Let’s Talk Bookish: Reviewing Books?

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! Today I’m back with a Let’s Talk Bookish, a weekly meme hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Today’s topic is all about reviewing books, something that I’ve wanted to do more of recently.

I haven’t reviewed a book for a few months, but I usually want to review books that I like. I don’t really like sharing lots of negative opinions about books, especially publicly, so I usually only review books that I rate three to five stars. That way, even though I do share some of my criticisms, I’m also able to talk about the fact that I enjoyed the majority of my reading experience. I don’t review every book I read because of this.

I generally think it’s harder to write reviews for books that are sequels. This is because it can be hard to balance avoiding spoilers of the first book while discussing aspects of the second book. I also think that avoiding spoilers can be difficult when reviewing fantasy or mystery books, since they often have multiple twists that can influence a reader’s opinions about the books.

Also, surprisingly, it can be hard to write reviews for books that I really love. This is because it’s often hard to come up with lots of things to say about them other than “I loved this and this and this.” Because there are fewer negative comments in these kinds of reviews, it can be hard to write a post-length review without sounding repetitive. This is why, in the past, I’ve done mini-review posts for books I’ve rated four stars.

I typically don’t change my reviews of books since I write so few of them, but I do sometimes change or remove my ratings of books, since I rate almost all of the books I read, generally unless they are for a class assignment. I remove my ratings if I no longer want to support the author or the book.

What do you think? How often do you review books? What makes writing book reviews difficult for you? Let me know in the comments! I would love to hear from you!