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In today's era of Goodreads and Letterboxd, authors and filmmakers have greater access than ever to the opinions of people who experience their work. And while some creators have sworn off ever gauging responses to their work online, Victoria Aveyard isn't one of them. 

At BookCon 2026's Heroines of Romantasy panel with her fellow authors Rachel Gillig, Scarlett St. Clair, and Carissa Broadbent, Victoria Aveyard revealed that she reads reviews of her own books on Goodreads, and has been for a while. And she's not the only member of her family who engages with online discourse about her work. 

"[How do you know if people like your books] if you're not reading Goodreads?" joked Aveyard. "I did have to lecture my parents about not responding to Goodreads reviews. Because I was 24 when the Red Queen was published, and my dad was ready to figure out how to leave a comment. And I was like, 'No, no, no, no, sir, please don't do that, you will get me in so much trouble,'" Aveyard said. 

I find it incredibly sweet that Aveyard's parents, at least at the start of her career, lurked on her Goodreads reviews. And who knows, they could be lurking there still today. For total transparency, I don't mean "lurk" in any negative sense; I mean it in the slang meaning for reading through forum posts or other content online without commenting. We've all done it at one point or another. 

Watch the full Heroines of Romantasy panel from BookCon 2026 here:

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