Back when I started book blogging I never thought that writing book reviews was a tumultuous exercise. It turns out, as is often the case, I may have been wrong about that one. Reviewing books is not quite the staid exercise our former high school English teachers would like us to believe. Amazon reviews have a way of disappearing lately, especially if you happen to give the book a less than stellar review.

Or worse case scenario, not only do you find that your review has been removed but that the people orchestrating it's removal are alleging that they have located private information about you - including your children's name and your home address. Seem far-fetched to you? Yeah, well I bet that's what one Amazon reviewer thought before it happened to her.

It all started out innocently enough. Last summer, August 2007, an Amazon reviewer, Reba Belle, posted a 3 star review of In Her Bed by Deborah Anne MacGillivray. It's a bit of a confusing read as, aside from Reba Belle's original review, all of her comments have been removed by Amazon. MacGillivray also posted comments in response to the review which she later deleted herself leaving some more gaps. Little was heard about these deleted comments until Dear Author posted a Highland Press Warnings earlier this month. Since then many of the deleted comments credited to MacGillivray have come out as has the information that in August 2007 MacGillivray supposedly posted to Highland Press Author Group about Reba Belle saying that "thanks to our PI we now have her name, her husband’s name, her childrens’ names, her grannies and great grannies name. Her address phone number and email." Reba Belle's Amazon reviewing rights have been removed (...but of course she can still order from them).

Dear Author's contributer Jane, who had brought the blogosphere most of the information on the issue, has provided an excellent summary of the events to date so head over there to read it and follow all the links.

I've been following this story since April 7 and reviewing everything again over the last few hours and I can honestly say my head is spinning. The idea of an author orchestrating this reaction in response to a relatively benign 3 star review is simply unthinkable. That there is suspicion that Amazon reviews may be padded isn't new. As Ramblings on Romance, etc reminds us, the New York Times wrote an article in February 2004 about reviewer wars.

Anna Jarzab has sympathy for authors for some of the bad reviews that appear on Amazon but thinks that in this case the author crossed the line.

Some Amazon reviewers are notoriously cruel, and I don’t know of any author who hasn’t felt the sting of an extremely nasty (undeservedly so–I think reviews should be calm and thoughtful, even if they are bad) review. But, in the end, if someone has an opinion about the book it isn’t really fair to deny them the right to express that on Amazon, even if you think that it is invalid.

Muse's Book Journal did some digging of her own and posted cautionary tale of reviews.

For her own novels there seem to be tons of 5-star ones and maybe one dissenting 1-star! This is just unrealistic. There are always a range of responses to novels and movies. I try to find good points in the books I read but a 5-star review is still more of an occasional thing when something wows me. Thinking that the community over on Goodreads.com would be less effected by this type of manipulation I found that again her novels were getting average ratings of 4.75ish.

Rachel Butler, an author herself, has been following the story and has a few observations.

What I am getting into is a topic that came up as sort of a sideline: reviews and authors. Reviews are a part of this business. Good ones are a nice ego stroke that lasts about five minutes. Bad ones can shake your faith in yourself and stick with you like a bad case of poison ivy.

Jem's Thoughts made, in my opinion, an excellent point about bad reviews.

What's sad is that negative reviews are sometimes the most valuable. And usually they don't keep me from buying something I was interested in.

It's been a long time since I've read, let alone relied, on Amazon reviews. Why would I when I have so many excellent book blogs at my disposal? But on the rare times that I do look at them I tend to seek out both 5-star and 1-star reviews. The 5-star reviews often have a tendency (in my opinion) to gush but they tell you exactly why the reader was head-over-heels in love with the book. The 1-star review will tell you why people loathed the book and more often that not it's for the exact same reason that people gave it a 5-star rating. But sometimes you get a really great critique of what didn't work for the reviewer. Sometimes that will point you away from the book because it's something you hate as well and other times it will have you running to click "buy now" because that thing that the reviewer hates - yeah you absolutely love it. And when a book had oodles of 5-star ratings and no 1-star or 2-star ratings and barely any 3-star ratings? I get suspicious...and it's looking like there's very good reason.

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.