The Book Wench

The first time I started doing book reviews was in high school in the early 2000’s. I had my very own Myspace meant only for book reviews called Read Rave Review (sound familiar?). I got a little bit of traffic, not a lot, but enough to garner some attention from actual publishing companies wanting to send me books to review. I even spoke with a couple authors themselves. I stopped just before graduating because I had plans to go to college and I knew that I wouldn’t have time to read for fun, let alone keep up with an entire blog/site.

I missed reviewing while I was in college but, as I predicted, I never had time for it. I was able to read some but not as often as I would have liked and I barely had time to finish books and think over them; there was no way I could muster up the time to review books or maintain a blog/site. I was going to classes full time, working full time, and still trying to maintain a friend group (I ended up failing at that as well, but that’s another story). Blogging would have to wait until after I graduated.

Fast forward a few years. In late 2013 I graduated and in 2014 I moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina to live with my military then-boyfriend, now husband. I got a job pretty quickly there as a waitress and was able to read a lot more. But for some reason I didn’t hop right back into blogging. I say “for some reason” but the truth is school burned me out on reading and writing about what I read a lot. But I did eventually fall back into both.

In 2016 I decided it was finally time to get back to blogging. I missed it and I didn’t have a lot of friends in North Carolina with whom I could talk about books (not until an old college friend of mine moved to Fayetteville with her husband – said friend eventually would become The Page Maiden and help me with my blogging until I shut it down in late 2017).

Once I got back into the thick of blogging I loved it. The Book Wench blog was what I wanted it to be and more. I loved the reading (of course), the writing, the authors, and just having access to a massive bookish community. I had business cards, my own domain, Indie authors asking for reviews or blog tours. It was great…until it wasn’t.

My husband deployed in 2017 and my anxiety, which had always been around, skyrocketed. Blogging started to become a job…and not a job I was happy to have. The requests were outweighing my output, writing became a chore, people became pushy, and it ended up blowing up in my face. I had one author email three days in a row asking for his review…for the book he had only just sent me five days prior. I had explained that I was working on other reviews and would get to his in time, to which he agreed…and then unagreed, I guess. I finally told him that I could no longer review his books if he was going to push me to skip my other authors when I had expressly explained my process and where I was at in said process and he called me a bitch. You win some and you lose some.

But this exchange changed everything. I shut down my requests and I quit writing, and reading, for several months. After a couple of attempts to get back into the groove I gave up altogether.

For nine years I would not write another review on a blog or website other than Goodreads.

I missed it terribly, but I would think of the stress and guilt and give up on the idea, over and over again.

And then I got sick. Seven years after quitting the blog, I got very sick and developed a serious chronic condition: gallstone-induced pancreatitis. Without going into the grisly details, I very well could have died and now I will live with pancreatitis flares for the rest of my life. Pancreatitis has made life so difficult. It has made school (I started my Masters in 2021) so difficult. It has made working nearly impossible for me. Until recently.

In January (of this year, 2026) I had a hospital scare and have been on a super severe diet ever since. That has helped with the management of my flares (more or less, I am currently in the middle of one but I digress). It has made them more manageable and less likely for me to end up in the hospital….usually.

I hope to eventually be able to return to work once I graduate in May (Just 3 more weeks!) but I know that doing most physical jobs will be next to impossible as any moderate to severe physical engagement of my abdomen results in terrible pain.

But I can blog.

I missed it so much and toyed with the idea of coming back to The Book Wench so many times but I never did. Until March, when I decided that I wasn’t going to run anymore and that I would blog on my own terms.

This will probably always remain a hobby – as in I won’t likely ever be able to monetize the blog – but that is okay. I enjoy it all the same.

The problem is…I seem to have come back to it too late.

Book blogging is not as big as it used to be. Now, Tiktok and Instagram are the main places to go for book recs. And ya girl is not putting her face out there like that. Plus I’m not good at video edits.

I know I need to up my Search Engine Optimization and all that but still, I wonder if it’s worth it. Will my (proverbial) voice be heard by others? Will they care what I have to say about books?

I won’t lie: I have asked myself a few times whether this is all worth it. I think it is. I really do. But I AM nervous that it will all lead to nowhere just the same.

Has anyone else had any success with their book blog in the mid 2020’s? What kinds of stuff would you like to see on The Book Wench going forward? What would engage you?