July 15, 2025

In Defense of Bad Reviews, But Not This One

What are your thoughts on negative reviews?

Honestly? I kind of like them.

Ew. Look, I’m not here to kink-shame anyone, but this seems like S&M-level…

What? No. I don’t like receiving them for my books. I meant that I like reading them about other people’s books…actually, that seems kind of dickish, sorry, let me explain. Good reviews generally employ literary cliches and, too often, they come across as boring, nothing but empty praise. A negative review - if the reviewer is good - has to prove its point. Too often, good reviews don’t share that same urgency.

But you don’t really write negative reviews.

I don’t, and haven’t since I’ve been reviewing for The Washington Post. I do try to point out the objective flaws in a book, but I also sort of hate doing that. Writing anything negative about someone’s work, especially in a public venue, really bothers me, even if I feel I’ve made a valid, nuanced point. I hate hurting someone’s feelings, and also I’m a coward.

Which brings you to…

Which brings me to this shit from Women.com - “The Least Popular Thriller & Mystery Picks from Reese’s Book Club, According to Reviews.”

You have thoughts?

Let me be nuanced and objective here: this article is stupid trash. We’ve all grown to weirdly accept that a listicle is now an accepted form of journalism, although it’s borne of clickbait (numbered or ranked lists yield higher engagements, rankings spur debate, etc.), but this is the worst of those practices. Each entry consists SOLELY of a plot description followed by a negative Goodreads quote.

And that’s it. There’s no sign that the author has read the books or the writers’ other books, or has any familiarity with the work they’re sharing and disparaging.

But isn’t the goal of this article just to list books with bad Goodreads reviews?

Yes, and what a pointless goal. You and I could have done the same thing in about thirty seconds, if we were also morally bereft.

Think about the wasted opportunity here. Goodreads is constantly under fire. Every author I know tiptoes onto the site like a child frightened of an abusive parent. Which isn’t to say that the goal of the site is inherently problematic, it’s not. But if you had to write an article, and had also bothered to read the books, imagine something more substantive, maybe “Reese’s Book Club picks with negative Goodreads reviews that missed the point” or “Do Goodreads Reviews and Reese Book Club Picks Line Up?” or “Five Bullshit Listicles My Editor Asked Me To Write But I Refused Because This Isn’t Worth Ruining My Reputation.”

Were you the only writer outraged?

Writers are always outraged but, that said, you should definitely read Andi Bartz’s (a writer whose work was included on the list) response. But, as if often the case in 2025, cruelty and attention are the point. The entire reason for this article’s existence was to provoke anger and lead to clicks, maybe even a condemnation from Reese herself (the editors were definitely hoping for this). It’s a mean-spirited exercise in desperation.

It’s also, depressingly, nothing AI couldn’t have done. This article has no voice. The plot summaries (as Andi also noted) read like they’re AI-generated, and there’s no commentary on the validity of the GoodReads responses.

A better writer (assuming a human wrote this) could have made this into so much more. A discussion of the accuracy of Goodreads, even a self-aware commentary on the limiting nature of listicles.

An article like this is nothing but contempt - contempt for the writers who wrote those books and for the readers who enjoyed them. And ultimately, it’s contempt for their own readers, whom they clearly don’t believe deserve their best work. If this is your idea of journalism or integrity, get fucked.

EA

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I’m presenting a session at this year’s Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in Baltimore, from July 24-26. My session is on “Building Your Platform with More Publishing Credentials” and, yes, there will be a PowerPoint. I’ll be joined at the conference by a slew of wonderful writers, including Yasmin Angoe, Jane Cleland, Polly Campbell, Rob Hart, Wanda Morris and more. There’s still time to register, so check out the speakers and sessions.

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Whenever I talk about what led me to crime fiction, I often discuss how I was reared on the literary canon. The college I attended had a fantastic writing program, even for undergraduates, but they rarely taught genre fiction. So I read a wonderfully wide range of writers, but never those outside the canon. It wasn’t until I graduated that I discovered crime fiction writers who were easily as good as the literary ones I’d studied.

Within short fiction, which is his focus, Art Taylor is one of the best crime fiction writers - and therefore, simply one of the best writers - in the world. He certainly has the awards to make that claim but, rather than list all of them, it’s easier to tell you that he’s won every award in crime fiction for his short stories, often repeatedly. If I did try and list them all, I’d get blisters on me fingers.

When you teach and study writing, regardless of genre, one element that comes across almost any great work is urgency. How close to the trauma or action does a story start? Why, in a lifetime of collected stories, is the narrator or protagonist sharing this particular one? What’s always struck me about Art’s work is the urgency, the way he chooses stories that must be told by the narrator, and read by the reader. Flip through an anthology of crime fiction writers, and the first line of an Art Taylor story will always stop you. Read through his two collections of short stories - like the novel-in-stories On the Road with Del and Louise or The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions and you’ll happily lose yourself in worlds of taut drama and heartbreaking moments, all complemented by assured prose and an innate understanding of tension.

In my last newsletter, I wrote about the pursuit of greatness, and how it may be achieved through narrowed focus - could the greatest baseball player in history. for example, be the best pitcher ever, but not a player known for their hitting and fielding? It wasn’t a question I could answer, but the answer may lie in what Art Taylor has accomplished. Because when it comes to short fiction, no one’s better.

Learn more about Art Taylor’s work here.

It's giveaway time! The winner of a copy of one of the Art Taylor collections listed above is:

bob.bl____e@_____.com

Congrats, and I'll send you an email with more information soon!

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Anyone who knows me knows I’m a gigantic hip hop head, especially for underground rap, and I’ve followed Ruby Ibarra’s career since first coming across her music in a Buzzfeed listicle (see, sometimes they do work) in 2013. Since then, she’s had a string of successes, but hasn’t broken through to the level (I thought) she deserved. That may change now that she’s won NPR’s 2025 Tiny Desk Contest! The accompanying Tiny Desk Tour ends in DC this Saturday, and I reached out to the Washington City Paper and begged them for the chance to interview her. We zoomed last week, I filed the interview a day later, and it ran today (7/15). People, THIS WAS A DREAM FOR ME, and aside from saying things like, “the hip hop concert” in an old-person way, I think the interview went very well and now she and I are totally best friends. In my mind. Where I’m also about three inches taller. Check out the interview HERE!