Elaina's Notes on Reviewing

As stated before, I do believe our books deserve reviews. That is the author part of me talking, of course, but knowing how I feel, I therefore do leave reviews - as a reader. Reviews are how we tell others what we thought about a book and perhaps we then encourage other readers … and we encourage our authors to keep writing.

Yet it is a fact that reviews are subjective. What I enjoy reading, you may not. Something I find less than interesting, you may enjoy. This is how we are; we are all different, and I love that we are all different. From a review point of view, though, maybe you question how I rate reviews I do post.

I don’t review everything I read. Some books do not in any manner create a spark of interest for me. Others are written, well, badly, and I simply abandon the book. I will not leave a terrible review; this is just how I am. If a book, in my opinion, does not merit three stars or more, it will not receive a review. I know how much work goes into writing a novel, series, short story, poem or novella, and to trash the writer’s years of work just doesn’t feel right.

I therefore post reviews of books that did in some way speak to me.

Now you ask, but how can you give a contemporary or horror novel 5 stars and then the next day a fantasy or crime novel also receives those 5 stars? These reads are completely different from each other, are they not?

The answer is that my rating isn’t about genre. I read all kinds (although my favourite is Fantasy) and every genre has a different way to tell a story and therefore elicits reactions that will be different also. I base my rating on my reactions.

A sweet romance may cause me to sob into my pillow, while an epic fantasy may have me swinging swords in my dreams. Reaction. Emotion. Therefore both deserve five stars.

Thus, don’t judge what I read when looking at my rating; use the stars to judge my reactions to the story. Now you know J