Hi, everyone—it’s Ely again, here for my monthly post for March! Over the last few months, over on my own blog I’ve been looking back at the books I never reviewed, rereading them and sharing my thoughts. It’s been a fun process so far, but it got me thinking about changing opinions on books after you’ve written reviews. So today I thought I’d share my thoughts and some of the things I’ve done and seen others do.

Deleting The Review

Obviously, the most dramatic technique is to just delete your review. This is probably easiest on something like Goodreads and Storygraph where you probably won’t be breaking hyperlinks or whatnot. I personally don’t use this one very often—I’m more likely to clear my star rating on GR or re-rate it. That being said, I have deleted reviews of books and authors that I no longer felt comfortable supporting.

Disclaimers

An easier option is to just add a disclaimer at the start of a review. I think this one works particularly well if you’ve changed your star rating after reading, or if the review just isn’t relevant anymore. Again, if you’re choosing not to support that book or author anymore but don’t want to delete the review for whatever reason, this might be the way.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Rewriting

This is probably the most time-consuming one on the list. I’ve done this one a few times when I’ve looked over old reviews and decided a sentence isn’t quite right or if I now see something I said in a completely different light. This can be anything from deleting a paragraph to changing the entire thing. It all depends on what you’re changing.

Leaving It

This is the most common one, I think. Sometimes you can completely change your mind about a book but completely forget about that review you wrote on it when you read it that first time. This honestly happens to me all the time and I’m only reminded if I go to look that book up or if someone likes or comments on it, whether that be on my blog or Goodreads. Most of the time I don’t have the time or energy to really look over the review and I end up just leaving it as is.

What about you—what do you do with the reviews you’ve changed your mind on? Let me know down below!