The Good Reads Drama/Cait Corrain of it All

One Big Grift Bag

It is very possible you didn’t even know there was Good Reads drama. And honestly, good for you. I didn’t either, but I got a tip from a trusted advisor and simply had to dive in.

For the uninitiated, Good Reads is a platform to track the books you’ve read, as well as review them. It is, in a sense, a democratized way of sharing books, as it really gives fellow readers insight and recommendations from people who don’t write for major publications.

Good Reads is also the wild west. The reviews aren’t vetted. Anybody can make an account and post anything. This can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. You probably know where this is going. The current drama is about one of the times that Good Reads’ laissez faire approach to book reviews was a Bad Thing.

Since about February 2023, several 2024 anticipated releases—many of which were written by BIPOC authors—have been receiving mysterious troll-y reviews. And one book with similar subject material and a 2024 release date has been receiving positive reviews written and liked by the same troll accounts.

The only good book according to these troll accounts was Cait Corrain’s debut novel, mythology turned space romance novel Crown of Starlight. People have been putting those pieces together for some time now.

This all came to a head earlier in December when authors who were affected by the review bombs started speaking out. Author and online personality Xiran Jay Zhao subtweeted Corrain and very succinctly pointed out that all of the review bombers were the same people rating Corrain’s novel highly.

When confronted with the seemingly damning evidence, Cait Corrain produced screenshots conversations with a friend named Lilly. Her counterargument was that her friend had done all of this without her knowledge. Just meticulously review bombing Cait Corrain’s debut cohort for months all in the interest of helping out a friend perform better.

You can read some of the conversation below:

And then there’s a blank space in screenshots I have. Then the kicker.

The conversation displays an indignant and horrified Cait Corrain confronting her friend Lilly about the review bombing (and fake good reviews for Crown of Starlight) and Lilly acting as if it was done in an effort to make Corrain feel better because she was worried about her book’s future performance.

People rejected Corrain’s “evidence” immediately. Too convenient. Too inconsistent with the events of what happened (Lilly admitted to doing this all “the other night,” when the activity had been going on since February). Too poorly constructed (bad photoshop jobs w/ timestamps that are whack). And also…Lilly’s profile pic in the conversation was a meme-y Kirby??? Not that it matters, just that people are fucking weird.

Corrain also revealed that Lilly was a Reylo—a fan who ships Kylo Ren and Rey from Star Wars. These fans are rabid and Corrain very clearly wanted to pin Lillyas a deranged fangirl. And that’s easy enough. The fan community is known to be…intense.

Why would Reylo be involved in the first place? Well…Lilly added Corrain’s book to a bunch of user-generated lists of Reylo related books on Good Reads, presumably to get the Reylos to read it and (hopefully) boost Crown of Starlight’s ratings.

To (mis)quote Baudi Moovan in the eponymously named Netflix docuseries, “don’t fuck with Reylos.” They came out of the woodwork to show that Corrain’s evidence of Lilly was doctored, that there was no evidence of a Reylo Lilly existing before, and that it was all a bunch of hooey. (Obviously if there was a Reylo Lilly w. a Kirby avatar, they Reylos would’ve known her.)

The Reylo evidence, along with what Zhao compiled independently had all but proven that Corrain had committed some form of Good Reads fraud. Corrain went private, which seemed to truly put the nail in the coffin.

Corrain’s book agent has since dropped her and her book has been pulled from the 2024 publication cycle for Daphne Press, Corrain’s UK publisher.

And, most recently (December 12th), Corrain acknowledged that she had fabricated Lilly. She was the sole person behind the good and bad fake reviews. She stated that she was under the influence and mentally unstable when she did it, but that she takes full responsibility for what happened.

Crown of Starlight has now been the subject of its own review bombings. While these vigilante reviews similarly have nothing to do with the actual content of the book, they further highlight the fundamental problem of the premise with Good Reads. Anybody can write anything about any book.

It is beautiful and scary to have at our fingertips everyone’s thoughts on everything. To be able to see what any old person has to say, to be able to engage with the minds of people we would never otherwise meet. That we can sift through real and fake reviews for any product or service and come up with an overarching consensus before shelling out for anything as inexpensive as a makeup palette or as monumental as a deposit for college is amazing. This IS the internet. This is its power and glory. And yet, none of it exists without bad faith actors.

This particular set of Good Reads drama will amount to very little in the end. The fake reviews may be removed, though that remains to be seen. But the authors who were affected have garnered good will from the bookish community just for being victims. It is my sincerest hope that they will be fine in the end. Crown of Starlight will not be a hit if it’s published. It probably wasn’t going to be a hit anyway. Corrain’s career will probably not be over, over. Caroline Calloway and George Santos have both been on Ziwe and parodied all over the internet. Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey had whole shows made about them. Whatever level of scamming and deceit you engage in is irrelevant. You can make something out of it.

Maybe this is the end for Corrain or maybe she’ll make something out of it. I’ll be watching.