Should Bloggers Post Negative Reviews?

I think the following has happened to almost everyone that has been blogging for a while. An author contacts you  and asks you to review his or her book. You read the blurb, read some reviews and decide to give the book a try. Sadly enough, you don’t like it. At all. What to do now? Not post the review, and offending the author you promised a review to, or do post the review, and offending the author by giving the book him or her provided a bad review. 

I have been faced with that dilemma multiple times, and I have done both the not posting and the posting. Personally, I lean towards the post-your-bad-review camp. The only time I’ve decided against it was when I was part of a certain book tour, and I couldn’t get through the book. I did like the author though, and I’m sure other people will absolutely love the book, but it wasn’t for me. Maybe it was just bad timing, I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t want to spoil the author’s book tour, so I just did my tour stop like a good girl, but didn’t add a review to it.

However, I think you should be able to post your not so good reviews as a blogger. If we would all only write raving reviews, how can readers decide for themselves if they would like the book or not? To be properly informed, you should know both the good and the bad. Before I buy the book I always read some 1 or 2-star reviews on Goodreads. If they complain about things that don’t bother me, I’m almost a hundred percent sure I’ll like the book and it will be safe to buy it.

If you only post 5-star reviews, there is also the problem that no one believes that you write your own honest opinion any more. And that’s exactly what being a reviewer is about. We don’t get paid by any company. People read our blogs because we love reading and we like to talk about our experiences as readers.

One thing that I think no blogger should ever do, is to attack an author personally. You can hate a book, sure. But don’t make it a personal fight. And just because you didn’t like it doesn’t mean that someone else can’t like it.

In my opinion everyone should review the way he or she feels is right. As long as you stay honest, and stay kind.

What do you think? Do you write negative reviews? And what do you do if you have “befriended” an author, would you still post a negative review? Leave a comment and join the discussion!