Declining to Review

First, I've sent Abigail an email about this, so will probably get a response to my particular concern.

But, generally ... if you win a review copy, under what circumstances would you feel justified in not completely reading and reviewing it? And at what point do you go back to the administrators and say "Whoa! This book was entirely mis-represented in the description of books to review." ?

>1 LyndaInOregon: I don't think you actually need to complete a book to review it. You could simply say that you requested it because the description interested you, but once you started reading it you found the book had not been accurately described.

>2 amanda4242: Interesting option -- "reviewing" without completing the book. The question then becomes: "Is it a 'review' if the 'reviewer' admittedly has not read the full piece?"

Yes, one can respond as you suggested, and since LTERs are completely voluntary, there's certainly nothing wrong with walking away from a book with incredibly distasteful content.

I'm just wondering if it's worse -- in terms of staying eligible to receive ER copies -- to file an "I didn't finish this" review or simply to not comment at all, and how other LTERs have handled the issue.

>3 LyndaInOregon: I've often found reviews explaining why someone didn't finish a book very helpful: sometimes I'm warned away and sometimes what the reviewer hated is something I love in a book.

The contents of a review have no bearing on ER eligibility. As long as your review is at least 25 words long it counts for ER purposes.

I ended up leaving a very negative review, leading with the fact that I didn't finish the book. I can handle sexual content. Straight-up porn is a whole 'nother thing.

Have you read the other reviews for the book? It must be really bad.

>7 Foxhunter: Fixed it.

>1 LyndaInOregon: I've had some LTER books that weren't as interesting to me as I thought they'd be, but most of mine were not so bad that I wasn't able to finish them. I have at times included in my reviews that if I hadn't gotten the book with the expectation that I would review it that I probably wouldn't have finished it if that is how I really felt about the book. I've not had the same issue that you've had though (if I read a later comment in this thread correctly).