How a review
gets here.

A real person read the book.

Every review is written by a named reader whose identity RNKD has verified privately. They may use their real name or a stable pen name. Nobody here is a character, and nobody writes from a summary. If a reviewer didn't finish a book, the review says Did not finish and tells you where they stopped.

They're allowed to hate it.

Negative reviews are published on the same terms as positive ones. We don't remove a review because an author, a publisher, or an advertiser would prefer we did. The opinion belongs to the reviewer.

Old books count.

A book read last week or twenty years ago is fair game. RNKD isn't a news site, so reviews don't carry publication dates — a good review of a 1974 novel is as useful today as the day it was written.

Nobody connected to the book supplied it.

Reviewers read books they own, bought, or borrowed — or, sometimes, a copy RNKD bought for them. RNKD does not accept books, payments, or anything else from authors, publishers, agents, or publicists. If that policy ever changes, this page changes first.

When RNKD bought the copy, you'll see RNKD provided this reviewer with a copy of the book. No cash payment was made for the review, and the author or publisher had no involvement.

Nobody's paid for their opinion.

Reviewers aren't paid for reviews, and no reviewer earns anything from what a review sells. RNKD may earn money from advertising and from Amazon affiliate links; that money doesn't touch what anyone writes, and the purchase link always comes after the review, never before it.

Editing fixes typos, not opinions.

An editor may correct spelling, grammar, formatting, and accidental spoilers. Changing a criticism, adding praise, altering a rating, or changing a recommendation requires the reviewer's approval. The reviewer's voice wins.

AI helps with chores, not opinions.

We use software to catch typos, check for duplicate text, flag possible spoilers, and draft the "where they agreed / split" summary on Roundtables from the reviews themselves. Every summary is checked by a person against what the readers actually wrote. No AI writes a review, invents a reaction, or fills in a rating.

Roundtables are independent first.

When two or more readers review the same book, each writes before seeing the others where practical. Reviews then lock. We show every take, an honest average if there are ratings, and the points of agreement and disagreement. We don't manufacture drama and we don't manufacture consensus. A Split Decision label just means the readers plainly disagree.

Mistakes get fixed out loud.

Factual, attribution, or disclosure errors are corrected on the page and logged, permanently, on our Corrections page. If a reviewer changes their mind about a book, we say so rather than pretending the new opinion was always there. Every book page has a Report an error link.