Do You Look at Reviews Before Reading a Book?

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly series created by Rukky at Eternity Books and hosted by Aria at Book Nook Bits. The full list of February topics can be found here.

This week’s topic is about reading book reviews or spoilers before reading a book.

Let’s get started!

Do you like looking at reviews for books before you read them?

It depends on the book but generally yes. I like to see what other reader’s first impression are of the book. Particularly with Goodreads I want to see if people who have similar reading tastes enjoyed or disliked the book and why.

I sometimes also skim reviews to see if there are any content warnings I should be aware of. I really appreciate when people include these in their reviews.

Is reading reviews important to you when choosing what books to read next? Or do you prefer to wait until after you’ve read a book to look at reviews?

It’s only important to me if I’ve never read the author before and I’m hesitant to dive into their work.

Sometimes if I’m not really enjoying a book I’ll go and look at reviews to see if other readers felt the same. Generally I do this if I’m on the fence about DNF-ing the book and want to know if anyone else did as well.

I rarely read reviews after I have finished a book. If I do it’s just while casually scrolling either Goodreads or Instagram but I would not say I seek out this content.

Do you ever look at spoilers before you read a book?

I try very hard not to. I don’t think I would ever intentionally seek out spoilers.

Do you look at reviews before reading a book? Tell me in the comments!