I recently read a book I could not, in good conscience, recommend to anyone. It was one of those rare BookBub features that appealed to me. (If you are unfamiliar with BookBub(dot)com, I’ll wait here while you go check it out.) 

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I am something of a disaster-fiction-freak. Pandemics, forest fires, alien invasions (the other-worldly kind, not the Trumpian kind), earthquake movies, you get the gist. As a developmental psychologist, I could offer some suggestions as to why this sort of story appeals to me, but I’ll skip the didactics for now and get back to my point.

The instigating premise of the book I’ve just read is a meteor that breaks apart and crashes into the Monterey peninsula, setting the place on fire. To be technically correct, this object should have been referred to as a meteorite, because bits of it actually hit the earth, but now I’m wandering again. Only to make the point that even genre fiction does not relieve the author of the obligation to “get the details right.” Somewhere, some foolish, but nevertheless better educated reader is going to notice, as, in this case, did I.

Now before we begin on the specifics about this book, let me say that, as a rabid consumer of disaster stories, I can tell you it is probably best to site your fictional disaster in a place that readers are likely to be somewhat familiar with, and at the same time, to already have some negative feelings about. O’Hare International Airport springs immediately to mind, for reasons I don’t need to go into here. Siting a horrific disaster on the beautiful Monterey peninsula in California is less than perfect. Many readers have fond memories of wonderful past visits, and would hate to see that area destroyed.

Since the author in question did not seek my advice in this matter, let’s move on. Having a meteorite set fire to Monterey is at least a plausible plot instigator. From that point forward, this story dropped off the edge of implausibility, never to return, becoming nothing more than a series of increasingly unlikely feats of derring-do on the parts of numerous characters. As I said once in my review of a Tom Clancy story, this book might appeal to the stereotypical twelve-year-old boy. And yes, of course I know, an author could do a lot worse than take Tom Clancy’s earnings to the bank, although I think there is little danger of that for the author in question, or his agent.

And now we’ve reached the cherry-on-top that really irks me about this book. The author has not only an agent, but also a publisher. A publisher that openly turns their nose up at authors who choose to take on the publishing tasks themselves, no less. But again, I digress.

Okay, so how does a reader write a bad review? First I want to ask, is there really any such thing as a bad review? My daddy taught me, as I suspect yours did also, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Typically when I read a book that I cannot, for whatever reason, recommend to my friends, I only post that I have read it on Goodreads(dot)com, leaving the stars and the review blank.

As an author, however, I want to suggest that readers are usually pretty bright, and if you explain in your review why you didn’t like a book, that is good information that other readers can use. Other readers might love a story for precisely the same reason you hated it! Not to mention, knowing why certain readers don’t like a story is also information the author can think about and possibly put to good advantage in their next book. My conclusion: the only truly bad review is the one you didn’t write. Even if you write an uncomplimentary review, someone somewhere will learn something from what you have to say.

You might be excused at this point for wondering why I don’t follow my own advice and sometimes leave my Goodreads review blank. To this question I have a feeble but, to me, an adequate excuse. Not all authors see reviews the way I do, and I fear the appearance of “revenge reviews” from them if I don’t so much enjoy their book. Any book on my Goodreads list that has no review is posted that way because 1) I am personal friends with the author, and that gets awkward, 2) the book was so bad I had to abandon it before finishing, or 3) I could not recommend it to my friends. 

What do you do when tasked with writing a review of a book you read, but could not recommend? Do you give it a thumbs down and explain why? I’ve been getting lots of comments from Russian bots lately (seriously!), so I would love to hear what you think about reviews.

Thank you as always for your support!