An Ode to Reviews

(Not actually an Ode)

I’m coming up on a launch. Songs for Libby releases on October 15 and is up for pre-order now. That means that I’m going to be putting out my hands to beg for reviews as soon as it’s out.

I think a lot of people think that in order to leave a review, you have to be a “good reviewer.” For the record, anyone who bothers to review something is a good reviewer in my book. You don’t have to do a special intro to the book before you give your opinion. It doesn’t have to be long. You don’t have to cover every aspect of what you did and didn’t like. If all you want to say in your review is, “I really liked this one,” that’s great! You can write as much or as little as you want. No one is out their judging your reviews (unless you are a professional reviewer, but that’s different).

To demonstrate my point. I want to share one of my favorite reviews with you. Here it is:

One may ask WHY this would be a favorite of mine. It’s not even five stars! It’s not a glowing review. Why in the world would it be a favorite?

Ahem:

Number One! Honesty. She likes her romance dirty and isn’t afraid to say so.

Number Two! Because my book isn’t steamy (like she prefers), she took off one star. That’s totally legitimate. If some aspect of the book makes it so that it just isn’t your cup of tea, you can (and should) take off a star. Removing one star because she didn’t like one aspect is perfect. She didn’t say, “Ugh. It was clean, so I hated it. I’ll give it one star!” No, she gave credit where credit was due.

Number Three! She made me laugh. The bookshelf at the bottom that I circled—”hand-cuff-me-hot-cop”—makes me laugh every time. Glad you liked my hot cop character, Jae!

So, for anyone who finds review writing intimidating, I hope this helps.

And if you’d like to be part of my street team and help me with early reviews, please join my Fan Group on Facebook and read through the posts there.

Weekly Book Highlights:

I read this collection of three novellas years ago, and I still go back once in a while to reread one or two of them. I really love all three, though What’s in a Name is my favorite.

This is part of an interesting collaborative project. It’s a series of six books where there is something that happens in the previous book that impacts the next book, even though each book had different characters and is written by a different author. They’re on the shorter side, but they’re all sweet and fun.