‘I’ve been robbed’: BookTok rallies against reviewer when increasing reports point to thieving behavior

Why does it always feel like there is constantly some sort of drama going on with BookTok? For a community that focuses on the joy of reading, you’d think it would be a pretty chill space, but it turns out that couldn’t be further from the truth.

For those unaware, BookTok is a community that exists on TikTok, consisting of book lovers who often share what they’ve been reading and offer reviews, good or bad, on the latest popular and not- so-popular books. You could argue that authors like Colleen Hoover wouldn’t be nearly as successful without the existence of such a community, even if they do trash her books from time to time.

The drama

The latest disturbance in the community revolves around influencer @Callireadsss, a popular BookToker with over 200k followers. She makes book reviews and often recommends what she’s reading — pretty much what you’d expect from a BookTok account. But recently a number of smaller creators and authors have spoken out against her, accusing her of scamming people.

One of the most damning allegations comes from Jay Michael Night, a small author who Calli reached out to with ann offer to review his books. Jay prefaces his story by saying that he has all the messages to back up his claim (which he posted in a separate video), and that he’s speaking up now as he’s seeing other creators coming out with similar stories. Calli does charge for her reviews and it’s pretty pricey, with Jay paying $600 for his review. But that’s not the issue, the issue is that she never made the videos she promised. In other words, she basically stole $600 from Jay.

Jay says he paid Calli in April, but had yet to see the videos at the end of August, when he finally posted his video calling her out. Almost five months with practically no communication on Calli’s end — it’s easy to see why Jay would be upset with her. But it doesn’t end there, as he mentioned in the video, other people have had similar experiences with Calli, so this isn’t a one off.

In fact, Calli’s scammy behavior dates back at least a year. A video from September 2023 exposed Calli for trashing a book that a follower had spent money to send her, claiming she would never read it. Obviously, this upset the author who sent in the book, but BookTok was a lot more forgiving of Calli back then, chalking it up to being just a mistake.

However, the allegations against Calli are mounting, and it seems like the troops of BookTok aren’t going to keep giving her a free pass. While her account previously had over 250k followers, it now sits at just under 230k, and the comments have been turned off. As for Jay, he’s received a ton of support from the TikTok community, with massive BookTokers like Ophelia (with 13 million followers) offering to review his book for free. So I guess there’s a silver lining for Jay after all.