Quote:
Originally Posted by Tome Keeper
Copying the blurb as a summary doesn't mean the reviewer has not read the book, just that they don't want to re-write something that is already available. I sometimes use the blurb as a summary because I don't focus on retelling the plot in my reviews, and it is much easier to avoid accidental spoilers that way.
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I find, though, that a lot of the times the book blurb doesn't really give a sense of the whole book - just the part that the publisher thinks is going to sell the book. That's why I tend to view askance reviews that start off merely repeating the blurb.
Perhaps it's also because when I was in high school/college and wasn't interested in the book I was supposed to read for my class, I used to read the blurb, Cliff's Notes and one chapter of the book and create my term paper from that. I used the one chapter to source all the quotes in my paper. I usually aced the papers using that method. Of course, I got nothing from the books - which is my loss that I recognize in hindsight. So when I see reviewers quoting the blurb word for word my BS meter starts to go off.
