Bad Goodreads Reviews - Bad/stupid/etc reviews and other garbage found on book tracking site Goodreads

[AbyssStarer]

Readers of KiwiFarms, you've likely been on the site Goodreads.com and seen many dumb reviews. At this point I've seen enough for a thread. If you happen to see something, come by and share it with us, stupid promotions from the site operators also welcome. I personally find they advertise almost nothing but Young Adult garbage written by people with unpronounceable names.

I wish there was a better book tracking site to use, Goodreads even still has the UI of a site from the late 00's, but I have never found an alternative. Maybe it's for the best that all the retards have to congregate on one site.

---

This is not even a review, it's an ad and a TMI about a sexual fantasy. "I yeet my books back and forth," seriously?



This one admits to not reading the book, simply being mad that Coco Chanel was an evil nahtsee supporter, and promotes a different book. The profile pic of Mona Lisa in a mask adds a cherry on top.


The average reviewers for the site are simple ones like this, which are almost actual reviews.


Complete non-review, just teenager-style sperging


More teenager-sperging.


This is in the News & Interviews section. You can almost play bingo or a drinking game with these. Obvious POC names, unpronounceable names, etc.

 

[Tootsie Bear]

My favorite reviews are of the former Harry Potter fans who changed their reviews form 5 stars to 1 star because of J.K. Rowling's comments.

 

[TendieGremlin]

Academic literature is a better way to spend time anyway.

 

[ditto]

Best Goodreads review ever went something like "Never bother with books by female authors with horses on the cover." Lesson learned time and again.

 

[whitepumpkin]

Any site that thinks Angie WHYTE PPL BAD Thomas can do 'no wrong' needs to be labelled as the cancer it is.

 

[Jewthulhu]

View attachment 1884179

Any site that thinks Angie WHYTE PPL BAD Thomas can do 'no wrong' needs to be labelled as the cancer it is.

She can do no wrong, but the book is apparently only 4 stars.

The stupidest motherfuckers on Goodreads are probably the political spergs. They seemingly perceive everything through a political lens and simply cannot enjoy a book if it was written by someone who disagrees with them politically.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

This thread needs more shitty gifs taken from 1990s comedies of women and girls squealing. Otherwise you'll never get the whole GoodReads, dunno what to call it, zeitgeist(?), leitmotif(?), atmosphere(?). Too lazy to dig much, but here's kind of what I mean. Katerina's Reviews > Six of Crows., though it is far, far, far from the worst I've seen. I think this might be slightly passe now, but a few years ago every fucking review seemed to have them.

People bitch about the GoodReads layout, but I kinda like it. In fact I prefer the web circa 2011 to the shitty everything is a giant icon taking up half the screen we get nowadays. (That's desktop. The mobile app is unusable.)

In GRs defense you occasionally get gems like this, which is still making people sperg out 14 years after it was written. (The comment section must be read to be believed.)

 

[and 420 others]

Patrick S Tomlinson, who has a KF thread, is a (shitty)sci-fi author who gives himself 5-star reviews and gets into arguments with people who leave him bad reviews on goodreads.

 

[AbyssStarer]

Patrick S Tomlinson, who has a KF thread, is a (shitty)sci-fi author who gives himself 5-star reviews and gets into arguments with people who leave him bad reviews on goodreads.

You know, newfag, it's common courtesy to upload screencaps instead of just saying that something is out there.

 

[whitepumpkin]

While not as bad as some, this is probably quintessential Goodreads YA review: Here

To start, a link to their store and Instagram! Can't get those Advanced Reading Copy books unless you're popular!
Then the review opens up with artwork (or pictures of their 'book haul' or the book surrounded by fairy lights) and a quote. Setting the mood for what's to come: glorified gushing. Usually about romance or qweers, take your pick.

This one lacks the BOLDING of words, but they include images so you can see how much this book affected them.

See? Relatable. Further relatability is simping for female characters along with Brooklyn 99 or supernatural gifs.

Which is where I always find these reviews to be the funniest. I am pretty sure this is not a teenager writing this review, yet the praise of a character as if they're best friends makes you think they are. What adult reads a book as talks about a fictional character like they're bffs, married, and their god? Oh wait, mentally ill ones. The only ones who consume YA.

The rest is just a bad retelling of the story. There's nothing about the style or the pacing. It's all the reviewer reacting to quotes from the book and how much it affected them. To the point where they keep referencing how much they cried and "all the feelings". If you wanted to know if the book was worthwhile to read, you'd have to scroll past hundreds of these before finding some decent review not written from a woman with their hand in their pants.

Then the end.

Give me money.
I checked her profile too and she's apparently one of the top reviewers on this site.

Goodreads.

 

[and 420 others]

You know, newfag, it's common courtesy to upload screencaps instead of just saying that something is out there.

Patrick is also very fat. Sorry, no screencaps. You'll just have to take my word.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

LMAO. What am I even reading?

