Good morning !
It has been a while since i’ve wrote a new installment in this little blog serie; but got another idea after talking with a friend about yesterday’s book review!
My other “Blogging with Anxiety” posts; Feeling we’re not enough // Content Wise // Stats // Posts Paranoïa // Have I posted this before? // Can I Say that? // Missing A Post // Tags // Not a “good enough” post
Spoilers are something that really scares me in a way — we know how most people within the community just HATES to be getting something spoiled for them.. while a very few, me included, actually don’t really care.
And what really consider a spoiler, anyway ? This line seems so blurry, especially to someone who don’t really care… I just tell myself that it considers any major plot points, so my general rule of thumbs is going as vague as possible. But then – what if a little « side thing » I comment on is getting considered as a spoiler by someone else ?? There’s no really “real guideline” to this.. which make everything so much harder on my brain xP
Now let say that I do go for the safe way: pulling out a red warning on the « introduction » part of my post (before the line with the goodread page & rating and all that)… how far in details can I go ??
Can I gush around in details like I would to someone who had read the book? Is it better to keep a little decency?
Imean – ofcourse I won’t just go and tell the book in great details from A to B.. but I still wonder how much of my thoughts on some details I can get away with — despite knowing it’s MY review on MY blog, thus I can do what I want and it would indeed feel more genuine to me to do something like that… Is it something readers enjoy? Would it still be getting read?
That’s probably why writing book reviews can be so hard/off putting for me than other posts.. you can’t just go rogue and write all that you feel like as a regular post would be.
I don’t want to sound « mechanical » nor only say a few things.. I wanna say what I thought about it, what I liked, what I hated.. I wanna share my experience !! But then i’m slammed by that after thought of « will I make someone mad that I spoiled this book for them? », despite having the warning and everything.. because yes, there will always be some of thoses.. in everything.
For so long in the start of my blog, I had wanted to sound so « professional » in my reviews.. while in the end of the day, i’m clearly not. 🤷🏽♀️ I’m just a simple human, raving and rambling on this book that I -usually- liked.
I’d like to think that everything should be fine and I should stop worrying after the implacement of the warning — because at this point it’s fair game. Maybe I should even add that as a close somewhere, on my about the blogger or discloser or something, explaining how I do my reviews to include this little part. So readers can know ahead of time that *maybe* reading my review before reading a book might not be the best idea..
I’m honestly the same way about spoilers. I actively seek out spoilers for books, movies, games, etc. because sometimes I just need to know what’s going to happen! I try to keep spoilers to a minimum in my reviews though because I know not everyone is like me. It really is such a vague guideline to try to follow. If all else fails, just know you can’t please everyone. At the end of the day your blog is for you anyway right?
Thank you!
Yes, that’s correct – most often than not there will always have ONE person that won’t be happy 😅
It can be confusing but if I know I can’t avoid saying something that others might consider as spoilers I usually add “might contain spoilers” text before my review. I like writing reviews sometimes when I have something to say but sometimes it’s so hard to say anything without spoilers, especially with novellas.
Yeah it can be tricky.. when i’m unsure if it is or not, i usually have the « might contain » in red before it — so if anything, I can say they choosed to ignore it.. but it lowkey still stress me out xd
I think as long as the review doesn’t include any major plot twists, it should be fine. But I also know the feeling of wanting to talk about a book in depth and then worrying about revealing spoilers 😅 Interesting post!
The struggle is real indeed! 😅