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OK, I think this needs a discussion: cookbook reviews on Amazon or elsewhere that make you scratch your head.  :) I don't BUY books on Amazon, but I do read the reviews there to help me decide what to buy or order at my local bookshop, and there seem to be, among all the really useful reviews, certain types of not-so-useful reviews that just keep popping up:

--The ones that give one star because the book wasn't packaged properly by Amazon and the cover is sticky or the corner is dinged or what have you.

--The ones that say it's a great book with terrific recipes and wonderful photos but then subtract two or three stars because it uses a lot of a particular ingredient that the reviewer deeply dislikes, even if it's a very typical ingredient in the cuisine featured in the book (e.g. "I love this Mexican cookbook, but three stars because she uses cilantro!")

--The reviews from someone with a specific diet slamming the book because it's not much use to people who follow that diet, even though it doesn't claim to be.  The most common one I've seen is that a book with a big slab of meat on the cover isn't vegan-friendly enough, but I've seen keto and paleo folks with similar complaints for cookbooks that never claimed to be keto, paleo, vegan, etc.  I have a lot of vegetarian cookbooks, and I've seen a number of them get bad reviews for not having any meat, so it goes both ways.

Anyone else have any book review characteristics that leave you kind of puzzled?  :)

I also don't buy from Amazon. One of the benefits of using a bookshop is that you can physically pick the book up, flick through it etc. which makes reviews kinda moot. 

I've noticed all those, not just for cook books but for almost any product you'd look at, like the woman who gave a micro-screwdriver a single star as "too small to be useful" though it's perfect for its intended use of adjusting spectacle frames.

Also the people who clearly only leave reviews when they are aggrieved but never read them before they buy, so complaining a book has a lot of pork recipes when 8/10 reviews have commented on the wonderful selection of pork recipes

There seem to be people who click on the wrong end of the row of stars, clicking one star then leaving a rave review, or clicking on 4 or even 5 stars and leaving an entirely negative review; the one star version seems to be more common.

I totally agree.  We have a small local bookshop and I'll order from them, and they don't have many cookbooks, so I read the online reviews in advance so that I'm not having them place an order for something I might wind up returning.  I also find that if a book has been around for a while, I can get an idea of whether people have good luck with the recipes or not if there aren't many Notes on EYB (which is where I look first.). :)

Yes, all those.  One recently gave one star for an used book because it smelled like Tide.  

I sometimes wish that the "reply" feature still existed so that I could go, "Um, this is a rave review-- are you sure you just wanted to give the book one star?"  

And yes, the aggrieved reviewers who clearly don't read the other reviews.  Or the ones who give two stars because they returned the book because there's nothing in it that strikes their fancy-- I'm never sure why they take the time to review something they didn't use because it was clearly a mistaken purchase for them.  Or the ones who returned the book and give a low rating because of something they really should have figured -- e.g. lambasting a vegetarian or vegan book not because of the recipes but because it dares to make a very tame statement that cutting back on meat is good for the planet, and how dare the author get political?  

That's kind of the opposite of so many one-star reviews I've seen, because at least Tide is CLEAN.  :) I seem to keep bumping into reviews with photos of something sticky on the cover, which make me curious (in a grossed-out kind of way that kind of reminds me of my childhood), how does a new book coming from an Amazon warehouse get something sticky on the cover?  I guess the working conditions are such that the employee is drinking a Slurpee while working because they didn't have enough time for a decent break?

I think I'd be OK with a used book that smells like Tide.  :) 

OK, here's another example:  I was just checking out a new cookbook at the bookshop, and it's gorgeous, and the recipes look amazing, but it's very focused on highly local fresh foods for the absolute opposite part of the country from me, so it won't make sense to buy it.  It's clearly well-written and thoughtful and creative, and beautiful on top of that.  I would never give this book a one-star review even though there's not much from it that I could reasonably make.  But someone else already has.  Go figure.

Just found a one star UK review of Madhur Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking - a single star for having an accurate title?

Expected it to be Indian cooking but it's general eastern cooking

I try to make use of the "helpful" button to make sure the "real" reviews make it to the top of the list. But I do understand that some people view the review as overall service, not just the book itself. It isn't fair to a great book (that had a shipping delay, or damage, for example) but I can see how it happens. 

