A day in the life of a reader who tags the author in a bad review

I write satire so I don't scream.

Denise, aka bookreviewmaven54, wakes at 7:15 and stretches her arms, refreshed. She taps her still-slumbering husband on the shoulder until he snorts and wakes.

“You were snoring all night,” she tells him, her voice still hoarse with sleep. “Just thought you should know.”

On her drive to yoga, she rolls down her window and leans hard on the horn. The passing jogger pauses, breathing hard, and ducks to look through her window: “Can I help you?”

“Thank God you stopped,” she says. “I just had to tell you—I hate your haircut.”

Denise smiles, confident that her unsolicited feedback has made the world a better place. (Photo by Teona Swift)

After an hourlong vinyasa session, Denise rolls up her mat and trots over to the instructor. “What’d you say your name was again?”

The instructor is taut and tall, with veined arms and a long braid. “It’s Sam.”

“Sam, your sequences were unimaginative and I won’t be back.” Sam’s eyes widen but Denise is already headed for the door, mat tucked under her arm.

Denise hums along with the radio as she drives to a lunch spot. There, she and a friend catch up over BLTs. Afterward, she leans back, patting her belly, then catches the waiter’s eye.

“Can you send the chef out here? I want to tell him this was revolting.”

The waiter frowns at her empty plate. “I’ll…I’ll let him know.”

“No, no—to his face.” Denise folds her hands. “I don’t mind waiting.” As he starts to retreat, she calls after him: “Or you can just give me his personal email!”

Back at home, Denise takes a moment to look up her son’s teacher’s number. She calls and introduces herself politely.

“Oh no, it’s not about Timmy,” she says serenely, chuckling at the suggestion. “I just wanted to tell you you should probably stop being a teacher. You don’t do any of it the way that I would.” She tilts her head, listening. “No, I’ve never done it. But I would. Be better at it, I mean.”

She sets down her phone right as the school bus wheezes to a stop out front, and Timmy barrels up the steps. A rolled piece of construction paper pokes from his backpack, and he begins to tell his mom about the cool project they did in art class.

“Did you make this?” she interrupts, her voice bright. She unfurls the paper as he nods shyly, then crumples it into a ball. “I need you to know something, Timmy. This is terrible. My eyes are worse for having seen it.”

Denise is going over to a neighbor’s place for dinner, so she drives to the wine store to pick up a hostess gift. Wined Up is in a strip mall next to a yarn shop, and she beelines for the door of the small knitting store.

“I just popped in to tell you I would never shop here,” she calls to the salesperson, who’s reading a book behind the counter. “Goodbye!”

In her mind, she’s already writing a scathing review. (Photo by Vlada Karpovich)

Wine procured, Denise heads to her neighbor’s. She rings the doorbell with aplomb and, when the door opens, looks around in wonder. “Thank you for having me over!” She opens her palms. “Wow, your house is hideous!”

For mysterious reasons, her friend declines to join her at the musical they got tickets for. No matter—Denise sits in the front row, rapt. After the curtain call, she follows a small crowd to the backstage door, where finally, the lead emerges.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” She elbows her way to the front and grabs the actor’s shoulder. “I have some notes for you!” He raises his eyebrows and turns away, brightening at a proffered Sharpie and playbill.

“Sir? Your performance was lackluster!” She waves her arms, unsure how he’s not hearing her. She clears her throat for a final bellow: “It’s okay, I’ll just find your Contact Me form!”

As she passes a group of construction workers, she yells to be heard over their jackhammer: “You’re doing a bad job!” Then she turns toward the parking lot and someone taps her shoulder. She clutches her purse in alarm, but when she turns, it’s a familiar figure: the jogger with the bad haircut.

“I just—I wanted to tell you you really hurt my feelings.” The woman clasps her hands nervously. “You’re quite rude.”

Denise rears back, outraged, tears gathering in her eyes. She is gobsmacked, disoriented. She straightens her spine and delivers her coup de grâce:

“How dare you insult me?!”

Denise drives home in a huff, replaying the interaction in her mind—she can’t believe this woman’s gall. Rude, she called her. But this woman doesn’t even know Denise. Who does she think she is?!

Denise manages to shunt the jogger from her mind as she changes into pajamas. In her pocket of #metime before bed, she finishes a novel. Not writing one, of course; her skills are much better suited to reviewing.

The book is in a genre she hates and on a topic she dislikes, and—you’re not going to believe this—she’s hated every word. Loathing a novel is a gleeful, almost orgasmic experience for her, as a part of her mind has been writing her scathing review from Page One.

Denise fires up her phone and takes an artful picture of the book softly lit and surrounded by flowers. She uploads it to Instagram and writes a poem caption that calls the book “garbage,” describes the writing as “painful,” and concludes that it’s “one of the worst books I’ve ever read.”

She’s about to hit post when she smacks her forehead; she almost forgot the most important part! Fingers flying, she rushes to the search bar and finds the author’s handle. There—now they’re tagged. She feels a little rush as the book review hits her feed.

As she drifts off to bed, she smiles to herself.

Perfect, she thinks. Now that author knows exactly what they did wrong.