There was an author lately (more like all the time, amiright?) who called out reviewers who didn’t finish their books. They said that reviewers who don’t finish shouldn’t be leaving any sort of review and I thought I’d take the moment to rant about that for a minute.

If you don’t know DNF stands for Did Not Finish. The reader put the book down because they just couldn’t get through it.

That is a review.

If someone couldn’t get through all of it, they should get to say why.

I’d like to say this as a reader first: I spent most of my reading life pushing through books I simply didn’t like. I wore it like a badge of honor to have actually read tough or awful stories. It was like something about the act made me a better bookworm.

At least better than you.

And at the end of the day, we book nerds are in fact competitive. That’s why there are reading challenges and book haul videos. It’s not just our love of reading that fuels us, but our love of reading more than others. Our love of having personal libraries that rival the one Beast gave to Belle. Even our love of spotting something others didn’t (had to throw one in there for the re-readers).

But I’m not just a reader now. I’m also a reviewer.

And I don’t have time for a bad book.

At my worst, I had a pile up of 20+ books that needed to get reviewed. That is 100% on me for requesting those books and reaching out to authors and publishers for them. Part of the promise of reviewing is that in exchange for a free book, I will review it in a timely manner. On average, I will take a week to get through a book. I read slowly these days, taking my time to savor a good story, especially if I want to write a good review for it. So, a book that takes me a week to get through 10 chapters isn’t great.

And if I needed to force myself through those 10 chapters, that’s even worse.

Consider this: I read mostly YA books and 10 chapters in is often around 100 pages. 100 pages with no pay off is a long time to be reading something I simply do not enjoy.

I say this to everyone in the bookish community: whichever you choose to do, for whatever reason(s), is fine, but don’t shame people, especially reviewers, for putting a book down.