Critique, Review and Hatefulness Supertatee's rantings from her Soapbox

        Let me start by saying this post is MY OPINION MY THOUGHTS AND MY FEELINGS!!!!! So if you are offended, sorry it was nice knowing you.

My sister and I started this blog as a place to talk about books we have read, those we like and don’t like. As time has gone on we have been fortunate enough to work directly with some authors on reviews, releases, and promotions. It has been a lot of fun. I personally post here, on my Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble accounts; as well as share on my Twitter and Facebook. And we try to remind the readers as well as authors that we are not professional reviewers or editors, we are just sharing our opinions. I also read reviews of other bloggers. Over time I have seen on all these sites reviews of many different people. Many just like us, people giving opinions. But there are others who seem to get great pleasure being complete and utter assholes. I am not just saying that to be mean but there isn’t another way to put it. If you don’t like a book, fine you are entitled to feel that way. And there is a way to write the review so that it helps other readers and the authors. For example if an author reads a review where someone states the book in question didn’t make sense or maybe didn’t flow well and the reviewer gives examples it actually can help the author when writing a future story. BUT there are those “reviewers” that seem to take it too far, they are hateful, rude and sometimes abusive. There is a way to explain why you didn’t like a book without being ignorant, insulting or cruel to the work or the author. I have seen so called reviews where the person writing it, who has no knowledge of the author other than what the “about the author” page in the book, has stated verbally attack the author. Why? Does it make them feel better about themselves? Personally when I see a review like that I completely dismiss it, I don’t take the advice of someone who gets off on being an asshat. What really gets me is on one of the sites I mention above there is a group of these people who are all over the place giving these kinds of reviews; each one nasty and vindictive; seems like they may need a new hobby, or a new personality.  I have seen where some of them even become aggressive with the readers that did enjoy the book and posted a reviewing saying so. Seems to me if they have the right to be mean and hateful then others have the right to write to a polite review, notice I didn’t say  a favorable one? To me a “good review” can mean the person liked the book or that they wrote a review stating why they didn’t like the book in a way that is helpful to all involved. As sad as those bad apples of reviews make me I would like to say Thank You to all the wonderful people who leave reviews both in favor of a book and those who even when they don’t enjoy a book still leave a review that is decent and helpful.