Todat I'm participating in a blog hop organized by Reading Romances. The question the bloggers participating in this blog hop were asked was:
What do you look for in a review?
As a blogger who reviews quite a few books a month I think this is a very poignant question. When I write a review for this blog, or read a review form on eof the many book blogs I follow I think the key feature is honesty. I never ever write a dishonest review or accept money to post a good review, not only is this bad taste in my opinion but it ruins your reputation as a book blogger. Who wants to read a book review that's biased, because money was offered as an incentive?! You read a review to find out what other people thought of the book and if you should buy it, and when someone writes a dishonest review for money you'll never really know if the book was actually good or not.
In addition to honesty, I want to know why the reviewer thought what they did and inturn I try to explain my ratings in my own reviews. Now, this does not mean I look for the exact sentence Why I rated this book..... if everyone wrote that, I think book blogs would be extremely boring. However, I think its important to mention the reasoning behind a rating, for example, was it a low rating because of typos? you didn't like the genre? the writing style wasn't your personal favourite? When an explanation is provided in a review it gives the review a level of credibility because their thoughts are supported with some sort of evidence.
I agree - a truthful review, and what the reviewer liked (or didn't like) about the book are important. I also like an image of the cover, a quote or two from the book, and maybe a little about the author. And not too much detail about the plot... no spoilers! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, I hate reading reviews with spoilers! I hadn't though about using a quote from the book, its definitley something to consider.
DeleteHonesty is soooo stinkin' important. Transparency and honesty! :)
ReplyDeleteThe Brunette Librarian Blog
Agreed, without honesty a review is quite worthless!
DeleteReally pleased to see honesty coming up over and over again. It's so important. It doesn't matter if your review is perfectly formatted and presented if it's just a carbon copy of something a PR peep sent (and sadly, I've heard the "Here's an example review you might want to draw from" stories). It has to be personal and honest.
ReplyDeleteThat's terrible, I've never heard of anyone using a pre-written PR review but somehow I'm just not surprised.
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