I spend a good amount of time on Goodreads. I’ve built up a solid group of friends whose reviews I see first beneath a book, and they generally give me a good idea of whether that book is worth my time.
But sometimes I venture lower, to the reviews from people I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I’ll view only the one star reviews for a book I loved. But usually, it’s out of simple curiosity. I want different perspectives. I want to know what good things people see in a book I thought was terrible. I want to be reminded that a book I love isn’t for everyone, and I want to see why. Most of these reviews actually have good points and help to broaden my own perspective.
Inevitably, though, I’ll read a review that will irritate me. And I don’t mean the one star reviews of books I loved. I can get over that. I mean the ones that get the facts wrong, or dismiss a book because its characters are unlikeable. You know the kind. Lately, three specific things have jumped out at me, three things that I wish people would stop doing when they write their reviews.
1. “TSTL”
In case you’re unaware, “tstl” means “too stupid to live” and is used in reference to characters whose actions seem, well, stupid. It’s all well and good to call out a stupid action that stems not from character, but from the need to further the plot, but this “tstl” designation is not relegated to those instances. It’s used to describe protagonists – overwhelmingly girls – who do things the reader, personally, would not have done, things that have negative consequences.
There are so many problems with this. Firstly, you as the reader are not the character. We place a lot of importance on characters being “relatable” to us, perhaps too much. But the author’s job is not to create a character that would act the same way you would in a particular situation. Her actions don’t have to be relatable. In fact, they should be strange to us sometimes, because humans are strange and don’t act sensibly. They don’t act in the ways we would all the time. That’s why we have conflict, and conflict is why we have stories.
Secondly, teenagers do stupid things. I’m a smart person and I did tons of stupid shit as a teenager. Be honest: so did you. Heck, a lot of them were probably over someone you had a crush on. You probably still do stupid things as an adult. A character behaving in a way that is stupid does not make a book bad, nor does it make that character inherently stupid. It just means the book is about a human being.
2. “Selfish” characters
In multiple reviews of Mary E. Pearson’s The Kiss of Deception, Lia is called out for being selfish. She’s the princess of a kingdom and her parents are about to marry her off to a prince from another kingdom whom she has never met. She decides she’d rather not, and she runs away.
Let’s just set aside the fact that teens (and grown ups) often do things that are selfish, just like they often do things that are stupid. There is a larger problem at work here, and it’s one I see as very gendered. In a lot of our social discourse, women and girls are expected to sacrifice for others, and the lack of sacrifice is framed as selfishness. Women who choose not to have children or who uproot their families for a lucrative job are often called selfish. Girls who turn down a date with a “nice” guy they’re not attracted to are often called selfish. Women and girls who want to choose the way they live their lives are called selfish over and over again.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that Lia – one of my favorite fictional characters this year – was subjected to this as well, but it did. I read so many fantasy novels when I myself was a teenager that featured girls escaping unwanted arranged marriages. There wasn’t even a question in my mind of the girl’s selfishness or selflessness. Why would she marry someone she didn’t love? Of course she’d want to escape! I was so floored reading these reviews from all these readers who apparently expected Lia to marry someone she had never met, sleep with him, have babies, and so on, to facilitate a political treaty. She’s selfish because she doesn’t want her entire life, literally her entire existence, to be one giant sacrifice? Because she dares to choose her own life? Would you choose this for yourself or your daughter? What are we teaching our kids when we say that Lia’s actions are selfish? That girls should be meek and accept their parents’ directives, even if they know it will make them unhappy? That the only life worth living is the one where all your own wants and desires are subservient to someone else’s?
So no, Lia’s decision to flee this marriage, one that she knows is predicated on a lie (she can’t do what her parents say she can do, remember!) is not selfish. It’s normal. It’s brave. It’s feminist. It’s what draws so many teen girls to fantasy fiction – girls standing up and saying to others, through their words or actions, that their lives belong to them. What’s selfish is the continued demand that girls continually give away pieces of themselves to make others happy. Lia refuses to do this. It’s not easy for her to do. It’s hard. It’s painful. It takes immense courage. But it’s empowering to say “no.” It’s empowering to realize that you can demand the right to your own decisions, especially for teenagers. That you can demand the right to own your life and you don’t have to apologize for it.
3. “I have never read a successful book about _______.”
Fill in the blank with whatever topic you like, and you will probably have a sentence I object to. In this case, it was time travel, but it could easily be shapeshifters or romance or anything else under the sun. There are successful books about every topic. The fact that you haven’t read a successful one is due to one of two factors: 1. You haven’t read very many of them; or 2. You just plain don’t like that topic. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to assume that most of the time, it’s the second reason.
I say this as a huge fan of time travel who didn’t care for this particular book that was being reviewed. I have read lots of successful time travel books. They probably wouldn’t work for someone who doesn’t like paradoxes and plots that can make your head hurt. They probably wouldn’t work for someone who wants their science fiction to be completely plausible, because time travel is inherently implausible. (If time travel existed, wouldn’t we have time travelers in our midst right now?) That’s the fun of it. It’s likely that someone who doesn’t think any time travel books she’s read are successful can’t get past these things, and that’s fine. You don’t have to like books about time travel. That doesn’t mean they’re not successful; it just means they’re not for you.
Are there any other trends in book reviews that bug you (or enrage you)? Let me know in the comments, and please weigh in on the ones I’ve pointed out here. I’d like to know I’m not alone.
Vague reviews drive me nuts, the one-liners that say things like "I didn't like this book" or "This book was dumb." Why??? Was the writing poor, the plot thin, the characters underdeveloped?
