My 2021 reading challenge (https://www.emma-bennet.co.uk/reading-resolutions) has been so much fun – I’ve read some books I’ve been meaning to get around to for years, some books by favourite authors of mine, some by authors who are friends, some books by authors I’d never heard of before, and it doesn’t look like I’ll have too much trouble hitting my target of 52 by the end of the year.

I have decided, however, to add a little caveat to my challenge: as well as posting about the books I’ve read and tagging the authors where possible on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/romanceemma/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/romanceemma), at the end of the year, I’m going to leave a review for every book I enjoyed on Amazon.

Some of the books I’m reading this year I’ve owned for a while, some have been gifted to me, a lot are being borrowed from my local library, and some are charity shop finds. Very few will have been bought new, and so the authors are not receiving any monetary recompense – while I don’t want to buy 52 brand new books for this challenge, I do want to give something back to the authors.

Reviews are so hugely important to authors, and they cost nothing to do.

They don’t even need to be very long. They mean that Amazon will show that author’s book to more people, who will hopefully buy copies of it because they’ll be able to see from the reviews how awesome it is. As an author, you ain’t gonna get anywhere on Amazon without a fair few reviews!

The reason I’m only going to review the books I enjoyed is that as an author myself, I don’t like to be negative about anyone else’s work. I won’t recommend it if I didn’t like it, but I don’t see any need to scream from the rooftops about what I disliked. Of course constructive criticism is essential for all writers to improve and grow, but a bad review isn’t necessarily going to be constructive. It feels pretty horrible to get a negative review, and I don’t want to be the person handing them out.

Thankfully, I’ve chosen well so far and am getting so much out of being more intentional about my reading, so I anticipate needing to write an awful lot of reviews on December 31^st 2021!

Right, I’d better go: I got halfway through my first Heidi Swain novel last night, and I’m desperate to find out what happens next!