> Outlawed​

Rate this book
1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

Outlawed
by
Anna North (Goodreads Author)



Connor's review
Jan 12, 2021




did not like it
bookshelves: dnf, owned-not-tbr


DNF’d on page 118 specifically.

Until that point, I was willing to overlook a lot.

There are a lot of strange gender and gendering decisions, especially when there is a character in the synopsis who is not a man or a woman. A character that I don’t think was handled all that well, as far as I got.

I was sold this book on the idea that it was going to be a gang of barren women and genderqueer people, so that it was all these people who are harmed by “being able to bear children” being the definition of womanhood. But instead the gang is barren women and genderqueer people as long as they are afab. The Kid is first described to our narrator as a man, and when she meets The Kid (who is not given pronouns at all) she doesn’t perceive The Kid as a man or a woman just as a person, which was a decision I understood from the author as a way to respect a character who does not exist in the binary. Except, after that she suddenly misgenders The Kid just for the sake of explanation and then we are all told what genitalia The Kid is working with anyway.

Which is. Exhausting.

That The Kid and the narrator continue to constantly gender everything else from inanimate objects to the size of hands (even with women you know are large and, again, a character who isn’t a man or a woman at all) and the presence of calluses (as if we aren’t talking about a gang of outlaws and as if calluses aren’t from working)... just a bonus.

I wanted to believe, and I am still willing to believe, that the kind of terf-y aspects in the book are in service of “this mentality is harmful” and not something more insidious. I really am. I think it’s possible. I want to believe that the narrator’s bad takes and rough opinions (“this cow was more woman than I would ever be”) are supposed to be a show of how she needs to be exposed to more of the world and needs to, and will, grow as a character.


But then I got to pages 117-118, where three of these women start discussing how they have, can, and should disguise themselves as men (“that’s the best way to charm some men”), get into sexual relationships with cowboys who like other men (“plenty of cowboys like other cowboys”), and “do whatever you want to them, but your clothes stay on. And sometime while you are drinking together, you mention a horrible accident you were in a while back. Gored by a bull, whatever. That explains anything they feel or don’t feel on your body.” Because, “the good news is, most men are pretty stupid, and pretty gullible. They want to believe what you tell them.” So yeah. I do in fact draw the line at casual discussions of women tricking gay men into sexual interactions with them under false pretenses and, as a friend pointed out when the passage was sent to them, painting the queer men out to be the predators in that situation.

As a trans man, and a queer man, absolutely not. I’m done. I thought I left girls trying to catfish gay men back in high school when they were doing it on the internet. I can’t go any further.

Also, maybe don’t read if you have dysphoria/are worried about picking up new insecurities within dysphoria, I’d say especially if you are transmasc but since that’s what I know, I’m not sure it’s any worse.

Also if it was sold to you as a sapphic book as I’ve also heard, I wouldn’t say it is. A lot of the women in the book are sapphic, but that does not include the main character and I believe she starts a romance with a man. (In the pages in question, she seems to confirm that she is in fact straight)

That doesn’t discount that there are sapphic characters in the book, and I think we have all read a book for the gay side characters, but I do think it matters to say that it is in fact the side characters.


Also the heists are not very detailed, the first one in plot is not discussed at all. The world building, in particular the danger that women are in vs the standing they have, and what places do and do not still exist in this alternate timeline- sometimes feels inconsistent. Some of the more brutal details or grim descriptions can come out of nowhere and feel edgy rather than genuine. And often enough something is repeated or over-explained in a way that feels like the author doesn’t doesn’t trust the audience to read and understand what she is writing. It can feel like you are being spoon fed information that you already picked up on a few pages ago. But in its defense there was one specific instance that felt that way the most, and I was probably being pretty critical following that, and of course I did dnf the book so these might not be issues that continue further in the book.

Spoiler: size

 

[Midge Shelby1919]

---

I think these reviews are my favorite. At first glance, they don’t seem terrible, just a bunch of praise. However, when you know that all these people are friends, it raises a few eyebrows, especially when reading other reviews.

 

[AbyssStarer]

I am uncomfortable with a SFW website like Goodreads telling me to read something racy and tantalizing while some modern corporate artstyle blobs blink at each other.

 

[whitepumpkin]

Since Valentine's Day is coming, why not enjoy some gay shit written by a straight woman about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy fucking. It's a New York Times Bestseller!

I'll admit, this is easy pickings for this type of stupidity (Rainbow Rowell is the worst name I've seen on a book), but considering the top review, I had to share it. Because this is the *top* review for a book.

Looks like the tags say this is going to be great.

Wow. Confusing yet insightful that this bitch is insane. And of course, there's a quote and a picture of artwork that isn't too bad but it's still tumblrart. The review, of course, isn't a review but gushing. Just unfettered retardation.

This is extremely telling of the mental age of this 'woman' and anyone else who reads this type of genre.

I don't think this person has ever had a friend that wasn't imaginary.

That's it. That's one of the bullet points. hmm.
*Top* review for this book.

