Review Reliability

It’s somewhat ironic talking about the reliability of reviews as a person who writes reviews, but as a reader—of books, and of reviews—I think it’s important to bounce around the idea of how much weight we put on reviews, and how we allow them to sway our reading choices, especially when it comes to the inherent subjective nature of a lot of reviewing styles.

So, back before I was interested in blogging myself, I was first introduced to book vlogging, or booktube. The rabbit hole was deep, and some of my favorite videos ended up being reviews. When I started reading as a kid, booktube wasn’t a thing. Book blogging wasn’t a thing. Connecting to veritable thousands of other readers wasn’t a thing. Perhaps a little late to the discovery, I was fascinated that there were people out there who just… talked about books. Books they loved, books they hated, books that made them want to rip their hair out—

And oh, the snarky, salty, tea-drenched reviews were a plenty.