Why You Can’t Trust Reviews

I am having a week over here, my goodness. First it was bad reviews once again trashing my books. Next it was the shadow of piracy. Then it was someone bitching about woke pronouns.

And then there was the troll.

We all know GoodReads is a cesspool. It has been for quite some time, and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it, aside from leave. (And plenty of people are doing just that—not least of all because it’s also Amazon-owned.) Even before Amazon ownership, though, GoodReads was never managed very well, which means that there are plenty of trolls.

Getting Charles’d

GoodReads trolls are so infamous that we even have a single-named wonder: Charles.

Charles is a known GoodReads troll. This account has, for years, run around the site giving gay books a one-star rating. The account has been flagged and reported. Every now and then, a fresh crop of people discover Charles and report the account anew. As of this writing, the account is still going strong.

So, despite reports, the GoodReads team does nothing, despite a clear pattern of abuse. The Charles account’s behavior is targeted: it only one-stars gay books. It does nothing else.

At a certain point, that no longer looks like a real person operating the account. It’s a bot or someone with a serious vendetta and a lot of time of their hands. Maybe someone with a serious vendetta and too much time who built a bot. Either way, it’s obvious that “Charles” is not a legitimate reader; this isn’t someone who occasionally hates a book. It’s someone going out of their way to drag down books in a particular subgenre, which is borderline harassment. It’s certainly targeted behavior aimed at harming a minority group. And it’s disingenuous—one-star ratings knock down a book’s overall average, making it appear “worse” to readers and harming it in the algorithm.

So while Charles may be something of a joke—mention the account and most queer writers will roll their eyes and say something like, “Ah, yes, Charles. Who hasn’t been Charles’d?”—the account and its behavior is doing real damage to authors.

Everyone, Meet P K

The account I stumbled on is “P K.” The account appears to have been hijacked: it was originally registered in 2016, then lay dormant until early 2025. In January, it began rating a whack of isekai manga and light novels, often in batches.

By early February, the account had moved to pinging books with particular keywords in the title. One of these keywords appears to be “mpreg.” On February 2, the account began one-starring a buttload of books with “mpreg” and a few other choice keywords in the title.

It’s pretty obvious the account did not read these books. It racked up nearly 2,000 ratings in the span of less than a month, and, as I noted, it appeared to be issuing one-star ratings on the basis of a book having “mpreg” in the title. One hint is that the account has rated the same book in multiple languages. One author with books in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese got dinged with one-stars for each edition on the same day.

Excuse me while I doubt that someone who reads five different languages read the five different editions of the same book which they allegedly hated in the span of a day, along with a whack of other books they also apparently hated.

The Spree Continues

By mid-month, the account was rating books by a single author, seemingly working through this author’s ouevre. The account appears to be carefully varying its ratings on these books—many of them are five stars, but some are four or even three stars. The crown jewel here is two different editions of the same book being given two different ratings.

It’s pretty clear P K is the omegaverse / mpreg version of Charles, carefully trying to hide the trolling by sandwiching it between what seems to be more legitimate ratings and reviews. The other suspect part is the praise for the single author—it raises the question of whether “P K” is a sock puppet.

This particular author is not writing in the mpreg or omegaverse subgenre. It doesn’t quite make sense that the author would create a sock puppet account to slag books that aren’t direct competition, then upvote their own books in a completely different subgenre. Nonetheless, it does look strange. And, well, I’ve been around the internet long enough to suspect just about everything at this point.

What Can We Do about Accounts Like This?

The short answer is: nothing. They’re trolls. We can dislike it, we can whine and cry about how unfair it is, and we can report them to GoodReads, but it will change nothing. Even if GoodReads does care—and they don’t—they don’t really have enough data to ban the accounts. P K is particularly insidious for that reason. It stinks to high heaven—all the one-star ratings make it very obvious this account does not like mpreg, so why keep reading it. There are no threats, no abusive language. Sure, we can say that this looks like “malicious intent,” but is it? GoodReads says that you have to prove malicious intent. I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that one-starring books because they exist as part of a particular subgenre when you pretty clearly have not read them is malicious intent, but I can’t prove it. This person could just really, really love hate-reading mpreg.

That’s implausible, yet possible. But that’s largely why Charles has been allowed to run amok for years. We can all say if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck … but we can’t prove it’s a duck, and therefore GoodReads argues they have no reason to take action against the account. P K’s use of other ratings and other genres makes it even more difficult to prove malicious intent. That means we can report until we’re blue in the face, but it’s unlikely that anything will be done.

Supposing that GoodReads did take action, though, nothing would really change. Trolls are a dime a dozen. It’s like playing whack-a-mole: you hit one, another springs up.

It Makes Reviews and Ratings Meaningless

This trollish behaviour—which also happens in short, negative reviews—means that ratings and reviews ultimately mean nothing. Reviews can substantiate a poor rating or justify it; we can always agree or disagree. But a rating, without any explanation, is more difficult to contend with. It drags the book down without explaining why. In turn, a book’s overall rating sinks, which, in turn, means it looks more like “a bad book” to potential readers.

Given that, reviews and ratings become relatively meaningless. Yes, a book has so many ratings or so many reviews. Yes, it has an average, and a certain number of reviews or ratings are one-star or two-star or three-star or what have you. But how many of any of those are genuine ratings from actual readers? And how many are from trolls who are just out to drag down books they don’t like?

Good reviews and ratings must be suspect as well. Did people actually read this book and like it? Is this a sock puppet account, or maybe the author’s BFF? Maybe the author is paying for good reviews and fake ratings. We don’t know.

This makes it very difficult for readers to know what’s good and what’s bad—although we should never underestimate the power of a bad review to sell copies of a book. I’ve certainly been intrigued by reviews that complain about “spice.” For me, spice is a selling feature, not a bug, although some readers would definitely consider it a bug!

YMMV Is Very Much in Play

I think one of the most important things for readers to remember when they’re perusing reviews—and even when they’re writing them or rating books—is that the enjoyment of art is very much a “your mileage may vary” type of thing.

I, for one, have certain authors I don’t read. Some people love those same authors—and would likely hate my work. It’s easy to forget that when we bounce over to a site like GoodReads and see everyone singing the praises of a book we hated.

So, How Do You Find a Good Book?

Personally, I don’t pay much attention to ratings or reviews. I read cover copy, I look at covers, and I sort of go by vibes.

If the book is checking a lot of boxes for me, then I’ll give it a go. If it’s not ticking boxes for me, then I’ll usually pass. Unfortunately, a lot of readers seem to be drawn in by eye-catching cover art than actual substance.

The only time I’ll pay attention is when a book is rated under 2.5 stars. Usually, wading into reviews will show that there are some serious issues with editing. While I withstand a lot of grammatical errors and lack of spellcheck in my fanfic, I can’t abide by it in anything I’m paying for.

That said, editing is a fussy, fussy thing—and plenty of readers will slag on books for “poor writing,” even when the book has been edited and is actually relatively error-free. That boils down to a lot of people not knowing what they’re even talking about. There is a disconnect between what writers put on the page and how readers interpret it more often than we think. And, of course, there are a lot of people who think they are very good at English, but they actually are not.

All this said, ratings and reviews are still important for books—especially indie books. They’re just not important for the reasons you think they’re important. In this day and age, books live and die by ratings and reviews, because they bolster the algorithm. So, if you love an indie book, be sure to give it a review. It helps spread the word, not by telling other readers how awesome the book is, but by telling some computers to tell other people how awesome the book is.