Review Policy | Dark Shelf of Wonders

Review Requests

Thank you for your interest in my blog. I am no longer open to accepting review requests.

My blog will always be a place to share a love of (and advocate for) indie books! I will continue sharing reviews of indie books and generally participating in reader spaces. However, my reading schedule is simply not able to keep up with the number of requests.

Human-Made Art

I am not interested in reading any books where Gen AI has been used in any part of the process. I do my very best to only promote books 100% written by humans, with cover art made by humans. AI is not capable of making art and if a person didn’t bother to create it, then why should I bother to read it? That being said, it’s possible than one might pass me by without my knowledge. If that’s the case, and I later learn about it, I’ll disclose it and post a warning to other readers.

Rating Scheme

Ever since I started writing book reviews, I’ve been back and forth on different rating schemes. In my old posts you might see a couple different ones, the CAWPILE system being among them. But I found it was way too much work to maintain for every book I read. In the end, I decided to just go back to simple star rating—1 to 5 including half and quarter ratings. Since no matter what system I pick, my personal rating will always be subjective, might as well keep it simple and let the review itself do the talking.

Also, I am a big advocate for DNF-ing, life is too short to read books that are not a good fit for you. Therefore you probably won’t see too many books with excessively low ratings. I don’t write reviews of DNFs nor do I rate them on any review sites. That being said, sometimes there are surprises or I read outside my comfort zone and it doesn’t work out. In that case, I believe that giving my honest opinion is helpful. Negative reviews can help connect readers with their books just as much as positive ones!