Let’s Talk Bookish: All About Reviews and Spoilers

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, the meme moved to another host, Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

This week’s topic is submitted by Jillian @ The Bookish Butterfly and is:

Do You Read Reviews and Spoilers Before or After?

Prompts: Do you like looking at reviews for books before you read them? 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? Do you ever look at spoilers before you read a book?

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To answer this question straight away: yes. I definitely check reviews before I decide whether to pick up a book or not. Unfortunately, I have been disappointed relatively often these days, so checking reviews has become a must for me. If I don’t check the reviews beforehand, it might happen that I check them whilst reading. This often occurs when I don’t seem to get through a book and want to know whether it’s the book or just me. I am a massive mood reader and therefore the reviews do not decide if I will read a book next or later, they decide if said book will make it to my TBR at all.

Do I spoiler myself before reading a book? Not per se. However, I spoiler myself when reading and getting impatient. So I always take a sneak peak into the final chapter when this happens. Moreover, when I’m struggling majorly with a book, this is a good way for me to decide whether the ending is interesting enough for me to push through and finish it, or that it’s better to DNF and move on. Luckily spoilers do not ruin my reading enjoyment, so I can do this easily.

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What about you? Do you read reviews beforehand or when you are reading a book? Do you read spoilers before or whilst reading a book? Or don’t you read reviews and spoilers at all?