The types of books I do not usually read are books dealing with war or politics, erotic novels, overtly religious stories, non-fiction, short story collections, children/middle grade and most straightforward contemporary reads. (The most common exception though is if it is written by an author I am interested in.)
About Review Requests:
Note: I've gotten much pickier and reluctant of late to take on new review requests due to time constraints and my wish to focus on books in my TBR pile.
Please send me a book review request through this Review Request Form. If you have a request other than a book review, feel free to email me. I accept physical copies or ebooks (I prefer kindle-formatted ebooks) from authors and publishers.
If you would like to get in touch, my email is bookishwhimsy (at) gmail.com and I live in California. Books that are not clicking with me, I usually don’t finish, and in that case I will not review it. But I will let the person who sent me the book know the status, as I always endeavor to review a book that is sent to me. All reviews are posted on Amazon and Goodreads as well as this blog.
All books reviewed on my blog - regardless of where or how I got it or who sent it to me - are reviewed completely honestly, with no influences. I try to be fair, positive, and constructively critical in my reviews, but they are only my opinion. I do not receive compensation for any of my reviews other than a complimentary copy of the book.
My Amazon profile
A more detailed post on my thoughts and advice on Author Review Requests.
My Ratings Breakdown:
(implemented 29 July 2013)
Five star books for me, almost always excel in the storytelling. The writing, characters and plot doesn't have to be perfect, but my enjoyment of the book was perfect. Sometimes everything about the book was perfect to me - and I like to highlight that in my actual review - but there are times when I was disappointed here or there but I felt like the book held my interest and captivated me enough to give it all the stars. If I couldn't put the book down even if there are flaws I think it deserves a rating that reflects that I was totally involved with the story. Also I would recommend this book to others and if it's a series I am definitely planning to continue on with it.
Probably this is the rating I give most of the books I read. I did enjoy it and I connected with the story and/or characters, but there were little issues that meant I felt it wasn't the perfect read for me. Oftentimes I give this to a story that has a great plot and characters but the writing or execution of it somehow was disappointing. Or even if a book has a big disappointment for me, but also something rather brilliant about it, I will rate it more for that brilliant part. Basically there are flaws, but I still thought the book was an excellent read. If this is a series though, I may not put continuing with the series on my priority list, but there is a big chance I will continue with it eventually.
I always feel bad giving this rating because these books almost were great for me. They had a lot going for it, but in the end I couldn't get into it as much as I wanted to. These books could even be generally thought of as excellent, but my own personal enjoyment was middling to bored and I can't say I would recommend the book. I might even forget the book the minute I finish writing the review. So probably the best thing I can say is that it's not bad, it's just not worth the time I put into it.
This is a book I could not connect to. My enjoyment level was near the basement, and I forced myself to continue either with the hope that it would get better or because I felt like I had to finish it for some reason. But really I didn't care for it, and I was disappointed by it most of the time. There may be some merit - in the writing, characters or plot but it wasn't enough for me to feel warm happy thoughts about the story.
I've never actually given out this rating on my blog. There are definitely books that deserve it but they also belong to another category that gives me less stress and allows me to enjoy reading. And I don't review these on my blog. What are these? The DNF. To hit this category I have to dislike the writing, the characters, the plot, maybe even shudder at the title of the book. To my mind, the worst book I ever had to finish (the one that made me hate life as I turned pages) was Moby Dick. I know it has merit. I just couldn't find it. And it didn't help that it's so bloody long.
This is a new category that I'm including on my blog (as of March 23, 2015) which will be for books that I feel deserve more than five stars, and are pretty much my new favorites. These will be books that really resonate with me for some reason, and that I absolutely have to own a physical copy of.
