To review or not to review by request?

Heey!

Recently I wrote about what I like to see in my review requests, now let’s chat about if we “should” do it or not

We know, one thing that mainly attracts us as new blogger is the promise of free books, along with shiny arcs. Most of us made the mistake of demanding too much and had to juggle to meet ends with too many of them approaching deadlines at the same time 😅

Ofcourse we want to help authors with reviewing their books, as that’s what we love. But sometimes it can become overwhelming, and I find especially if you’re a mood reader. At the time of accepting it, it might’ve been something you were genuinely interrested in reading… and suddently it’s not. The mood has switched and you’re stuck to do it anyway 😬

Since about a year (or maybe two?) i’ve choosen to let go of Netgalley’s ARCs and I’m currently thinking the same for review requests; trashing that part of my “review guideline” completely.

Don’t get me wrong, I rarely get any to begin with.. although it seems that they all gets in at the same time, and generally speaking it isn’t books that follows said guidelines anyway. Sometimes it may feels like it’s something that we’re obligated to do as bloggers, and some authors clearly aren’t thankful of what we do, at no cost whatsoever among our daily lives.

It’s one more pressure of things that put a strain on us that can make our hobby stressful; and maybe might make it less enjoyeable. Our blogs are the only corner of the internet that’s ours, so we should feel free to do whatever we want with it without feeling guilty of this or that- like not having a niche or not accepting requests.

Do you keep taking review requests, or have you stopped?