After experiencing the highs, lows, hypes and underwhelm that Bookstagram has to offer, I started asking myself this question: can I trust Bookstagram recs now? I have caught myself a few times this year before I jumped on a bandwagon that I knew in my hearts of hearts wasn’t going to be for me. I have also found many books I genuinely loved thanks to Bookstagram, but there are also those books which were so hyped, so heavily promoted, yet failed to meet my expectations. I am still trying to work out how I feel at it all.

I will preface this with a few points. One, my reading taste does not dictate what others should or shouldn’t read, post, or promote. I am well away that I can ignore books that don’t appeal to me and focus on the accounts that align more with my reading tastes. I also know that I have read a lot this year, and reader burnout is steadily creeping up on me. This is making the overhyped, underwhelming books stick out more for me, and possibly creating a little bit of resentment at the moment. Reading is a privilege, not just in terms of accessibility but my schedule too. The fact that I can read as much as I have this year is a massive thing, and not a lot of people have the time to do that. I don’t intend for this to be a discussion that comes across like I am complaining or resenting the fact that I don’t like all the book recs I come across.

Let’s start with a quick note of how I decide to make a book rec a library request (because that is the main pipeline when it comes to book recs). I have a few accounts that I feel read similar works to my reading preferences while still crossing comfort zones and reading outside of my normal range of books. Whenever these creators post their weekly reading, book recommendation lists, or recommendations based on things I enjoy, I check the books out online and request a few. The other way I get book recs, and this one tends to be the one that suffers the most, is when a book is getting a lot of hype on Bookstagram. This is a common occurrence for a lot of readers, I feel, so I am sure there are people in the same boat as me. Whether it is a recently published book that has a lot of hype, a book in a genre I has already kind of sworn off as I’ve reached my limit, or a book that doesn’t have a lot of popularity but the premise sounds right up my alley, i might add a book to my library requests. But as time goes on, I either get a reality check before it has reached me in the library queue, or I get the book and realise that its promotion and its content as different.

Now, I will say that I have a few of these kinds of books that I have gone back and requested again to give a proper chance, or a second chance if I feel the timing was just wrong the first time around. For example, The Will of the Many by James Islington is a book that sounds like an absolute banger, and something that is my kind of read. But when I first picked it up, I just wasn’t in the mood to read it, and didn’t even make it to chapter two before I put it down. Other recent books include The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty, A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, and The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngawera as a New Zealand pick.

Others, however, I think I can say will stay firmly off my requests list and tbr piles. As much as I have heard good things about it, Alchemised is not something I am going to pick up, even if it is a dark fantasy with political intrigue and other things that, again, I generally like in a book. Katabasis is not getting a second chance from me, and I am happy to leave it to others to enjoy. My choice of not reading these books is not a reflection of the book’s merits or writing, rather an introspective decision to lessen the number of books I pick up by getting titles I know I will enjoy. There are so many books out there, and so many books I know I will like, so there is no need to read books I don’t enjoy, or think about books I DNFed that maybe had other factors involved in their lack of reading.

But let me circle back to the crux of this discussion. Can I open Bookstagram, scroll for a bit, and get book recs without fretting over wether or not I will enjoy them? The answer, from what I have seen, is no. That is likely the answer for a lot of us. The reason is simply. With how books are being marketed these days, what details are included in their promotions and what tropes are slapped on to get audiences’ attention, the real meat of books is getting less and less screen time. Authentic explanations and plainspoken blurbs for books are less commonplace. From what I understand, the marketability of books relies on short phrases and SEO tags: One bed, enemies-to-lovers, he falls first, strong FMC, childhood best friends, dark romantasy, and shadow daddy are just a few that come to mind. None of these actually tell you what the books is about, the plot, the inciting incident, or the conflict that will make things difficult for them throughout the novel. Reviews and wordy explanations for books aren’t the right fit for Bookstagram’s algorithms, or any social media algorithm, which is a real shame because when you break a book down it mere elements of its being, they all start to sound like copies of each other.

This isn’t the same for literary fiction, historical fiction, or short stories, I know. I am talking about the more popular genres out there like crime fiction, fantasy, romantasy, and dark romance, all of which are talked about by so many on bookish social media. Maybe that’s why I still have faith in my select few, knowing there genres lay outside the “upper echelons” of bookish social media. I’ll call it a day here before I get into a whole different discussions. How have your book recommendations been lately? Do you feel you are also suffering from disjointed book recs?