Wow.  Someone really wasn't paying attention!  :)

I love this topic! I've taken to regarding any "crowd-sourced" reviews of a product or service as entertainment/comedy ... There are the comments on recipes that start off with "I substituted 8 of the 10 ingredients in the recipe and used a different pan and boiled it instead of baking it, and it turned out terrible. 0 stars. Will not make again." Really? You didn't make the actually recipe, so why comment?

Thankfully, I find that usually the comments on EYB are useful. This week, I made the peanut brownies from The Cardamom Trail (Chetna Makan) and the previous commenter noted that the baking time was off. I know this can happen because of using a different pan size or a differently (or un-) calibrated oven, so I kept an eye on the brownies as they got to the time specified in the recipe. Sure enough, using the same size of pan and same temperature, the commenter was correct about the baking time, to the minute! Thank you @anya_sf! I commented too, and added the measurements for my substitution for self-raising flour. This is a British book, and I thought others might benefit from not having to look up the conversion. 

EYB is a great community, and I encourage members to make constructive comments on recipes!

I rarely bother to post reviews on Amazon but I have been agonizing over giving one star to Tom Kerridge's Hand and Flowers Cook book. This is a brilliant book and I am amazed he would want to put his superb recipes out there for all aspiring young chefs to pillage!

So why only one star? I rate by usefulness to me - a bumbling man in the kitchen with no cookery training. I don't have his chef's equipment, the team of chefs, the professional ingredients  - I wouldn't know meat glue from wallpaper paste, There is hardly a single recipe that I could tackle and I think most domestic cooks would feel the same. MInd you, I'd love to eat there (with an alibi?)

Come on, he kept it simple "pine needles" not "Scots pine needles" or "Corsican pine needles" or "lodgepole pine needles"  ... nor did he confuse the issue by including fir, spruce, and hemlock as "pine" (see 20 Types Of Pine Trees Grown In The UK | Horticulture.co.uk). I don't subtract stars for this kind of cookbook ... I just call them readers' editions.

Sea and Smoke: Flavors from the Untamed Pacific Northwest | Eat Your Books is a similar book but living in the PNW I have a better chance of accomplishing a recipe. It received reviews such as "As a professional this book still isn't that applicable. The ingredients stem from a microclimate therefore can't really be recreated. Great as a coffee table book, less so as a functional piece of work."

Any books I've ordered from Amazon lately are poorly packaged and arrive with some damage. I'm back to local bookstores. The reviews on Amazon are mostly untrustworthy either because the reviewer is getting paid or just not qualified or biased. A few years ago, I started getting emails thanking me for my reviews of certain products on Amazon. When I looked, there were all these reviews using my name but nothing I had ever written. Amazon said someone had gotten my info and written these reviews probably for monetary compensation. My Amazon account had to be changed and now has two step verification. I appreciate Eat Your Books and use what other cooks say about a book and its recipes before buying a new cookbook. It's saved me from impulse buying!

I am wary of cookbooks with tons of five star reviews and a rating of 4.7 or higher.  Those reviews were almost always written by the fandom of the social media star author.

I did give a bad review once to a cookbook whose recipes always hinged on one impossible ingredient.  Celery vinegar, anyone?  

I usually go straight to the three star reviews and look for those reviewers who have actually cooked several recipes.  

Now I'm curious @Churchim808 ... what cookbook or cuisine calls for that much celery vinegar?

I am also leery of all the 5 star reviews.  I usuallly read reviews in The Guardian or other bigger newspapers with food sections, some magazines, and I was following tons of food blogs and used to get great recommendations from them.  Unfortunately I had them all saved in Bloglovin and that site shut down with no warning so I didn't get to export a list of all the food (and other) blogs I followed.  :(  Lots of people were left in the lurch with their shut down.  

Modern life has taught me not to trust anything that involves money. Earlier this year it turns out that a major UK bookseller was being paid by publishers to insert books into 'Best Seller' lists REGARDLESS of actual sales. A book at #1 would get a sales boast. I'm sure there are a lot of murky dealings going on behind closed doors. 

I buy from a shop where I can see the book, flick through it and see if its something I want to own. The only books I buy without physically seeing are those recommended by trusted friends.