Why is Goodreads deleting negative reviews of this book?

A BookToker has issued a PSA to readers after Goodreads removed her review of a “disgusting” book written about her.

In the clip, which had 875,700 views by Saturday, Hailey Hughes (@haileyannhughes) accused the website of allegedly siding with author Matt Shaw and having “no interest in listening to (her) opinion or hearing (her) side of things.”

The feud between Matt Shaw and Hailey Hughes explained

Hughes and Shaw first clashed after the author caught wind of her review of his book, A Roll Of The Dice, in December 2022. While she praised the book’s premise, in which a character makes life decisions based on dice rolls, she said the plot was thin overall. She also expressed concern about “strange sexual themes” in the book, which mention bestiality.

She said: “It felt like an 11-year-old boy had discovered he could be turned on and then just started writing a book that made no sense because he had read a few of those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books and wanted to be like that.”

In response, Shaw released Moist Gusset, a sexually explicit comedy that included a direct dedication to Hailey. “Obviously, this book was Matt’s attempt to write from a woman’s perspective by insulting a woman,” writes Distractify journalist Jennifer Tisdale. “It only gets worse.”

Currently, Moist Gusset has an average rating of 2.03 stars based on 325 Goodreads reviews. But those reviews apparently don’t tell the whole story.

@haileyannhughes, Goodreads supports Matt Shaw. All recipes in the 20-minute YouTube video are linked in my bio. #booktok #booktokfyp #bookrecs #bookreviewer #goodreads #horrortok #extremehorrorbooktok #booktokdrama #mattshawdrama ♬ Original sound – Hailz

Hughes calls on Goodreads

In her video, Hughes initially called on others to delete their Goodreads accounts because, in her opinion, the website had decided to “stand with” Shaw.

“If you don’t know who I am, I’m the unfortunate reviewer who was attacked by an author of extreme horror stories last August,” she said. “He attacked me quite viciously on the internet and dedicated a disgusting book (Moist Gusset) to me.”

She then accused Goodreads of removing not only her review of “Moist Gusset” but also “a lot” of other reviews.

“If you never read the book and only gave it one star, you shouldn’t have done that in the first place,” she said. “But if you read the book and wrote a real review, you need to contact Goodreads support and tell them that they deleted your valid review.”

“Personally, I’ve been using StoryGraph for three, three and a half years to track my reading,” she added, “so I’m fine with it. And I encourage you to open an account there too, because it’s very clear where Goodreads stands.”

Shaw tells his side of the story

In an email to the Daily Dot, Shaw denied allegations that Goodreads is siding with him in a feud he has “no interest” in. He claims he has done his best to stay out of the “drama” and that he is the one being bullied by Hughes and her followers, not the other way around.

“The book was a satirical love story, written from a woman’s point of view, by a man, and, until the hate campaign against me began, had positive reviews from people who got the joke,” he wrote. “The person the book was dedicated to decided to tell her followers that I had written torture porn about her (a lie) and was stalking her (a lie).”

He went on to say that he blocked the book YouTuber (Hughes) on all channels and mentioned that she declined his invitation to appear on his podcast to talk about “how we can make people feel safer in the community when they believe they are NOT safe. That was met with derision.”

As for Goodreads’ deletion of reviews, he claims that it has nothing to do with him personally.

“Goodreads has a policy of not allowing fake reviews, and many of the one-star reviews I received after this attack essentially said they hadn’t read the book and weren’t going to read it, but laughed at the fact that they were giving me a ‘cry-worthy one-star review,'” he wrote.

He recalled that Goodreads also removed one of his comments on the site when he invited Hughes to his podcast, explaining: “Goodreads sent me an email and told me that the site not for writers to connect with readers. The fact that I’m being blamed again is just someone stoking the fire to get more engagement and commotion.”

At the end, Shaw said: “NO you should tell other people what to write and what to read. We are all free to make our own choices. It is one thing to say you don’t like something and recommend something you did like, but it is quite another to ask people to engage with what they like. You do and disagree. Contrary to what others have said, this was never about receiving negative criticism, this was about censorship and one person telling people what they can and cannot do.”

The Daily Dot contacted Hughes via email and TikTok comment. We also contacted Goodreads via email.

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