There is nothing else but talk on the characters and how this bitch related to them. Nothing about story, about structure, about pacing. Nothing that, if you were in a bookstore and you looked up the reviews to see if you should buy it, is even remotely convincing other than "GAY HARRY POTTER" and "CINNAMON ROLL". Can the industry not see why YA is in a deathcry at the moment? Why reading is becoming niche? If this is considered a Bestseller I'd hate to see what shit isn't.

But wait, the review isn't over.

Now it is. BUY me shit and MAKE ME POPULAR.

Goodreads.

 

[HIVidaBoheme]

Took a quick peek around the 2020 Goodreads awards winners in the "Best YA novel" category and found some gems.


A good Girl's guide to murder has a woman most likely in her mid 40s behaving like a tital autist online, failing to pique anyone's interest by hyping this shit as the next Agatha Christie and of course, plugging their social media right at the end.

Spoiler: I feel this woman smells of bologna

The Gravity of Us, while I pondered what this book could be about this thot helpfully summed it up and told me why I should read this.

Spoiler: Tumblr Space UwU

While the cover art of "This is my America" dissuaded me from even peeking at the preface, it was this review by Bookishrealm that convinced me why I shouldn't waste my time with it:

Spoiler: REEEEEEEER WYPIPO BAD

All in all, stuff nobody should waste their time with.

Pls forgive the spoilers, I wasn't going to just dump all these phone screenshots and call it a day.

 

[Jewthulhu]

Spoiler: Politisperg is too stupid for Dostoyevsky

Yes, she is a fan of left-wing political novels and YA shit. How did you know?

Also, while not a "review" per say, I would like to share what is apparently the top quote from the top YA book of 2020.

A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.

Profound.

 

[Midge Shelby1919]

Spoiler: Politisperg is too stupid for Dostoyevsky

View attachment 1906540
Yes, she is a fan of left-wing political novels and YA shit. How did you know?

Also, while not a "review" per say, I would like to share what is apparently the top quote from the top YA book of 2020.

Profound.

Those kinds of reviews are really annoying. Like, I get it, I’ve read classics that are not to my particular taste, but I still respect them as works of literature. This is someone who only reads the literary equivalent of comfort food, and has never thought of literature beyond a surface level.

Also, that YA quote is hilarious. It reminds me of the ‘Got any other sayings from Hot Topic?’ meme, just replace Hot Topic with tumblr aesthetic blogs.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Spoiler: Politisperg is too stupid for Dostoyevsky

View attachment 1906540
Yes, she is a fan of left-wing political novels and YA shit. How did you know?

"Subbing this into English"
Thank God this wasn't the dub of Dostoyevsky.

 

[Azovka]

The Gravity of Us, while I pondered what this book could be about this thot helpfully summed it up and told me why I should read this.

View attachment 1906466

Ah, I was wondering whether Chai would pop up. She's kind of infamous in that sphere.
For the context, she's an "aggressively sapphic" Muslim French uni student. In other words, she's just a generic Muslim of Moroccan descent that compensates for her no doubt fairly conservative upbringing by pretending to be a lesbian / bisexual / genderfluid whatever online. She's also active on Twitter with the typical posts you'd expect from her community.

I always find Chai's reviews hilarious because she loves purple prose just as much as she likes shitty YA. Her reviews are often super lengthy and half her sentences don't make sense if you actually stop to think about them beyond the *squealing fangirl noises*.

Here's the first sentence from a random sample of her reviews : "Reading the first couple chapters, the strength of my delight, the speed with which it flowered, shocked me."

"Sorcery of Thorns burned through my initial skepticism, bright as a comet in the night’s sky, piercing me with vicious pleasure. In Rogerson’s luscious prose, Sorcery of Thorns weaves a pleasant spell indeed. This is a vibrant novel, and an unstintingly lush one."

" She isn’t telling a story as much as she is pinning down shards of history with well-aimed throws of a dagger before they could melt into paper like watermarks, gone as soon as the ink dries."

That last one in particular makes me want to pin her down with a well-aimed throw of a dictionary. Dear God. There's so much wrong with this one sentence alone - now imagine the rest of her review. First of all, you can't "pin down a shard". A shard is a piece of broken rock, ceramic, glass etc. You can't say "a shard of paper", so how the fuck would you pin down a "shard".
And how about "paper like watermarks". WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? A watermark is a pattern applied to paper, money or photos, so how would it be "paper like". And "gone as soon as the ink dries" is equally dumb since the whole purpose of watermarks is that they're meant to stay. Anyways, you get the gist.

Oh, and she's all about "aesthetics", like most people on GoodReads.

Here's her bookshelves, if you were curious.

And here's another sample of top GoodReads reviews that I thought were funny.

Edit : And here's one of her posts about Kaz, the protagonist of Six of Crows, the mediocre YA fantasy book everyone seems to love.

I'll take the risk of making a politically incorrect joke and just say it : bet the violence by men reminds her of her traditional Islamic home.