Sep 06, 2012 04:09 PM EDT
'Where We Belong' Author Emily Giffin, Husband, Attack Book Reviewers

Centering on a young, hot-shot professional female who can't find satisfaction in her personal life because she's living a lie, Emily Giffin's latest novel, "Where We Belong," has garnered mostly positive reviews as predictable, but satisfying comfort food. Giffin has been happy with the reception. At least she was until one Amazon review left a bad taste in her mouth.

A few weeks ago, "Where We Belong," got the following one-star Amazon.com review:

Giffin's husband, who later identified himself as such, wrote, "Really? An 'avid reader' that has written one review in their entire existence on amazon. Beware people. Psycho alert." His original comment has since been deleted from Amazon but is available on several blogs

And so the Internet firestorm began. People attacked Giffin and her husband. People responded by supporting them. People then supported the reviewer. And then people attacked the reviewer. That one-star review still remains up on Amazon.com, with 60-and counting comments of its own.

A blogger and professional wedding photographer who writes as Corey Ann -- and reviews under the name Corey A. Doyle -- then got involved. As she wrote on August 23, in a post titled "2 Authors Behaving Badly: How I Pissed Off Legions of Emily Giffin Fans," she'd recently read "Where We Belong." She got the book for free as part of the Amazon Vine program, with which she says she's done some 200 reviews. In an interview with The Atlantic Wire she said, "There were a few things I didn't like, but I didn't hate it. Before this I actually liked Emily."

She posted a 4-star review of the novel on the site, but upon noticing that the one-star reviewer was getting "torn apart," she changed her review to a far more negative one.

 "It was a good beach fluffy read but the ending somewhat annoyed me. Then Emily ruined the book - and her novels - forever for me by acting out online." That's when, she says, "Emily pops up on Facebook, talking about I changed the review from 5 to 1 star-it was never 5-star-and people are going crazy. It kind of spiraled from there."

Corey Ann has posted many of Giffin's online responses (Click here to see screen shots of the author's response) which have since been deleted from Giffin's Facebook page, along with Amazon and other comments. Other bloggers also picked up the story, most of them siding with Corey Ann, though Giffin certainly had her supporters, too. "I got three phone calls, all unknown," says Corey Ann- one a hang up, one a call to tell her to take down the review, and one, she says, an suggestion to commit suicide because she must be so miserable.

All the controversy and anger died down eventually, but not until Amazon removed Corey Ann's review. She says, "I guess from Amazon's side, they didn't want it to get uglier. I get what people are saying. I'm not allowed to review what the author did, I'm only allowed to review the book. I shouldn't have changed it. I should have just put an addendum." She wrote an email explaining what had happened to the retailer but says she hasn't heard back

"Once Emily heard how awful people were getting, I expected her to be like, you guys, this is crazy, but to see her say I must enjoy the attention and if I didn't I wouldn't leave my review up.... She was saying 'we apologized.' but she never apologized."

Giffin responded to request for comment with the following statement, via her publicist:

"Although I have never willfully hurt another through social media, I understand the impact of my posts last week and apologize to any and all who were affected by them. I will continue to strive for open, honest dialogue with my readers, but will be more mindful of my words in the future."

"It's sad. I have all these people commenting saying I'm ruining [Giffin's] life. But you should be able to review the way you're going to review."

According to US Magazine, Giffin was formerly the men's basketball manager at Wake Forest University during the Tim Duncan era. Giffin is also the author of "Something Borrowed," which was adapted into a film in 2011, and "Something Blue."

Should authors interact with negative reviewers on the Internet? Should they read the reviews at all? What do you think?

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