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.
