I could write a damn college thesis about how much I hate 11/22/63, Tender is the Flesh or anything by Grady Hendrix

Same here. I find that positive reviews are often boring or cliche, or at least it’s harder to make them not boring/cliche. “I laughed, I cried, I stayed up too late reading it” – all cliches, even when they’re true. But in negative reviews, it’s easy to be very specific about what I disliked.

It’s the Anna Karenina principle: all positive reviews are alike, but every negative review is negative in its own way.

This is great actually and I love it. I always look for the negative reviews when I’ve finished a book. Even if I liked it. Books are long; there are so many ways for them to disappoint you. It raises the experience of reading to get into analysing the details. I think being able to notice what is good and why it is good is actually harder to do, but also interesting. Like it’s nice to explore what it is in particular that you enjoy the most personally. But hating is fun. And honestly if a book is a mixed bag, where it’s not terrible but just didn’t quite land, I think those are the most fun to discuss.

And this is why authors should keep away from readers spaces too!! Let us hate stuff. We will keep buying books, we promise!!

It’s like how people have more to say about their exes, just human nature

You’ve basically just described how the internet works. You are not alone.

I love reviews like that! Books can be bad in kind of an interesting way, if you know what I mean? Often you can at least see what they were aiming for or why enough people liked them for them to get published, and it’s fun trying to figure out what didn’t quite work. Particularly when you read a not so great book by an author you otherwise enjoy- it gives some insight into what does work about their better books. Sort of like learning how a machine operates when it breaks down and you try to fix it.

It can just be a bit naff when the reviewer doesn’t really get what the book is trying to do to begin with. Quite a few Goodreads reviews are basically ‘this is the first book I’ve ever read in X genre and it sucks because it’s not like the books I prefer in Y genre.’

I love these kinds of reviews because they go into the “why” so I know it’s not just the usual “I personally don’t like this book and think everyone else should hate it too”. More in depth analysis is always welcome.

I am definitely the same way. I have a podcast and the longer the episode is, the more likely I hated it. Haha. The way I see it is that if it’s really good, I want people to read or watch whatever I’m talking about. So I don’t want to ruin it for them. But if I hated it, I want to vent about all the parts I hated.

When you are reading something good, you are usually very immersed in the story. While reading it, you do not think about the reason(s) why you like it (I assume).

But when reading something with a lot of problems or just bad storytelling, that is not the case. You are constantly reminded that you are reading something you do not enjoy.

I think that is the reason why we can say a lot about books we don’t like. And not a lot about books we do enjoy.

I don’t think you have an issue. It is pretty normal.

I just try to be as kind as possible when giving reviews. Even though some books are frustrating to read. Because I don’t want to discourage new authors from following their dreams.

I wonder if you have a secret or not so secret wish to be writing books yourself, and bad books make you frustrated that they’ve been written and published.

If I just sorta liked something or it was average/good I can barely scrape up anything to say. But if I loved it or hated it I can go on forever. Same with book club meetings. If everyone is just neutral about it we move on to talking about something else.

When I write positive reviews my sentences are always kind of juvenile. It’s like a ramble of I like this or I enjoyed that, but when I write negative reviews, I end up writing paragraphs worth of opinions! I think I genuinely enjoy writing negative reviews because it feels like an analytical piece I have to write for a class, and that is something I haven’t had the opportunity to do in a long time.

I would have loved to be able to write an absolutely scorching analysis of a book we’d had to read in school. It would have probably gotten me to think more about the book than figuring out that orange was the color of love or some shit like that.

I rarely make any review, and i wouldn’t read something too long of a review, as i’m trying to find fast if something is good or not, and a long review breaks that basic idea.

The hardest part I find for writing long reviews for books I hate is the fact that I have to explain all the crappy plotholes, dialogue, tropes, etc. The reasons WHY I didn’t like the book. In order to do this I make sure I have examples. Hunting around the book for these examples gets tedious.

Now, the worst reviews I have are for books by authors I love, and have asked me to review their books, and I see that they are slipping into territories that are not good.

IE. An author who has become too pointed in their views and basically spends pages and pages on college level lectures on feminist politics - when I just want to read the story.

An author who should have stopped after the last book

An author who has been doubling down on the icky taboo.

I hate that. I hate having to whitewash a review because I don’t want to hurt the author’s feelings, or turn off readers.