Unfortunate But Necessary Disclaimer: This site has nothing to do with Mitt Romney’s book. *barf*
(Free advice: Before purchasing a domain name, always google it first.)
Today is October 8, 2024, and this About page needs a refresh.
This summer I changed the layout of this blog to focus on my book reviews and Elise’s interviews. My very (very) old fanfiction and Star Wars content is still live and can be found at these links: HP and SW fanfiction, random SW thoughts. But with the HP fanfics being almost two decades old (jesus) and my interest in Star Wars having reverted to absolute zero, and with those pages receiving little to no traffic anymore, there wasn’t much reason to feature them. So if you’re looking for those, they’re not gone, they’re just harder to find.
If you’re new here and wondering WTF, allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Danielle Stockdale, and my greatest, most beloved hobby is reading and reviewing books. You can find a list of my book reviews here. Alternatively, you can visit my Read shelf on Goodreads, which I keep up to date. What’s the difference? My Goodreads shelf includes books I read but didn’t review.
I also receive author interviews from my friend Elise Cooper and publish them here for her. There’s a new one every weekend. You can find a list of them here.
That’s the TLDR. If you’re interested in learning more about me and this blog, read on.
Why the name No Apology Book Reviews?
It’s a reminder to myself that I have a right to state my opinion without being afraid of upsetting overly-sensitive ninnies or incurring the wrath of trolls. The purpose of this blog is to be a place where I can feel at home and be comfortable stating my opinions. That doesn’t mean I intend to hate on, put down, or call out anyone or anything; I simply want this to be a tiny corner of the internet where I, and anyone who visits, can feel safe. No comment goes live without my approval. I pay for this site, I control it.
Are you one of those assholes who includes spoilers in your reviews?
Yep! Less so in recent years, but if there’s an element of the story I or my commenters want to talk about, then we will. I do try to be courteous with advance spoiler warnings. If you don’t heed them, that’s not my problem.
What’s Keen Eye Editing?
My freelance fiction editing business. It needs a brand revamp that I haven’t gotten around to, but in short I specialize in performing manuscript critiques for fiction writers. I’m actively seeking clients, so if you’re a writer looking for a professional to analyze essential storytelling elements, such as theme, plot, character, pace, and style, you can learn more at www.keeneyeediting.com.
I’m dying to know how this blog came into existence. Tell me every detail.
Said no one ever. But Imma tell you anyway. 😉
I love books. I love reading, I love reviewing, and I love editing. I love writing, too, and my dream is to be a bestselling author, but I’ve yet to make that a reality. Possibly due to the terrible ADHD I recently learned I’ve had all my life, but that’s a whole other thing.
I’ve loved to read as far back as I can remember. My mom used to read to me when she tucked me in at night, and it became an addiction. When I was old enough to read on my own, I’d turn my lamp back on and keep reading after she’d marked the page and gone.
When I was fourteen, I was with my mother on a shopping trip and got bored, so I trekked a couple blocks down to the public library to have a look-see. I found A Night of Gaiety by Barbara Cartland, who I now know is a romance author of legend. I read it, and though I didn’t understand most of it, I fell in love with the love story and became a romance junkie.
I believe I got into Harry Potter that summer as well, which marked the beginning of my writing and editing.
I quickly discovered—three guesses who—Nora Roberts, another romance author of legend, and my OCD tendencies and natural compulsion to collect (don’t get me started on Pokémon) pushed my addiction to become an obsession.
Today, I have dozens of lists compiled in Word and Excel documents to keep track of my favorite authors and their prolific careers. I have a short(ish) list of favorite authors whose latest work I have to read as soon as it’s released, come hell or high water, and the rest I obtain to read and collect as I can afford them. I filled my old bedroom with boxes of books, lined the walls with shelves stacked two deep. It is now called my library. Why do I keep them? If you can ask that, you’ll never understand.
I don’t think I’m a romance junkie anymore. My tastes have evolved and now span a wide variety of genres—young adult, mystery, horror, thriller, historical fiction, fantasy. However, I still love a love story, and I’ll like any story more if there’s romance in it. So I suppose I’ll always be a romance junkie at heart.
That’s nice. But why the blog?
