Under Review?

So recently I’ve heard through the Author World grape vine that there’s an author out there bashing readers who left him/her a 4 star review. Bashing as in, this person was outraged that the review wasn’t 5 stars and refused to allow a review if it was anything less than 5 stars. I’m still a fairly new author. I don’t get a lot of reviews or sales because I’m too new, and up until a couple months ago, I was only treating this as a hobby. As such, I am ecstatic when I receive any kind of review. In fact, I leave reviews as well.

I left a review once of a book that completely triggered me, and only because there was no trigger warning on the book. In the review I explained the issues I had with the triggers and that it would have been nice to have a warning before reading it. It was an ARC (advanced readers copy) book and I spoke to the author before I left the review because I know that some people don’t want a 3 star review. She was happy that I was leaving that review because it would help others know that there were triggers in the book as well. I got blasted by 2 of her readers for “not liking their favorite author”, where I then had to explain that I liked the author just fine. I just didn’t like the content and it was my opinion.

Anyways, back to reviews. So, I have met a few authors that refuse to allow anything less than 4 stars. If they give out ARC books and the reader wants to give less than a 4 star, that reader is banned from being an ARC readers. Here’s my 2 cents. The people that give you good criticism, and are helping you grow, why wouldn’t you want that? So you don’t have perfect reviews, sometimes those not great reviews are what other people look for. I have a friend that has some 1 star reviews for her books, and she LOVES them. Those reviews get her more sales because people want to know what was so bad that it was given a 1 star. Most of the time the 1 star is just because the reader didn’t like the content. It usually has nothing to do with the story, characters, or even writing.

So, here’s my question: Are you so high and mighty that you only allow 4-5 star reviews? Do you not want to make your writing better? Do you not want to laugh at the audacity of some of these readers? The author that is bashing anyone that doesn’t give a 5 star review, you are ridiculous. No one’s books are so perfect as to only ever get 5 stars. Even Harry Potter has some negative reviews. That doesn’t stop people (me, I’m people) from loving it! Here’s the dealio… if you don’t want all those other reviews that are not 4-5 stars, send the people my way. I’ll take all reviews! I don’t care what star you give me as long as you review my books. I want to know what readers think of my writing, my story, my characters, all of it. I’ll take any star as long as you leave a review!