The Power in a Review.

Once upon a time, you could rattle off titles of romance novels and if I read the book, I could immediately name characters, secondary characters, story lines and quote my favorite scenes.

Now, whether it’s because I’ve aged since then or because I’ve read so many more books since then, it takes a lot more to jog my memory of certain books. I’ll hear or read a title and think, “Wait, who’s book is that again?” That never happened before, I prided myself on the amount of dialogue I remembered and even remembering silly things like what flight Zack Benedict was on when he was going to Mexico City in Perfect by Judith McNaught, you know things like that.

I can’t do that anymore.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve been known to read a book that I thought I’ve never read, only to find out a couple of chapters in that I did in fact read this book and that I also own the damn thing…twice. I can’t remember what books I liked and what books I didn’t like and so in an effort to keep track of the books I read, when Izzy said you can start a book blog, I jumped on it. I jumped on it because it gave me the perfect way to remember what I liked, what I didn’t like and all that other junk.

I started writing reviews and before long, it became a hobby. I write a review for every book that I read, whether I liked it or not, if I read it, I reviewed it or will do a review for it. I never really think about who’s reading my reviews though. Until the emails and the calls started coming in.

Last month, I did a review on a book I read called Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury. I loved the book. I loved it so much that I read the entire thing in one sitting and I didn’t go to work the next day because my eyes were puffier than my brother’s afro. I looked like a raccoon and just wanted a day to savor the read.

Yes, for me it was that good. I know that not everyone is going to love that book the same that I did but I’m surprised at how many people read my review and went out, bought the book and loved it right along with me.

After I read the book and reviewed it, my sisters wanted to know about the book so instead of writing up an email about it, I just sent them my review. They read my review and wanted to read the book so they took turns reading it. Delene forwarded my review to my sister in law, Lesley and her friends from her daughter’s basketball teams, the other basketball Moms. Blanche forwarded my review to my sisters in Colorado and Vegas. The review got sent to my cousins in Hawaii, Samoa, Utah…everywhere.

Over the past month, I’ve gotten a whole gang of emails and phone calls from people who wanted to talk about the book. People who have thanked me for turning them on to the book and people who want to know what they should read next.

I’ve become an official book pimp.

Now, even though all these people have been emailing, calling and what not…I didn’t think much on it until my boss came up to me yesterday and wanted to know about this blog thing I’ve got going on. So I told her everything and she seemed pretty interested to hear all about it. Now it’s pretty weird for me because my boss is the complete opposite of me. She’s this older woman who is a total soccer Mom. We’re like night and day, she’s very strict and controlling where I’m more laid back and go with the flow. We have nothing in common and yet, she read the review that I wrote (because my sister Blanche sent it along) and she wants to read the book. She said that reading the review made her want to read the book herself.

And I felt good about that.

That one review is making the rounds all over the place. So many people have bought that book because of a review. I never paid attention to this stuff before but a review is a powerful thing and I never really cared to know that.

How awesome that something as simple as writing up a review can have such a huge impact on other people and the decisions they make on what to read next. Feel special, all you book reviewers out there…whether you know it or not, your reviews do make a difference.

Happy Reading!

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