Well, no one I know really gets into books like I do. Sure, a few of my family and friends enjoy reading and will pick up a book now and again, but none of them want to sit down and have a long conversation about character arcs or plot threads. So when a heartbreaking scene sends tears trailing down my cheeks, or when I’ve hurled a book across the room because it makes no goddamn sense, no one understands why I’m so upset (insert infuriating it’s-just-a-book comment here). It was lonely.
In Spring 2015, I was so frustrated with a certain book that I thought I would burst. I had to talk about it. I got on Amazon and spent an afternoon ranting . . . and felt a lot better. That summer, I wrote more and more reviews. Some were voted helpful, some were criticized, but whether anyone paid attention to my reviews or not, I couldn’t help myself from spewing my opinions. It’s an outlet.
Then one day when I was checking out reviews for a book I was interested in, I saw reviews left by people who had been sent advanced reader copies (ARCs).
They got to read books before they were released?! How did one earn such a privilege?!
The easiest solution was to start a blog (but here’s a longer answer if you’re interested). And here I am.
Wait, what was that about Star Wars earlier?
Move over Taylor Swift, I’ve gone through my own eras. (Yes, that joke is a year too late. Bite me.)
When I first started this site in Summer 2016, it was for reviews alone. Then I remembered my old Harry Potter fanfiction, which I still receive positive feedback on from time to time, and I thought, Why not give my fanfiction a home here? It’s my site, I can do what I want with it. So I added that.
In Summer 2017, Elise approached me, asking if I would like to help her promote authors by posting her Q&As with them. I was thrilled! What fantastic content to add!
Then The Last Jedi came out in December 2017 and sparked one of the greatest wars in the history of pop culture: Did that film ruin Star Wars or elevate it? To my surprise, I loved that movie, and to satisfy my craving for more, I novelized parts of the film and read everything I could find on Ben Solo. The result was my Star Wars fanfiction, which spanned a good portion of 2018. My fics—which I published here, of course, because why not?—were actually very popular for a time; they got thousands of hits and many wonderful comments. It even sparked a brief penpal relationship for me. I had no interest in Star Wars before TLJ, nor have I had any interest in Star Wars since. Something about TLJ spoke to me.
Over the years of writing reviews, something nagged at me more and more. My reviews tend to be too in-depth. Sometimes it’s painfully obvious that what I truly want to do is edit. (You’ll know those reviews when you read them.) Eventually I realized how much I want to be involved in the construction of a story. Critiquing the finished product is fun, but my time and effort might be better spent in the editing stages. I did some research, took some time to polish up my skills and develop a website. I launched my freelance editing business, Keen Eye Editing, in Summer 2019.
In July 2020, NetGalley added the audiobook format to their galley selection. I’m a surprisingly slow reader, and I simply don’t have time to sit down and read many print copies, be it physical or electronic, much as I would like to. I switched to audiobooks back in 2014, I believe, because they allow me to multitask, and now they are my predominant format for book consumption. I can count the number of print copies I read a year on one hand.
NetGalley’s audiobook selection was scant for a while, but it’s ever expanding. Soon I had more books to read than I could write reviews for—this is a hobby, remember, not a job—and finally I stopped writing long reviews for every book, which had kinda been my thing to date (thus the realization that I should be in editing). That way I could request lots of ARCs and still keep up with reviewing them.
But it seemed silly to make an entire post for a review that’s only a few small paragraphs. Well, I had posted a couple “review roundups” in 2018 and 2019; why not do that instead, gather a bunch of small reviews into one big post? So in 2022 I began posting seasonal roundups regularly while also writing longer reviews like I had previously. If I had a lot to say, it was a long review. If I didn’t have many thoughts about a book, it went into a roundup.
The balance of long to short reviews has gradually shifted up to present day, where I’m writing so many short reviews that I’m posting multiple roundups per season. I posted four roundups in Summer 2024 alone! NetGalley’s selection continues to expand, and goddamn it I want to read them all, so short reviews have become my new normal. I still write a long one here and there if I have plenty to say, but long reviews just aren’t feasible. If an author wants a long, detailed review from me, they can pay me to perform a manuscript critique. 😉
That catches us up! Now excuse me, I have audiobooks to listen to.
