It's time for the Book Blog Hop! Here's the official description: 

The first iteration of the Book Blogger Hop, which was started in March 2010 by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books, ended on December 31, 2012. On February 15, 2013, Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer reintroduced the hop with Jennifer's approval. The hop will begin on a Friday of each week and end on a Thursday of the following week. Every week, there will be a prompt with a book-related query. The aim of the blog hop is to provide bloggers with an opportunity to follow other blogs, discover new books, make friends with other bloggers, and gain new followers for their own sites.  

This week's question is:

 🐇 " How much do online reviews shape what you pick up next?" 🐇

In short? A LOT. I have literally removed dozens of books from my TBR just based on a single sentence in someone's review if they mentioned a specific pet peeve of mine. 😂 Look, after years of reading, I know exactly what makes me tick and what'll lower my opinion of the book (it doesn't have to be a bad thing, just a trope/plot point/genre I don't enjoy) so I steer clear of those, which is good for me and for that book.

I generally trust the people of Goodreads, and when I see that a book has a 3.5 rating or lower, that usually means I won't love it either. Or at least, I'll lower my expectations going in. There are books that immediately caught my attention that I will start reading right away, but there are others that are...how do I say it? Neither here nor there. Basically, could be good, but also really meh - and for those, I'll always go through a bunch of reviews before deciding whether to actually pick them up.

I don't want to "waste" my time reading something that I know I won't enjoy. Reviews can be a great thing and I appreciate them immensely. But sometimes, reviews can also be misleading, which is why I'll always read both the negative and the positive to compare. 

In the end, lots of our thoughts come from subjective interpretation, and maybe a book that I'd usually rate 3 stars, on that specific date and time, my mood thought it was amazing and exactly what I needed, so I'll rate it higher. I'm sure the same counts for other people so that's why I don't blindly listen to all reviews but I try to get important info out of them and get to a conclusion on my own.

💬 Do you listen to reviews? 💬