Artistic Adventures with Victoria

Today’s blog post was supposed to be something completely different. I had planned to finally share news about my next project—yes, a brand-new book! But as I was preparing the upload, I saw it.

The saddest sight an author can see:
⭐

Just one lonely star. No words. No review. Just a single, silent judgment.

To be honest, I always knew this day would come. It’s inevitable. Eventually, someone out there won’t like your book. But still… it hurt.

I couldn’t help myself. I went back to the book, wondering: What did they hate? Was it the story? The characters? Phoebe? Alexia? Was it something about the style, or maybe something cultural? Could the book be offensive in some culture? (It does have unicorns—and they can be rather unpredictable creatures.)

Driven by curiosity, I did some digging. As the author, I can see a few details, and I found out that this was a Kindle review.

So, I opened the Kindle version of the book and saw this:

Well… that explains a lot.

I would have been annoyed too—empty pages, and a random blue box at the end? Actually, there are two blue boxes: one on the third page, and one on the last. That’s all. I can only hope the person who bought it contacted Amazon and got a refund. And if you’re reading this by any chance—I am so sorry.

Of course, this is not how the book is supposed to look. In its correct form, there should be about 30 pages filled with both text and illustrations—not just a few empty screens and strange blue boxes. It’s a complete story, written and illustrated to unfold across those pages, blending narrative and visuals the way my books always try to do. I’d love to show you the thumbnail view to prove it, to walk you through what the book should look like… So for now, all I can say is: this is definitely not what readers were meant to see

So, I contacted Amazon. I now have a support ticket and am hoping they can fix this issue. It took about an hour to file the report, and I still don’t know if they’ll actually do anything. But even if they do, the damage is done: that one-star review will remain.

And here’s the hard part:
I can’t respond.
I can’t explain.
I can’t delete it.

To overcome one bad review, you often need ten good ones. That’s the kind of ratio we’re working with, and it’s not exactly on my side right now.

So… do you have any ideas?

At the very least, I hope this was the reason for the one star. Because the only other option is:
Someone really, truly hated the book.

Let’s just pretend it was the blue boxes.