Also, the reviews that start off with, "I don't normally read YA…" It's like these people need others to know they usually only read "real" books, but they sacrificed themselves and then were kind enough to offer their deep thoughts on this "for silly teenagers" story. It kinda goes along with your #3 – it seems so snobby and narrow-minded to say things like that.
Vague reviews on blogs bother me more than they do on Goodreads, probably because I'm vague a lot on Goodreads myself. They're definitely not useful to anyone else, though.
And yes to the "I don't normally read YA!" Sometimes it's not followed by something condescending, in that case I have no problem with it, but it usually is.
This was basically what I came here to share. I'm constantly frustrated by reviews that summarize a plot and state little more than "this one just didn't work for me". Well, why? If I have a hard time pinpointing why I didn't enjoy a book, I don't review it. "It didn't work for me" does nothing to shed any light on the book for my readers, so why bother reviewing? I often feel like those reviews are written with a sense of obligation more than anything else.
Agent Amy Boggs was just on Twitter yesterday talking about one of mine, and that is calling something a plothole when it really isn't. There is a HUGE difference between unexplored back story, unfinished storylines, and plot holes. But it seems like most folks just label anything that bugs them nowadays as a plot hole. Ugh.
Yes! It kind of ties into my #1 too…I've seen something described as a "plot hole" when it's actually just a character choosing not to do something that the reader would have done: "If she just did this, everything would have worked out!" But if the character's action is true to her as the writer has written her, it's not a plot hole.
I haven't seen too much of #3, but #2 drives me crazy! And honestly, I've rarely seen a review where a male MC is called "selfish" (but that's a rant best saved for another day).
Anytime a reviewer says something like "This is so stupid, I would never have done (whatever the character did)" I always think to myself — why would you want to read a book where the characters behave just like you would? Can you imagine reading a book where every character made perfectly sensible decisions ALL the time? How boring! 🙂
Another pet peeve of mine is people who give 5 star reviews on Goodreads without backing it up with anything more than, "OMG this book make my lyyyyyyfe!" Those always make me a little wary, for some reason 😛
Great post!
I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that male protagonists are not called selfish at the same rate as female protagonists either. I can't think of one I've read, actually.
I think #1 is a product of the rash of first person present tense books. It was easier to separate relatable from "this person has to do everything I would do" back when most YA was third person. Just my take.
As for #3, I actually admire it when a reader says, "I don't like this type of book and I didn't like this book in particular, either." Because to me it shows that a reviewer is willing to at least TRY and like something they don't usually. And stretch themselves as a reader. And if they don't like it, I just think, "Well, it's probably because they don't like that type of book." I don't take it personally, in such a case.
But there's a difference between saying "I don't like this type of book" and "I've never read a successful book about this." One admits that it's not necessarily a fault of the book; the other places the blame on the book entirely. If these reviews went to say that they don't like that kind of book in general, it wouldn't irritate me.
Arrrrgh, number 1 drives me up the WALL.
Yes, you reader, you would have made a different choice…because you have TIME to think about the choice. You are removed from the situation that the choice is being made in! You have more information, less stress, and FAR LESS emotional investment than the characters in question!
Grumble gruble…
My biggest pet peeve (in life, although it is quite prevalent in book reviews) is when people state opinions as though they were facts. Like saying, "This book is terrible," instead of, "This wasn't my type of book," or, "I loathed this book," or even, "I wish I had never read this book and I'm breaking up with the friend who recommended it to me because she clearly has no idea what kind of person I am." Any of those could reasonably pass for an opinion, which is exactly what a review is. No review is fact and it bothers me that people so rarely stop to acknowledge that.
See this doesn't bug me. I go back to my early English classes where we taught to excise all of the "I think" phrases from our essays since it was a given.
Also I think some books are actually objectively bad, though I take your point 😉
Yes! Related to #1, I recently heard secondhand some comments a relative made about the movie Interstellar, among other things that he hated it because he didn't understand any of the characters' motivations. My reaction is basically that he doesn't understand other people in general, then. So some of the decisions didn't give some of the characters their best odds at survival? Um… yeah, we're not always perfectly rational. And there are other considerations at play besides just survival. Gaaaaah. Makes me want to bang my head against a wall. (Especially since I love love loooved the movie, let's be honest here.)
Some other things people say in reviews that I hate, again related to #1, are to call a girl a Mary Sue, or to say she has no personality. Those are real possibilities I suppose, and can be annoying, but mostly when I've seen it it's seemed similar to those TSTL scenarios. Okay, she doesn't have a personality YOU like. It's not flamboyant and extroverted, ergo it doesn't exist? Oh, she's a "good girl," so she's a Mary Sue? And yet if she weren't, she'd be too stupid to live. Can't win. Bonus points if the reviewer somehow manages to accuse the character of being both a Mary Sue AND too stupid to live. Not sure how that works…
I mostly agree about the term TSTL. I got thinking hard about that this past summer, when I read a book with a male MC that made me ask, "What is the difference between 'endearingly hapless' and TSTL? Why am I thinking that a male character should get to be the first, and a female character behaving the same way would be the second? Do I hold women to some kind of higher standard?" At that point, it hit me that TSTL is generally used in a pretty sexist way, and I decided to drop it.
I don't like it when someone slams a book because they don't agree with the characters actions and motives. Some of my favourite characters are serial killers but that doesn't mean I agree with what they are doing, I just think they are brilliantly written characters and I can appreciate that without being a serial killer myself. I don't think relatable characters is a necessary thing for a good book. I mean sometimes, usually in contemporaries, then you probably need something about the character to resonate with you in order to really understand them but they don't need to do everything the way you would. I get annoyed at reviews sometimes. I especially don't like it when books are marked down because someone doesn't like the author.