I’m very happy to have Michelle Bell, my friend and founder of Michelle’s Book Nook, on my blog today as the Celebration of Bloggers Tour edges toward a close.  I met Michelle through Twitter so it must have been in 2011 because that is when I joined.  I feel, somehow, that I have known her much longer. Besides being a Blogger Girl, Michelle is definitely a pop culture junkie; a television, movie, super hero and comic enthusiast and I share her passion for so many of those things, from our mutual addiction to The Following, to a long history of watching General Hospital (although I gave up when it became The Sonny Corinthos Show), to a love of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to The Avengers, to our  undying loyalty to the New York Yankees (even when they suck…) and finally to our love of reading and books, particularly chick lit.  As a person, Michelle rocks and as a Blogger Girl, she’s top notch as well which made her post below quite surprising to read.  Please check out Michelle’s Book Nook and her charming post below.  

Confession of a Blogger!

When Meredith asked me if I was interested in writing a guest post for her Celebration of Bloggers tour, I jumped at the chance.  Then reality set in.  What exactly am I going to write about? I don’t think anyone wants to hear about my geeky side and have me squee about super heroes, the Force, Muggles, and dire wolves. And I don’t have a book to chat about.  Then it hit me, I knew what I would write about.

I started writing reviews for Chick Lit Plus in May of 2011 and it has been something that I am proud of doing.  In addition to getting a chance to discover new authors, I have had some wonderful guest posts and interviews to share with my readers (as few as they may be).  But here is my confession – My name is Michelle and I hate writing reviews.  Yes, you read that right. I am a book review blogger and I hate writing the reviews that make up the core of my blog.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t about the books themselves.  I love reading and will gladly spend time chatting about books that I love and what I loved about them.  I will recommend new authors and talk up their work to anyone willing to listen.  I just hate writing the review.  I have a hard time writing reviews, in all honesty.  I always question if my reviews are too short or too long.  Do I reveal more of the plot than I need to or leave you needing a little more detail on the story?  And how annoying is it when you want to say the book was “awesome”? (That is one of my most overused words and I try to limit my use of it.)

But what I dislike about doing reviews the most is what if I don’t like the book? We all have had books that we just don’t like and cannot finish.  I have one on my Kindle currently that I am so glad that I did not join the blog tour for because I just cannot finish it.  I normally enjoy the author, but this one feels so rushed and I don’t feel it. The thing is I do not like leaving a negative review. I would rather stay silent than publicly state that I felt a book was rubbish. Who am I to say that someone’s dream was a flop? I have never posted a bad review and I never will. I will post short reviews that do not contain much to them, but I try to find something positive to say for every book I review. Thankfully I have only had one author ever come back to me to question why my review felt flat and she was not overly thrilled for my honest response. (In my defense, her book ended in the middle of a scene, the middle of a sentence, to build suspense for the sequel that she was writing. It killed the whole book.)

So, why do I continue to do reviews if I dislike it so much?  Because I love sharing my love for reading with people. I like to think that someone may see my review and find that there is a new author on the scene that they have to give a try because I enjoyed the story. Nothing like having a comment left that someone checked a book out because they saw my review. That makes it all worth it to me.  And in closing, let me apologize to any author that I told to just “write what you want” for a guest post for me.  This took me numerous days to figure out what exactly I was going to write about.  And thank you, Meredith, for asking me to participate! You are simply the best!

Thank you Michelle, I can say the same thing about you. You are awesome 🙂

Blogger Girl, coming August 28^th from Booktrope Publishing:

What happens when your high school nemesis becomes the shining star in a universe you pretty much saved? Book blogger Kimberly Long is about to find out.

A chick lit enthusiast since the first time she read Bridget Jones’s Diary, Kim, with her blog, “Pastel is the New Black,” has worked tirelessly by night to keep the genre alive, and help squash the claim that “chick lit is dead” once and for all. Not bad for a woman who by day ekes out a meager living as a pretty, and pretty-much-nameless, legal secretary in a Manhattan law firm.

While Kim’s day job holds no passion for her, the handsome (and shaving challenged) associate down the hall is another story. Yet another story is that Hannah Marshak, one of her most hated high school classmates, has now popped onto the chick lit scene with a hot new book that’s turning heads–and pages–across the land. It’s also popped into Kim’s inbox–for review. With their ten-year high school reunion drawing near, Kim’s coming close to combustion over the hype about Hannah’s book. And as everyone around her seems to be moving on and up, she begins to question whether being a “blogger girl” makes the grade in her off-line life.