Did you know that some people love spoilers? Does knowing the climax or plot twists in advance make reading a book more or less enjoyable for you?
The subject of spoilers surfaced for me this week as I participated in a book tour of Court of the Grandchildren run by Blackthorn Book Tours. A virtual book or blog tour is the successor to the old fashioned bookshop tours. Instead of going round book shops, a buzz is created over a long-weekend during which your book is featured in lots of blogs and review sites, and the organizers do some online publicity to bring your book to the attention of the reading public.
At its core, it’s a burst of book blogger reviews.
So why the spiel about spoilers? Because I was surprised at how many of the reviews contained spoilers. Maybe there’s a greater demand for reviews containing spoilers than I had imagined.
Our tour was held over the Memorial Day weekend, with a total of sixteen bloggers/reviewers participating. They came from all over the world, but with the majority from North America and the UK.
I can’t mention all the reviewers, so let me start with a selection from the spoiler-free reviews:
Anni – this review was captivating to read. It gave the essence of the plot but within a framework of the reviewer’s reactions, and a fine description of the style and tone of the writing. There was a touch of philosophy in there too.
Ceylan – this Instagram review was almost the opposite in style to Anni’s but just as helpful. Ceylan provides the blurb, gives rating scores of the book, the cover and netflixability and then offers some points reflecting the positive and negative features of the novel, and a conclusion. Simple and effective.
MyBookishBliss – this review struck me as very heartfelt from someone reading outside their normal genre, and it hit directly on our ambition in writing Court of the Grandchildren — to encourage conversations about climate change.
One of the best examples of a review containing spoilers was that of Julie Porter at Bookworm Reviews. She provided a spoiler alert upfront, and her review was a very comprehensive interpretation of the novel.
The prize for the longest review goes to Joey Madia who also wins for the best title “Pay Attention: This Could Happen”.
Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to some earlier reviews from outside the tour:
Cosmic Latte: How brazen is it to start a review quoting the final paragraph of the novel? I spent some time debating whether this was a spoiler or not. Surprisingly, I concluded it probably wasn’t…but you’ve been warned, so you can skip the quote if you want.
Heaton Wilson: short, but a ‘gem’ of a review.
So far we’ve had blogs, Instagram, Amazon and Goodreads. But there’s more — Lorna talks about her impressions of the book on her Youtube channel ‘Book Lover Lorna’.
Overall, the book tour was a lot of fun, and it all happened while I was in lock down in Melbourne! Thank you to Blackthorn Book Tours for organizing the tour, and to all reviewers/bloggers for reading our novel. We are grateful that you took the time and effort to give your considered opinions.
And now, dear reader, you have a selection of reviews available for all of your preferences – including for those that love spoilers.
IMAGE CREDIT: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
