My 1-star Reviewer is the Plot Twist
My novel, The Echo of It All recently received its first 1-star review. And damn, the book wasn’t even a week old. That review devastated me. Not just a little. A LOT. To a point where I found myself unwilling to drive after dropping my kid off at school. Ten minutes later, I found myself sitting in the car, still in the parking lot, staring at a fence, where leaves danced and the clouds above the beautiful church tower behind the fence drifted poetically on the wind. Not even the soothing classical music on the radio eased my mind.
I thought my reaction was too dramatic, but I just couldn’t shake that heavy feeling. We’ve all heard the stories before, about artists, writers, and musicians who’ve received reviews that shattered their spirits, and I expected that to happen to me, eventually, but not like this.
So I read and re-read that review, trying to figure out where this reader was coming from.
That review title... "Would not recommend, definitely not for children."
The comments...
"Characters miraculously develop opinions and acquire information about other characters, out of what seems to be thin air..."
"Character traits abruptly changed, it was unconvincing..."
"Comical and juvenile... not for children..."
"Underdevelopment" and "inconsistent."
That 1-star review was totally puzzling to me. Vague. Misleading. It seemed to have completely missed every point I had tried to make in the novel. How could a reader misunderstand the novel so badly? The reviewer didn’t seem to understand the very basics of the novel’s mechanics, and to top it all off, she’d dismissed and demolished the book after reading only ten chapters… that alone shocked me. Ten chapters out of thirty-eight… I felt as if that person knew me and posted a hate review just out of spite... our minds really go to dark places when this happens.
My only saving grace was the earlier review from an ARC reader who’d given the novel a 3-star review. That reviewer had enjoyed the characters, the story, and most of all, the atmosphere! The only thing that prevented the 3-star reviewer from liking the book even more was the plot. She’d thought there was too much happening all at once, and had become a bit confused, fearing she’d missed a few stitches in the process. But she still recommended the book!
I understand how complicated the plot of The Echo of It All may be to some readers. I knew from the very beginning that the story was chock-full of lore. I knew it would require a level of immersion from readers. But… for that 1-star reviewer, no amount of immersion seemed enough. That seriously bothered me… because that meant something was seriously wrong with the novel.
And with me.
Then suddenly something dawned on me... or rather, smacked me upside the head like a ton of bricks: what if that reviewer is a child? Yikes... I’d written a middle-grade book before, my first book, Fantastical Nature. But I'm not a "middle-grade writer." I must have gotten a young reader who’d read Fantastical Nature, and assumed I was writing the same type of book without checking the details of it first...
That actually would explain everything.
The “not for children” title, the “juvenile” complaint, the bafflement at the complexity, the missing of basic plot mechanics like mind-reading... it all tracks if this was a kid (or a parent buying for a kid) who grabbed my book based on name recognition from your middle-grade work.
I’m not a hundred percent sure that this 1-star review is clearly about reader error, and I may never know who Amber J. W.... but I hope she's alright.
Talk about subverting expectations!