Rhys Rants on Reviews.

RHYS BOWEN:

Let me start by saying that I am not against bad reviews per se. If I see an occasional three star review for my Molly Murphy or Royal Spyness books I read it carefully and take it to heart. I know some people are annoyed by Queenie the maid. Others write that they adore Queenie. Obviously I can’t please everyone. But if someone writes that they didn’t think this book was up to the standard of the others and it got a bit boring in the middle, then I study that carefully. Did I have too long a period when nothing was happening? Did I end it too abruptly? And I remember that for future books.

However IN FARLEIGH FIELD has been a different matter. When you write a book that made it to #1 on Kindle and has more than 3000 reviews on Amazon, some of them are bound to be bad. Not only bad… very bad… downright insulting.

My favorite one star review to date is the one that said, “I’ve downloaded this book but I don’t like the look of the cover so I’m sure I won’t like it.  One star.”

Then there was another one star that said, “Didn’t download to my Kindle.”  And that is the fault of my writing?

Also because it’s advertised as a novel of WWII there are those (men, I suspect) who are furious when there isn’t an explosion with strewn body parts in the first few chapters. “This was juvenile,” they write. “A book for little kids.”  Actually no, I’d like to say, this is a book about a family coping with war. And about code breaking at Bletchley Park and spying for MI5. I don’t think most kids would be interested.

For those used to James Patterson style of three pages per chapter and someone dead at the end of each segment it may come across as boring. People converse. People have inner introspection. Not a single car chase. No torture.

Unfortunately Amazon and social media has given people the entitlement to say things they would never say to a person’s face. It makes them feel powerful to insult a successful author. It’s so horribly tempting to respond….

But of course I can’t respond. I mustn’t respond. The writer just has to swallow the stupidity and ignore it. The only time I was so tempted to hunt down the reviewer and strangle her with my bare hands was a review that said I knew nothing about the British upper class, nothing about the way they spoke. This did rile me, in fact my husband John (a member of the British upper class) was so upset that I had to restrain him from trying to find out who the person was and going to confront her. Because I married into a frightfully posh upper class English family. John’s grandmother was born at the stately home Sutton Place. The family still owns a couple of manor houses. John’s sister married into the leading Cornish family (you can see monuments to them wherever you go in Cornwall. This castle built by Sir Hannibal Vyvyan etc.) They still own Trelowarren, a lovely stately home.

So I have been among these people for fifty years now. And when I was first married John’s older relatives were young people in the thirties and forties. I know exactly how they spoke. I remember them telling me about the jokes they played on the butler.

It’s so unfair that the writer cannot answer back. But having seen what trolls can be like on social media it is wise to say silent and pretend I haven’t seen it. And I tell myself, “It’s just one person’s opinion. I don’t personally like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. I don’t like watching boxing. I’m not mad about James Patterson. But lots of other people are. And they are entitled to be.

I suppose the answer is not to read any reviews. Look what happened to Florence Foster Jenkins when she read a review. She died of a heart attack. But it is so tempting to scroll down that Amazon page and take a peek, and smile for the five stars that say “This was the best book ever” and remind myself that that review wasn’t true either!

So Reds how do you handle bad reviews? Readers, do you check out reviews before you buy a book? Do they matter?