I'm sure anyone that uses Goodreads has been faced with this: you finish reading a book and you didn't really like it, or you liked it but it has serious problems. The question that immediately follows is this: do you leave a bad review or just choose not to review it at all? Unless I really hated the book (and I have read ones that I just relished shredding to pieces), I hate leaving a bad review. When I read a book, I want to like it, and the more I want to like it, the worse I feel when I don't, or when it just falls short (you know, the ones that aren't out-right awful, but aren't great either). I just feel so mean doing it, however, I do it anyway. Why? Because no matter how upset the author may be about it, and I realize that for some this may be very upsetting if it's a new author, I have to be honest about what I thought. They published the book for everyone to read so they have to accept that not everyone is going to like it and might even hate it. However, I also write them because others may have the exact same issues with them that I do and would rather know about them before getting into the book and being disappointed.
Why am I writing all this? Well, the last two ebooks I read I had to leave less than stellar reviews for. In fact, I really rather shredded one of them and felt pretty bad about it while writing it. You see, the book just came out in March and I'm the first one to leave a review of it on Goodreads. To make matters worse, it's a new author. I only gave it 2 stars and a fairly detailed (and brutal) review. Hopefully, the author will learn from reviews like mine (I'm quite sure I will not be the only one to leave such a review) and will improve their future writing. Perhaps even do a major rewrite of the one that I reviewed and then re-release it (it really needs it!!).
(However, I must admit some perverse pleasure in shredding a book I truly hated!)
