Maybe that's why reviews cause so much trouble. No, I'm not one of those writers who think that reviews are evil. Note I say writers, not people. After all, that's how they discover new books they want to buy. That's how they decide that maybe they didn't want that particular book after all.
Reviews are useful to consumers.
They're useful to writers too, of course. But all writers think about, all they remember, are the bad reviews, the ones that say negative and hurtful things. Not just formal reviews I'm not just talking about formal reviews, the ones you see in the newspaper, or magazines, or maybe a few respected web sites. I do this because those affect decisions to buy books in the same way. I recently bought a trilogy based solely on the emailed recommendation of a friend, and plenty of other people do the same thing.