Tamsyn Muir uses the words “deliquesce(nt)” and “pallid” a lot.

Nowadays about a quarter of the books I read are ARCs, so I usually review those to try to maintain a decent NetGalley ratio.

With non-ARCs, sometimes I have something to say and sometimes I don’t. Often I’ll write a very brief review for non-ARCs (my ARC reviews are on the longer side).

When I read reviews, I’m much more interested in why they liked or disliked the book than in whether they liked or disliked the book. If all I know is that they liked it, so what? They’re a stranger on the internet, I have no idea if their tastes are similar to mine. But if I read a review that says “I didn’t like this, it was too weird, and the prose was too purple, and it spent too much time on the characters’ feelings and not enough time on the plot,” then I can conclude that it’s my kind of book and I should give it a try.

1. The majority of people who buy YA books are adults (source). YA is marketed to adult readers as well as teens nowadays. I’m not saying you have to read it, I’m just saying it’s not unusual for adults to read YA, and therefore it’s not wildly unreasonable for people to think you might read YA if you haven’t explicitly said otherwise. If you don’t want YA, just say that in your recommendation request.
2. There are also some books where people disagree whether they’re YA or adult. For example, Gideon the Ninth was intended to be adult fiction and was marketed as adult fiction, but the main characters are teenagers, there’s no sex in it, and some readers refer to the book as YA. It’s normal for many categories to have fuzzy boundaries, and since YA is a marketing category, it’s not surprising that there are gray areas.
3. People often make confusing requests. For example, they’ll say “I’m looking for a YA romance, something like [book they liked],” but the book they name is neither YA nor romance.
4. I wouldn’t “mention if something was softcore.” I assume that if you’re old enough to request a book recommendation on Reddit, and you don’t explicitly state that you’re a kid or that you don’t want any sexual content, then I can recommend books with sexual content in them (especially if it’s only “softcore”!).

1. The majority of people who buy YA books are adults (source). YA is marketed to adult readers as well as teens nowadays. I’m not saying you have to read it, I’m just saying it’s not unusual for adults to read YA, and therefore it’s not wildly unreasonable for people to think you might read YA if you haven’t explicitly said otherwise. If you don’t want YA, just say that in your recommendation request.
2. There are also some books where people disagree whether they’re YA or adult. For example, Gideon the Ninth was intended to be adult fiction and was marketed as adult fiction, but the main characters are teenagers, there’s no sex in it, and some readers refer to the book as YA. It’s normal for many categories to have fuzzy boundaries, and since YA is a marketing category, it’s not surprising that there are gray areas.
3. People often make confusing requests. For example, they’ll say “I’m looking for a YA romance, something like [book they liked],” but the book they name is neither YA nor romance.
4. I wouldn’t “mention if something was softcore.” I assume that if you’re old enough to request a book recommendation on Reddit, and you don’t explicitly state that you’re a kid or that you don’t want any sexual content, then I can recommend books with sexual content in them (especially if it’s only “softcore”!).

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas

I enjoy writing reviews, in general, but I don’t review every book I read, and I don’t feel particularly bad about that. I read for fun, on my own time. I do not feel an obligation to someone whose book I bought or checked out from the library. Unless I’m reading an ARC, it is not my job to give the writer feedback. I’m not their editor.

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.

No. I read adult literary fiction and YA romcoms and middle-grade and graphic novels, and even (very occasionally) picture books even though I don’t have any kids in my life. I don’t feel guilty about reading any of them. No one’s going to give you a prize for reading the kind of books you think you “should” read, so there’s no point in forcing yourself to read a book you’re not interested in or abstaining from reading a book you’d enjoy.

Ellipses by Vanessa Lawrence. Some of the most stilted prose I’ve ever read in a traditionally published novel.