A couple of reviews of my books seem excessive in their phrasing to my eye, but I didn't pay for them or ask for them. This experience has me less willing to automatically discard some of the reviews I've seen on other books as necessarily fake. Instead, it seems to me that some people just aren't that good at (or experienced in) writing book reviews in a way that is all that useful to potential readers. Of course I'm grateful for any reviews (good ones especially, of course, even if they are sometimes over the top), since experience has also taught me that most people don't leave any review at all, good or bad.
Not that I doubt that it happens. But if I was going to pay someone for a review think I'd want editorial control.
