This summer, as I was wondering “what the hell am I going to do now” post-grad, I finally decided to do what my friends had been urging me to do for months: start a book blog.

I started my blog, Jillian the Bookish Butterfly Blog, on Wordpress as a way to keep writing, as my creativity had hit a major road block and graduate school was over a year away. I was also a way to showcase to future employers in that respective field that I could write. My main focus was book reviews, as well as opinion pieces, and book recommendations.

So far, it’s been a good experience. In five months, I have had three authors approach me to review their books on my blog... which led me to my first major problem as a book reviewer.

An author who was self-publishing her book through Amazon Kindle had posted an “ad” of sorts on Books Amino, a book app I’m on, asking for bloggers to review her work. I messaged her, offering my assistance, and a week later, she sent me a copy of her book for me to read and review.

My honest, unbiased opinion was that the book was not good.

By no means am I an expert in reviewing books or determining what is classified as worthwhile literature, but reading her work was like having teeth pulled slowly, and painfully. Thankfully, it was short, a little over 200 pages. Admittedly, I sped-read through the last half of the book because I wanted to give the review I promised when what I really wanted to do was stop reading.

I wrote my full spoiler-free review on Amazon, giving it one star. I picked the book apart, going over it piece by piece. It was generally negative, though I tried not to make it so. And I posted it a month before it was due.

The author messaged me the next day. She said that while she appreciated both positive and negative reviews, she found mine to be incredibly hurtful, as if it was meant to be personal. I told her I had not meant for it to come off that way, but I was not impressed with her work. I felt horrible about it and I did not doubt she put all her effort into it. As a writer myself, I could see where she was coming from.

I urged her not to take my opinion to heart, because others on Goodreads were praising her book. A day later, she asked me to take down my review on Amazon and wait for the book’s publication date to post it again, as she was still trying to sell it on Kindle. I agreed, because I felt bad for hurting her feelings. In retrospect, maybe I should have stuck to my guns and said no.

We managed to smooth things over, but I kept my true opinions to myself: I felt as though she basically copied other popular books, such as the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth, and put them in her work.

This was not my first experience with an author and giving their book an honest review. The writer before this incident, Dallas Coryell, was super sweet and understanding of my review of his book, Melody’s Key. It was relatively low on the rating scale, but I still enjoyed it because it was a super adorable romance: an American rock star falls in love with an ordinary English girl in the countryside while spending the summer in her family’s hotel. (Seriously, if you are a romance lover, read it.)

All of this taught me important lessons about being a book reviewer, as well as being a reader in general.

Your opinions are your own.

This is an obvious one. When I looked up the reviews for the book I gave one star to, the majority of other reviews were five stars. I began to doubt myself. Was there something about the book I was missing? What did these other people see in the book that I didn’t? Should I go back and reread the whole thing to see if my feelings were different?

Once I saw all the other books on my TBR pile, I calmed down. I eventually realized that this particular book was not for me. There were too many tropes from popular books that I had seen before and the writing, in my opinion, was not very good. I’m glad other people liked this first-time author’s work, except I will stand by what I said. I should not change what I thought because of guilt or peer pressure.

Even if you are asked to review it, don’t feel like you have to like a book.

When it came to books published through a publishing house, I did not care if my reviews were negative. What did the authors care if an average reader like me thought their book was total crap? They were the ones with the book deal, not me.

What I found, though, is that it's harder for me to honestly review a book published through Amazon Kindle, like all the authors I have worked with so far. These are the writers who are just starting out, who may have already been turned down by publishing houses. I felt like I had to like the book, simply because I had offered to review it for the author. In this recent case, I learned that is not necessary. My opinions are my own and, in the long run, they do not mean the end all, be all in the book publishing world.

You learn what you look for in a book.

Before four years of college, studying various texts of English literature, and getting positive as well as negative feedback on my own writing, I don’t think I gave much thought to the books I read- beyond whether I enjoyed them or not, that is.

In the past year, I have learned that what I look for most in books is good writing. The author’s writing style is what makes or breaks a book for me. It does not matter if the plot is interesting, or the characters have funny one-liners. If the author’s writing is poor, boring, or choppy, then I’m not going to enjoy my reading experience.

Write what you want to write.

Aside from reviewing books, I try to write other material for my blog, such as book recommendations, lists of books I want to read, or my opinion on things such as the Goodreads Yearly Reading Challenge. Except, regardless of how much I advertised my recent posts on social media, I was not getting the amount of views I wanted.

Granted, my blog has only been active for less than six months. I should not expect too much in such a short time. The main reason I started the blog in the first place was to write book reviews. However, I have recently discovered that book reviews are the least read posts because the book community on the Internet has a deathly fear of spoilers. Unless creators disclose otherwise, reviews posted on blogs and YouTube are generally spoiler-free. Yet, the fear of being “spoiled” lingers anyway.

Regardless, I will continue to write book reviews, especially if I have something to say about a book or I want to share an underrated author with everyone. I like book tags, but I do not want them to take up space. I started my blog because I love talking about books. As long as people are reading them, and learning more about the books I review, that is all I care about.

Branch out.

By this, I mean read books you don’t normally reach for. You might develop a love for a genre you never considered before, or you could even confirm your dislike of it. For example, I didn’t read contemporary novels for years. Then, I picked up the right book about a teenager with mental illness and I was hooked.

As for blogging, I thought I would only do book reviews or book recommendations. Then, I realized I had some things to say about Goodreads and monthly TBR piles. Those pieces are some of my best on the blog so far, as well as some with the highest views. It made me want to continue writing discussions like those in the future.

If you are thinking of starting your own blog, go for it! It has helped me not only improve my writing, but to keep writing after the loss of structure school provided. And Odyssey helped out too, of course.