My favourite line on reviews ever is GK Chesterton: “Most reviews say, in effect, ‘this is a very fine plum pudding but there is no taste of salmon’.”
Dawn Powell, in response to critics liking her style but not her characters, noted they were basically saying "if they had my automobile, they'd visit THEIR folks, not mine."
Well? Where was the salmon? Idiosyncratically, I felt it needed more salmon. (Brilliant quotation)
I remember Bill Bryson talking about a book someone else wrote, a British author writing about a British incident that happened in Britain, & the American reviewer who complained that it used too many British words
'I changed every ingredient in this recipe, WHY DOESN'T IT TASTE LIKE YOU SAID IT WOULD?
I had a book review where the reader complained the story killed off Christians. They asked why I didn't kill Muslims, because, "Muslims deserve to die more than Christians". I had the review removed.
this is every "why is their passion in a romance?!!" review ever
That was pretty close to word for word in the NYT brief review of my first book. Well, not plum pudding. Or salmon. But definitely telling me that my book lost points because it wasn't the book the reviewer might have written. More than 3 decades later I'm still pissed. Really effing pissed.
As a semiprofessional film critic (see @neonmoviebunker.bsky.social), I can tell you that avoiding that temptation/trope is something against which I guard every week. I am not infallibly successful, but it is always something of which I am cognizant.