I've heard authors say that while they'd rather everyone love their books, if they can evoke a strong emotion - even hate - from a reader, they feel they've done their job. With that in mind, I checked out reader reviews on The Help while I was reading it. There were more than thirty reviews saying how much they hated the book and rating it a 1. I found this interesting because its overall rating was 4.5. A LOT of people had to rate it to overcome more than thirty 1s! Over thirteen hundred rated it a 5. Thirteen hundred! There were over sixteen hundred ratings in all.
That got me curious about how many ratings other authors got. Most I looked at didn't even get into the double digits! Nora Roberts has a few that have several hundred ratings. Stephen King has one over with just over a thousand ratings.
I then checked out J.K. Rowlings (Harry Potter books) and Stephanie Meyer (Twilight books). They both have a book or two with thousands (plural) of ratings. So I was thinking maybe it's not that big of a deal that The Help pulled in over sixteen hundred ratings.
Then it dawned on me. Rowlings and Meyer are multi-published authors with big budget movies made of their books, which means they have a broader audience than most authors. The Help is Stockett's debut book. It hasn't been made into a movie and it still got more than sixteen hundred ratings.
That says something.
Anyway, I finished the book and I have to say, I would rate it up there with the more than thirteen hundred that rated it a 5. It was a great book. So well written. I've heard several of my writer friends say that it made them want to be a better writer, and having read it, I understand that comment.
And to the thirty plus people who hated it - Stockett may be pleased that she evoked such a strong reaction from you but I just have to say that you don't know good writing or good story if you don't like The Help.
I highly recommend it.
