THE ONE STAR AND TWO STAR REVIEWS ..... REVIEWED. Linda Mitchelmore

There's nothing like a pandemic, I'm beginning to find, for putting those irksome moments in life into perspective. Take the one star and two star reviews. I've had a few. Sometimes I take a look on Amazon for really big names to see if they are similarly afflicted. They are. Some of them are truly terrible. But they write on. Which is what I've done. However .... Jenny on Lancashire Border had this to say about my first published novel, TO TURN FULL CIRCLE, giving it one star. 'I am seriously puzzled as to where all the 4 and 5 stars come from? After one and a bit chapters I was so bored I almost hovered (sic) the stairs - me, a life-long bookworm. My fault for downloading cheap. You get what you pay for.'

EMMA: THERE'S NO TURNING BACK was the sequel. Juliet romeo gave me a glowing 2 star review and a single word critique - boring.

EMMA AND HER DAUGHTER completed the trilogy. Nothing less than a four star review for this one, so maybe I was writing better or I had my fans.

And now my favoourite ... RED IS FOR RUBIES - the one I enjoyed writing the most and the one for which I got good reviews, and nothing less than 3 stars. It only came out in ebook form and audio and I'd dearly love to see this one in paperback some day.

I was then asked to write a novella. And HOPE FOR HANNAH came into being. Someone calling him- or herself, Eh, gave me a 1 star review. 'Nice surprising twist but plot is undeveloped. Ending was pleasing antagonist seemed to have the happiest ending despite being portrayed as a terrible person'.

This was followed by GRAND DESIGNS - this one, incidentally, was my biggest seller when I was writing for Choc Lit. But this is what J Durham's two star review had to say. 'This is so light it makes an old Mills and Boon look like an epic'.

A change of publisher now and my first with HarperCollins. SUMMER AT 23 THE STRAND. Someone called janey was 'so disappointed did not know it was all very short stories. When I buy a book I want a full story'. She gave me two stars anyway. Well, hey ho, it said on the blurb exactly what it was. This was followed by CHRISTMAS AT STRAND HOUSE which had no reviews lower than 3 stars. And then summer came round again and THE LITTLE B&B AT COVE END hit the shelves. A 2 star from someone called Linda (always hated the name even though it's my own) said, 'Quite enjoyable, an easy read, with some irritations.

All the grammatical errors in the reviews and the lack of upper case letters for names are as they appear on Amazon. A damning review could quite easily put a writer off ever putting pen to paper again. I think I was lucky that my first two star review for my first book was so funny in its way. Sometimes, in idle moments, Jenny's words will come back to me and in my mind's eye I see her 'hovering' the stairs. So .... do one and two star reviews seriously knock you back or do you just shrug, do that British thing, and carry on?