Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Thing About Reviews...

As a writer, good reviews, heck, any reviews matter to me - a lot.  As a reader, they matter too.  However, I have made the mistake of letting myself be swayed by them.  

I was really into the Monique Martin Out of Time series of books.  I loved the husband and wife time of time travelers, working hard to right the wrongs done by evildoers.  However, I got bored of the constant out-of-time living that they were doing; I wanted them to go back to their own time for a while and live their own lives. So, I temporarily stopped reading the series.  



It has six reviews, but they are all pretty good.  That swayed me.  But now I'm done (for the time being).

While reading through The Strand Magazine, I read up on Aimee & David Thurlo, a husband and wife writing team.  They have a series featuring a strong female lead character named Ella Clah, a former FBI agent who becomes part of the Navajo Reservation Police Deparment.  I read the first book and was HOOKED.


When I read the first book, I found that it only had three reviews (now four, thanks to me).  The lack of reviews made me hesitant; I only downloaded the free preview.  But once I read it, I was hooked.

So, the lesson here is read previews, and don't rely on reviews - not all of the time.  (I hope that my readers heed this lesson, too!)

No comments:

Post a Comment