We are asked to review everything nowadays, although this blog is not one I was asked to do by anyone. How was your delivery? Smiley face for the way your coffee was made and served to you? How clean are the toilets? How was your car buying experience, and let me say if you give less than 10 the Toyota garage is fined £2500 (I think that’s the right amount, but it felt quite a lot)?

I tend to ignore all of these ‘feedback’ prompts. I am not really sure that all this data collected is ever analysed properly and anything done with it. In education we call it ‘weighing the pig’. So busy are we weighing it, we forget to do anything else with it like teach for instance.

In the book, Ashley Lyons, a critic for a newspaper, gives a 1 star review for an Edinborough fringe festival show. Hayley Sinclair, in her one woman stand-up show, covers the climate, patriarchy and the end of the world. The description in the book would make me give it 1 star. No one likes to be lectured.

Having written his review and sent it off to the paper, Ash goes in search of a drink and bumps into Hayley and before you know it, it is the next morning and they have slept together. Hayley reads the review and realises it was written by the man she has just spent the night with. Awks!!

The rest of the book is an exploration of the effect this review has on both of them. Hayley comes out fighting, changes her show to talk about what Alex did and people lap it up to the point where it is live-streamed each night and thousands tune in. Alex doesn’t notice the attention the show is getting until the comments reach epic proportions and real-life people start shunning him.

All this attention then brings out other women Alex has upset through his lack of consideration after the event. But at the heart of this is the question about whether he has actually done anything illegal or just behaved badly. It’s also about the way in which everyone jumps on the bandwagon and joins in. At the end, Alex is worn out and destroyed as is Hayley and we are left wondering whether the behaviour warranted the attention. Is it OK to give a 1 star review? Is it acceptable to jump on the bandwagon even if it has nothing to do with you.

I remember the Black Lives Matter day and many small, independent companies that I follow on social media putting up an image of black to show that they stood with the movement. What happened next was very interesting because several of these companies then put out statements, using the same wording, that what they had done was surface support and that their companies had done nothing before to further Black people. Someone from Black Lives Matter was policing social media and seeing ‘woke’ responses in an effort to make their company look caring and compassionate and calling them out. They jumped on a bandwagon that was not theirs and they were noticed. You don’t see that happening too often.

I recently gave a 1 star review, my first, to a gardening book that was mis-sold or the promo about it was misleading and I did feel guilty because it was a gardener’s life’s work contained in the pages. I didn’t eviscerate, though, I was quite considered about why I was only giving 1 star. I am also not read widely enough for any author to find the review, I suspect.

Which leaves me with the question about how I decide not to review a book. Often I don’t if I think the book is not for me. I recently read Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible and didn’t review it. It was passed on to me by someone who is grieving and who felt the book meant something to her. To me, I could understand the sentiment but I didn’t like the writing style and it didn’t have and emotional resonance for me. I didn’t review it because it had been passed on by someone I care about and I don’t want to challenge her about the book. But if you are a critic for a profession, that probably isn’t the point.

Charlotte Runcie has acknowledged that she wrote the book after having given a 1 star review to a comedian and been heckled by them at another show. Because of course, these reviews are a matter of survival for those who stand up on stage in whatever guise. The question is, was she dismissive and small-minded, like Alex, or was it a point of view more widely accepted. It certainly made me think about how I write more negative responses to books.

The house certainly was brought down.