes i’ll read a review for a book not falling into my categories just because I love and trust the blogger. Sometimes I will avoid to read the review as I am busy writing mine about the same book and don’t want to be influenced in my writing. I will come back and read the review once mine is published 😉
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Yesss that’s exactly what I do as well! I always try to read reviews, because people always have really interesting points to highlight, and i love to know the opinions of other bloggers as well!
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Kudos to no.3🙌🏼🙌🏼
I swear like sometimes when goodreads isn’t clear on a book bec of their extra long synopsis, I always resort to book reviews!
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Yess thank youu!! OMG yes, somany times, goodreads has a really bs synopsis, so book reviews are so much more helpful
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Truer words have never been spoken
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I enjoy reading and writing reviews as well. But I also agree with what you’re saying about people not taking the time to read them anymore… I’ve wrecked my brains trying to come up with writing reviews in creative ways – even did a full review with only songs that gives characters meaning via songs, the plot and the ending, along with my feelings toward the book… people said they liked the creativity but still only got about 5 likes lol 😂 I don’t know what else to do… 🤷♀️💕 I’m going to keep doing me and hopefully one day people will like what I do 🙂
Great post 🙂
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Yeah. It’s happening with me though (57 followers), get a little over ten likes for book reviews and a little less with tags and awards and such. I’ll check out your blog sometime
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Thank you 😊
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No problem! I like the concept of the blog, following it!
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Thank you 😊 I’m glad you liked it 🙂
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Yepp you’re absolutely right. It’s hard to be creative and fresh about reviews, and it sucks when they don’t get the appreciation they deserve. Yeahh, I think if you keep continuing and keep trying, they’re bound to be noticed!
thank you so much!!
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Thank you 😊
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I’m with you on this one. Even if I never receive free physical copies of books, I love supporting great authors who take so much time to write a story for readers to enjoy. Even when I didn’t particularly like a book, I always try to say at least one nice thing that is true about the book, because I know not everyone has the same tastes and this means what I don’t like, someone else might love… Also, I try to add my reviews to as many platforms as possible.
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Yepp exactly!! Everyone has different tastes, so it’s important to try to give an unbiased opinion on the book, because you can’t be sure what other people like!
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And I want to give others a chance to read a book without me having spoiled it.
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I hardly ever post reviews on my blog. I just write the full-length one on Goodreads and write a summarized one together with other books on my monthly wrap up. I feel like I gravitate less towards review posts on WordPress as well, mainly because I’m not interested in the book that is being reviewed. I usually read and comment on review posts about books I’ve already read.
Meanwhile on Goodreads I think people would read my reviews because they are thinking about reading the book, or also just read the book and want to see other people’s thoughts on it.
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That’s true as well I guess. A lot more people go to goodreads for book reviews, so it makes sense as to why you’d rather publish them there. What works for each I guess! 🙂
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Such a beautiful post… I love writing and reading reviews so much too and you really summed up all my feelings so much better than me 😊😊😊
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