As a writer, reviews are a fact of life. Most writers I know definitely have a love/hate relationship with reviews. I have writer friends who read and reread their reviews, obsessing over them. Particularly the bad ones. I'll be honest, I don't always read my reviews. (I'll have to get into the psychology of that another day.) It's not that I totally ignore them. My mom (also a writer) reads them for me. She chooses tidbits (positives and negatives) to share with me. Today she found one by Avid Reader at Rabid Read Reviews and insisted I read it. I reluctantly agreed and was glad I did. I was thrilled, not just because it was a positive review, but because I realized that I had managed to touch my reader's heart in the way that my story of Alicia and Chloe touched my own heart in Just Like Other Daughters.
As I work on my new book, Closer than Sisters, I keep thinking to myself, how can I touch my readers, again?
A except from Rabid Read Reviews: Avid Reader . . . "Readers will think of the novel’s description that they’ve read this story before. You have not. Faulkner’s approach is fresh and new. She takes chances from which a less experienced writer might shy away. Whatever happens in the course of the story, the reader is left with the sense that this is a mother who truly loves her daughter and truly wants the best for her. Sentimentality isn’t usually my chosen genre, but I could not put Just Like Other Daughters down. The course seemed obvious but as the tale progressed I simply had to know what would happen next."
