The social media platform TiKTok has been a staple of life for teens for the past several years, leaving very few areas of life untouched. One of the areas TiKTok irrevocably changes is reading. With the creation of a community of authors and book reviewers the phenomenon dubbed “Booktok” was born. This community has grown in the past few years, spreading and reaching out tendrils to other platforms like YouTube and creating distinct hashtags on the book review website GoodReads. From gorgeous prose and heartbreaking stories to scandalizing secrets and mental breakdowns, there isn’t much that hasn’t happened on BookTok.

As a result of BookTok, some authors have seen their books rocket into the spotlight practically overnight, like Leigh Bardugo, who wrote “Six of Crows”. This book focuses on a crew of thieves set out to steal a prisoner from an impenetrable prison to save the world. “Six of Crows” is a heartwarming  book, with witty characters and found family. It was even made into a TV show, in addition to Bardugo’s earlier book, “Shadow and Bone.” However, some of the books that gain fame through BookTok are not as high quality. Rebecca Yarros’s book, “Fourth Wing,” is about a girl with a physical disability overcoming the obstacles in front of her in order to become part of the dangerous job of dragon riders, while navigating rivalries and a love triangle. Yarros’s book has faced considerable criticism for its flat world building, trope-heavy plot, and unoriginal characters. But some authors go farther than writing poor books.

Cait Corrain, author of “Crown of Starlight,” whose book on GoodReads received a one star rating from 76% of reviewers, just couldn’t leave things be. Corrain created fake accounts on GoodReads that gave her book good reviews and “review bombed” other debut authors’ books with scathing comments and  one star ratings. To make matters worse, most of the debut authors targeted were people of color, and when called out, Corrain blamed the behavior on a nonexistent friend, and later,  a mental breakdown. 

Corrain’s alarming situation, along with books like “Fourth Wing,” lead to the question—does BookTok promote this problematic behavior? The short, simplistic answer would be yes. But, does it even matter if BookTok is problematic if it increases reading? It can help students find their kind of books. From the outside, the literary world can seem daunting, with thousand page fantasies or mundane-seeming realistic fiction. But there is so much more out there, and BookTok can help new people find their genre. 

“BookTok has certainly helped inspire reluctant readers or non voracious readers,” librarian Megan McKnight said. 

BookTok creates a community and new readers can find an almost endless stream of content, providing chances to find where they fit in the reading world. 

Is the dislike of BookTok books and authors even warranted? Many of the books that receive criticism are YA books, a newer category written for teens, and romance or chick-lit books, which are historically genres for women written by female authors. So, like “Fourth Wing”’s predecessor “Twilight,” is all the hate really related to the book, or are some of the bad reviews based on sexist notions of what “real literature” actually is?

“I’d rather someone be reading any book than no books,” librarian Liz Liebman said.  

While there are many reasons for disliking an author and book from bad writing to problematic decisions, it’s always necessary to take a second look and examine if adding to the dogpile is really necessary. After all, just because a book isn’t your kind of literature doesn’t mean no one will find value in it.

“Reading is for pleasure and so whatever you the reader wants to read is the correct book,” McKnight said.