Welcome back to Stop & Chat! During our hiatus I came up with a ton of Stop & Chat topics and I am so excited to discuss this topic with you first.
Let me set the scene ok? Ok. So I was sitting with my laptop in my lap, trying to write a review for a solid 3 star book. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. It was just in the middle. Mediocre. Unremarkable in every way. Forgettable as soon as you finish. And predictable from the first page to the last. It literally made me go “meh”. But then I went to write its review and I realized….meh reviews are HARD!
It’s so easy (for me at least) to go on and on about a book I hated. It’s a smudge harder for me to write about a book I loved. But it is damn near impossible for me to write about a book I was meh about! And I’m always left with this feeling of inadequacy because of course those reviews are the ones that most people read (at least here at RSR).
So I got to thinking. What can I do to help make those middle of the road books easier to review? How can I accurately and adequately discuss it without sounding like I’m shrugging my shoulders and giving one word replies? Do I turn those into “Mini Reviews” under a certain word count? Do I review those strictly on Goodreads using their star system and a gif or word or two? Do I stop reviewing those completely?
What do you think? Do you find meh reviews as difficult to write as I do? How do you tackle them? Tell me in the comments!
I definitely agree with this post. Sometimes a 3-star read for me would be easy to talk about because it meant I had mixed feelings, so I could talk about good and bad things, but a 3 star read that was just “meh” is so hard to write about because I felt so little about it either way. It’s like you read it just to read it, not reading because you’re super into it or DNFing because it’s the worst thing you’ve ever read. Forgettable books are the worst.
EXACTLY! It’s like your emotions are nonexistent for it. Not because it was horrible but just because you felt nada either way!