Monday, August 20, 2012

What do you look for in a review?

review



        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.

 

     So now I'm asking you; what do you look for in a review?

6 comments:

  1. 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! :)

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    1. I agree, I hate reading reviews with spoilers! I hadn't though about using a quote from the book, its definitley something to consider.

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  2. Honesty is soooo stinkin' important. Transparency and honesty! :)
    The Brunette Librarian Blog

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  3. Really 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.

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    1. That'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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