What do you do when you enjoyed a book that gets pretty low and harsh reviews?

Sometimes I feel bad that I wasn’t reading (and thinking) as critically as I could have when tons of reviews come out with lots of valid and thought-provoking critiques on a book that I somehow completely missed with my experience of it.

Is there a secret to attracting followers? I've been on here for 2 months and only have 2 followers. I'd love to interact more with fellow readers.

I’ve been debating for a while on whether or not to start this. I’ve got all three books but I could desperately use some encouragement and reasons why I should read them since I’ve heard many mixed opinions on the series 😬

The book that you almost are 100% positive you will enjoy, but for some reason or another haven’t gotten to yet.

I for one am almost positive I will love My Heart is a Chainsaw but anytime that i have gotten a chance to try it or pick it up… I always find a different book or a different thing to do.

Like many on Pagebound, I am staunchly anti-AI, for all the reasons we know about.

I have been very engaged with learning about authors who may use this and eliminating them from my TBR.

I am also a publishing person by trade, and have studied the evolution of the English language, as well as my decade experience of copyediting and working with the written word.

There is a scary intersection, in my opinion, where readers are now throwing around accusations of AI usage in books that "sound like AI." I admit, I am a skeptic, and am hesitant to believe anything is real anymore. But I do think it's alarming that anyone can accuse a writer of AI, even if they haven't ever used it, because of their use of em dashes (em dashes till I die!!!) or style of language used. It's something I've been thinking about more and more, and I don't really have a thesis to this post other than to start a discussion that perhaps there should be some more nuance or careful approach when claiming a book is AI.

(This post was inspired by my seeing someone post in a forum that "this book sounds AI" when I, in fact, worked on it pre-publication process, and know for a fact it isn't.)

(And I even hesitate writing this, because I'm SO anti-AI, and I want the whole system to crumble! But I also don't want legit writers to be taken down in the process.)

Does anyone have thoughts on the audio version of this series?