You wanted to read the book, you were excited to crack it open, you came into it with good faith and anticipation… but you ended up dnf-ing it. Which book and why?
Mine was The Maid by Nita Prose. It was for my book club and looked like a fun murder mystery. Instead I got instant manic-pixie-dream-neurodivergent-girl vibes, and I noped out before the crime scene was even found.
Yeah I had a rough go reading a friend’s self pub book. Riddled with grammar and spelling errors on every page, one dimensional characters, poor use of humor in lieu of character development, and just about every urban fantasy cliché you can think of. I finished it and wrote a great review of it because I know my friend has potential, he just needs to grow as a writer. It was hard to push through it though.
He won’t grow that way, though. I hear so often about people lying in reviews, it’s insane. Why not be honest?
Because I don’t want to crush my friend’s confidence when he’s just starting out. I gave him a thorough list of things I’d recommend doing in the future offline. A public review isn’t a place for that criticism.