What I think about rating/reviewing a book that you haven’t read?| Discussion

Today, I’m going to be discussing about an “issue” that has been bothering me for a while.

Is it good to be reviewing or rating a book that you haven’t read?

 

I was going to write a review for today, but as I was scrolling through my feeds, I noticed that a lot of people are hating on Empire of Storms, which is going to be released in a few days. Basically, some people have been spoiled and are already rating and reviewing the book (most of them aren’t really good).

I’m not going to talk further more about the Sarah J. Maas “issue” (if you can call that an issue), but I had to mention it since it inspired me to write this discussion post. If you want to talk about your thoughts surrounding Empire of Storms, feel free to comment below (don’t forget to warn some people if there are spoilers). Without further ado, let’s start the discussion:

 

What are my thoughts on this subject?

I want to start by saying that I have no problem with people telling the world about their opinion, even when it is a negative review about I book I loved. Honestly, that’s what I loved about the bookish community, but lately I noticed that some people are reviewing and rating books that they haven’t even read and that isn’t even out yet.

“Reviewing” (if it is even called reviewing since you haven’t read the book) and rating a book based on spoilers or other people’s thoughts is not something I approve of. And I’m not only talking about the 1 star ratings, I’m also talking about the 5 star ratings. See, the thing is even if you love a book series and you are 99.99% sure that you will give the next book a 5 star, it still isn’t a constructive review because you still haven’t read the book. But in my opinion, it is better than rating it 1-star based on spoilers because the person who rated it 5 stars will absolutely read the book afterwards and review properly whereas the one who poorly rated it without reading the book will more likely not read it and leave a non-constructive review.

Rating a book that you haven’t read makes absolutely no sense to me, except if you only want to harm the author. If it is the case, it is personal and you shouldn’t put their career on the line because that would be very immature.

Things you should/shouldn’t do before a release: (except if you read an ARC)

If you’re excited, write about how excited you are about the book, but do not rate the book yet since you haven’t read the book yet.

If you hate the book series and plan on not reading the book, do not review or rate it based on spoilers. Thank you.

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I want to finish this post by clarifying that I am not saying that I do not like to hear different opinions than I about a book, but that it is very immature to rate a book that you haven’t read. I like reading reviews with different opinions than I, but not when they are based on only spoilers they heard and when they didn’t actually read the book.

And if you rate books 5 stars before reading them, I did not mean to offend you, but if you would like the haters to stop then you should also do the same. By that, I mean you should not rate the book 5-stars if you don’t want them to rate it 1-star. By rating it in advance, you give them the opportunity to rate it too.

What do you think? Tell me in the comments.