When a one-star review is in verse...

 

*....

 When a one-star review is in verse,

It somehow makes everything worse.

In their zeal to convince,

Critics make authors wince,

And whine, carp, bemoan, bitch, and curse.

The limericks have arrived!  My talented readers have sent in their contributions, as requested in my last post (find it here):  Give us your rude, your snarky, your obnoxious book reviews in limerick form.  They arrived in the Comments section, in email, by Facebook, and even by phone.  Some used the first line I provided ("There once was a one-star reviewer..."), while others started from scratch.

For your reading pleasure, here they are, with authors identified as they identified themselves to me.

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who cast titles into the sewer.
Authors cried foul!
With many a howl
But the one-stars came faster not fewer.     --Seri Good

I have the name of an edit-or,
that just might help this book sell more.
Till then it's a mess,
and I must confess,
I use it to hold open the door...     --Prue Batten

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who hungered each novel to skewer
And his only regret—
He could never beget
A rating of any stars fewer.     --Deb Atwood

This next one is not a limerick, but I felt that it nonetheless contained the very essence of limerick-ness, so it's included.

Your Novel's One-Star Review

The writing was awful, the characters worse--
I wanted to send them all off in a hearse.
The plotline was boring, the action scenes tame,
And far worse than that, all the romance was lame.
The spelling was quirky, the grammar awry,
Punctuation changed wildly with no reason why.
Perhaps it gets better, when all's said and done,
But I couldn't force myself past chapter one.     --Julia West

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who loved to drag books through the sewer,
Whose great joy in life
Was to generate strife,
And proclaim there was no one as truer!     --Kathryn Louise Wood

Your book was a waste of my time.
Why make the poor hero a mime?
Write a strong female lead,
With a magical steed,
Add some teenage angst – now that's sublime!     --Linda Wendt

And just to round things off, I've included a couple more by my alter ego, Sven Leonardo MacGeneric:

There's way too much grammar-abusing,
And the plot is absurdly confusing.
If you've got to sell dreck,
At least employ Spellcheck -
And besides, it's not even amusing.

It desperately needs a good edit
(Or maybe we ought to just shred it).
The writing's outrageous,
There's too many pages,
And if there's a sequel, I dread it.

And that's it.  Many thanks to my talented contributors (especially for getting me off the hook for coming up with a new post this week), and here's hoping that none of us will be the recipients of any such scurrilous reviews anytime soon.

Images are in the public domain by virtue of being reallyreallyreally old.