Do you read the reviews of a novel before reading it ?

when i read a review i look at two things before deciding if i should read or not
1. there is at least one thing good in the novels that is of my liking i will "give a try" even if the rest of the novels sucks....(i can't guarantee i will not drop it)
2. if the review have only negatives comment, i will give a try the first 20-30 chapter to confirm they are right or wrong....

all other cases i give a try before deciding if i keep reading or dropping it....

 

I don't read reviews before reading a novel, I said it before, I decide whether to read a novel or not based on: categories, tags, summary and the first two chapters (prologue or chapter 0 if exist and chapter 1)
Did I ever read reviews before?
Yes I did but not before reading a novel to decide whether I want to read it or not but rather in two situations:

• First situation, From time to time I see people saying something about some review being wrong and what not, and not giving the novel its right, by curiosity I might go to read such review just to see why the person was ranting (sometimes the rants are about a novel I read before and I just wanted to see what others thought about it)
  
• Second situation, I was bored, nothing new on NUF and I didn't have time to read a new chapter, so I thought, why not read some reviews (also about novels I read in this case)

So to conclude, I don't look at reviews before I decide if I want to read a novel or not

 

Much more important that the hook the synopsis is supposed to have is the one in the first paragraph. I have seen plenty of print novels which were good but with a meh synopsis. You also learn little about the writing style from the synopsis alone. Which is why you read the first paragraph instead.

 

You can't read the 1st paragraph when the book is surrounded by a plastic wrap. You learn to work with what you have at those points~

I won't read the 1st paragraph until I got home and already bought the book for print novels, so the synopsis better be pretty good at hooking me in~

 

I find most user-submitted reviews are useless so I'll generally just read them after I've finished the book. I generally use them just as a gauge for how other people respond to the story. The exception to this is when I look at books that raise warning bells. In this particular case I'll read reviews to see if my fears are founded, in which case I'd avoid reading the book. It doesn't happen all that often though; usually only when I suspect that the male love interest is going to make me want to throw up.

 

I always read the reviews, it tends to save me from getting really far into a novel and then having the author pull something that makes me stop reading

 

I did, but after I look at the rating first; if it had negative much more than positive, then I won't even bother reading the review, three things that I usually search in a review; 1. the MC's behavior, whether it matched my taste or not, and if the review said the MC will change, then I will give it try.

2. The update of the chapters and the pace of the story, if within a month the author uploaded even just like 4 chapters, as long they had a considerable length of words and didn't drag things just for the sake of milking chapters, I will give it a try, but even if the author upload like 20 chapters for a month, but all of them was just bullshit after bullshit (half of the chapter talked about this girl with jade-skin, oh and that girl also had jade-skin) I am sorry but bye-bye.

3. Grammar.

 

I mostly read reviews for spoilers really if I'm unsure/worried about the direction the story will take.
Doesn't matter if it is good or bad reviews, there are plenty of cases where a positive review turned me away from a novel and a few where a negative review made me give it a try.
Ratings I find absolutely useless.

 

Not anymore~

Ratings & Reviews are permanently blocked via Ublock Origin Element Picker Mode on my Firefox & Vivaldi browsers.

YOLO

 

Who sells books in plastic wraps? xd If you buy online you get a short preview and if you buy it offline you won't see any plastic.

 

I look for patterns.

Ratings should be more positive than negative as law of large numbers still mostly prevail, but dont get stuck on how high or how low.

For Reviews, just skim multiple negative or neutral reviews to see what the overall dislike if the novel is. Understand that people complain a lot about things that arent always bad. Also warns you about heavy ntr, wish fulfillment or if the series was cancelled or had a bad/rushed ending.

Take everything with high disages of salt. Rating and reviews still have value, if you know how to interpret them.

 

I usually read the synopsis and then go on the chapters. After reading a certain amount of chapters, I'll then look at the ratings and the reviews and the thing with both of these are that they're incredibly subjective.

The thing I hate about reviews is that people don't bother putting in a spoiler. It's like OK KAREN, WE GET IT, U MTLED IT TO COMPLETION. GOOD FOR YOU. There's no need to put in a short synopsis of what happens. If I want to know, I'll go to the spoiler thread myself.

Second, people can't put in objective reviews. There are either people who have incredibly high standards built from reading 100+ novels and they're really hard to please so they'll put in really low ratings in almost every novel they pick up. There are also people who put in a 5 star on the very first chapter because it looks promising or because they like a certain type of character or they plainly like everything.

If you do use reviews to decide, I'm pretty sure you at least know which information given is relevant to you in your decision and what you could expect from the novel which i guess helps filter out the trash from the bunch.

 

Bookstores do it fairly frequently over here~

 

Totally.
Review is helping me to know more of what's the story is about, but if the chapter is 400 more, then it's byebyebye.
For anime/movies, I never care with review.

 

Actually for anime I always get deceived lol (my reference is myanimelist) . I can't remember how many praised manga or anime I've dropped

 

I treat other people's reviews as advice from a comrade.
When I was younger, I don't listen to reviews. I've seen a post before about a video called "2 girls 1 cup". I didn't believe the "advice" written all over by comrades around the world and watch it. I still regret it this day.
After that, I saw this post about an anime called "Boku no Pico". I read the reviews and listened.
I know I was saved.

 

It's also a bad habit of mine, so most of the time, I read a novel with a mindset of proving how bad is it, as the review states.

 

Sometimes. If I don't understand the synopsis or I see a few tags I'm not sure of I'll drop down to the comments. I look for well-written reviews that detail what did/didn't work for the reader. Then I go and read a couple of chapters to see if I like it or not. Reviews I ignore: When the poster blasts other reviewers for their review. Poorly written reviews (wall of text/terrible grammar). Any reviews that insult anyone who dares to hate/love this work.

 

I would say that ~35% reviews are helpful. All others are mix of trolls/haters/didn't read but I must say that...