Fall into Reading - Question 1

As part of the Fall into Reading challenge, Katrina at Callapidderdays is going to be posting a reading related question each Wednesday. I'm hoping to answer them here each week, partly to keep me motivated for the challenge itself (I find it way too easy to forget about challenges) and partly because there's a great group of people taking part and I'd like to see their answers.

If you're wondering what the whole Fall into Reading thing is about, check out my original post here or Katrina's "The Basics" post here.


This weeks question is: How much do book reviews influence your decision to acquire and/or read a book?

Reviews do influence my decision to acquire/read books quite a bit. I tend to do my research about books before I get hold of them and I always try to read at least one positive review, one negative and one that falls in the middle. That way I can get a variety of opinions and any commonalities between the reviews can highlight the books good or bad points. It also means in the case of massively reviewed books (like Twilight or Harry Potter) I'm not attempting to read through hundreds, or even thousands, of reviews.

What I look for in reviews differs a lot by genre. If cozy mysteries have readers figuring out the ending early on, I won't bother. If romances are overly sickly, urban fantasies are overly graphic or young adult books have incredibly immature lead characters again I won't bother. At the same time, if a reviewer's love for the book shines through (and it's reviewers like this that made me first want to write reviews myself) I may overlook certain elements of the book that may not be to my taste and give it a try anyway.

That said, I do impulse buy based on covers, titles and special offers. I tend to do that in physical bookstores where there aren't really accessible reviews. I hadn't heard anything about Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampire novels, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld novels before buying them and they are three of my favourite series even after years of reading and rereading :)