How reviews work

Everyone who buys a book. About 8 days after the book arrives, we send one email with a private link to review it, and at most one reminder 7 days later. Then we stop.

We don’t ask first whether you were happy, and we don’t ask only the families we think liked it.

You don’t have to wait for the email: on the book’s page, “Write a review” sends the same private link to the email you ordered with. Only families who ordered can review, so every review is tied to a real order.

Every review that follows the rules below, whatever its star rating, exactly as written. We don’t edit the words, fix the spelling or shorten it.

A person reads each review before it goes up, usually within two business days, to check it against these rules and nothing else. Reviews show newest first, and every star rating is one click away.

We show an average once a book has 5 reviews. Below that, the reviews are listed on their own.

These rules apply to every review in the same way, whether it gives one star or five. We leave out a review, or the part of it that breaks a rule, if it:

• shows anyone’s face, or another person’s personal details, such as a child’s full name, a school or an address
• is abusive, harassing, discriminatory, obscene or sexually explicit
• is about something other than our books or our service
• is clearly false, or we have good reason to believe it’s fake
• contains someone else’s private or confidential information

If we leave out part of a review, we publish the rest and tell you what we removed and why.

You can add a photo of your book. Please show the book, not faces. We never publish a photo that shows anyone’s face, including a child’s. If yours does, we publish your review without the photo and delete the photo.

Photos are seen only by us until they’re checked. A photo we don’t publish is deleted.

We never pay for reviews, offer discounts or gifts for them, or write them ourselves. Nobody, and no AI, writes reviews for us. Nothing you get from us depends on whether you leave a review or what it says.

If something went wrong with your book, our promise applies whether or not you review it.

Verified buyer: the review came through the link sent for a real paid order.

Bought as a gift: the reviewer gave the book to someone else’s child.

Free book: the family didn’t pay, for example an early tester. We label these every time.

Anyone who works with us, or is a friend or relative of the team, is either left out or labelled.

We may reply to a review in public, especially a critical one, so the next family can see what we did about it. We never reply with anything that identifies you beyond the name you chose.

Write to hello@tallytells.com from the email you ordered with, and we’ll take your review or photo down. We don’t change the words of a published review for anyone, including you, but you can replace it with a new one.