How It’s Going So Far
Just here to check out the progress of our reviewers and the books. Here’s a table that shows what our scores are like currently! Keep scrolling if you want more information on SPFBO (Cassidy’s Version) though!
| Book | Cassidy | Mel | Rachel | Maria | Cailey | Deb | Bri | Dom | Sandra | Kristin |
| Tethered Spirits | ||||||||||
| The Thirteenth Hour | ||||||||||
| Scales And Sensibility | 4.6 | |||||||||
| Small Miracles | ||||||||||
| Fire Of The Forebears | ||||||||||
| The Umbral Storm | ||||||||||
| A Touch Of Light | ||||||||||
| A Song For The Void | ||||||||||
| Mysterious Ways | ||||||||||
| Miss Percy's Guide |
final scores
A Touch Of Light by Thiago Abdalla 8.2
Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater - 7.4
The Umbral Storm by Alec Hutson - 7.2
Scales And Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis - 6.8
Tethered Spirits by T.A. Hernandez - 6.7
The Thirteenth Hour by Trudie Skies - 6.7
Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide To The Care And Feeding Of British Dragons by Quenby Olsen - 5.9
Mysterious Ways by Abbie Evans - 5.7
Fire Of The Forebears by L.A Buck - 5.6
A Song For The Void by Andrew C Piazza - 5.1
spfbo (cassidy’s version) wrap up
A big thank you to everyone involved in not only this but the official spfbo comp! Without your hard work during the first round we could have never done this little unofficial comp as well.
I did find it very interesting to see how different our leaderboards looked. And we had different winners.
OUR UNOFFICIAL (OFFICIAL) SPFBO (CASSIDYS VERSION) CHAMP IS A TOUCH OF LIGHT BY THIAGO ABDALLA.
I did find it very interesting to see how different our leaderboards looked. And that we had different winners. If you want to see the official comps scoreboard click here.
Thank you to all the authors who wrote these ten incredible books! A reminder that none of these books came out in last place they actually came out at 10/300!
Reading is so subjective and you can truly see this by all of our reviews and scores, and also just the comparison of the two scoreboards. ALL of these books have an audience and that audience could be you! At the end of the day spfbo is about showing the average reader that there are some amazing indie reads out there and this year was no different. I highly encourage you to pick up a few of these and see how you’d sit on our leaderboard!
Congrats to Thiago for winning our version.
And congrats to Olivia for winning the official version.
There will be a giant wrap up video coming to my channel, where the ten of us are talking about our favourite reads this year. Till next year SPFBO. (which starts sometime in May so really only like a month)
What Is SPFBO (Cassidy’s Version) ?
In short: SPFBO is a self published fantasy blog off hosted every year by Mark Lawrence where 10 different blogs rate and review 300 self pubbed fantasy books until there is one winner!
If you want a full length explanation check out Mark Lawrence’s official spfbo blog and/or the video on my channel that gives a good run down on what it is and how it works What Is SPFBO?
SPFBO (Cassidy’s Version) Is literally SPFBO (PHASE TWO ONLY) but I just thought it would be fun to have some friends join me reading the finalists, and have us all rate them and compare our scores to the official judges scores at the end of it!
The only major difference in mine vs the OFFICIAL competition is that I created a rubric for us all to rate books by to get a score out of ten! This way you will be able to compare and contrast each reviewers score more easily!
We will be rating each book by giving these 5 things a score out of ten to then get us an average score…
Characters
Plot
World-Building
Writing
Enjoyment
And to keep us on even more of the same page there is a rubric that helps us score! Now the things in the rubric aren’t extensive, and not everything in the rubric is applicable to every book. But having a rough guideline keeps our scores more relatable to each other and all of us on roughly the same page.
Heres the rubric for you:
Characters: Do their motives make sense for them? Do they act their age? Do you feel for them / are they compelling to read about? Are they distinguishable from each other? Have their own voices? Do you understand them? Are they nuanced characters vs flat characters? How are the side characters, not just protagonists. Could you describe the characters to a friend?
Plot: Does it make sense or are there plot holes, plot conveniences? How is the pacing, done well or uneven? How is the foreshadowing? Are there hidden easter eggs throughout the story? Was it satisfying for the story itself? Was it unique? If theres plot twists, are they done well, is the plot too predictable?
World-Buidling: Does the atmosphere work? Do you feel immersed into the story? Does the magic system make sense, do you understand how it works? If there are rules do they work or do they contradict themselves, were these rules broken at any point? Can you picture the world, is there depth to it? Do timelines make sense? Unique? Interesting ? Too similiar to other things?
Writing: How is the prose, does it work for you? Are there editing issues? How are the themes and content? Does it make sense for the genre/sub-genres its in? Is there consistent word-choices and imagery, is it clear? Precise? How is the dialogue, well executed and natural, or is it a little clunky not as fluent. Is there a good ratio of dialogue to narration? Did the author leave things un-explained, were things clear, was there a lot of unneeded information?
Enjoyment: Personal to you. How much did you enjoy the book?
And here is the grading system to help give that score thats of ten:
RATING NUMBER STARS
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Who Is Involved?
I have nine friends who have some sort of online book presence joining me for this! I will link them all down below to where you can find the majority of their bookish things! I will also be updating each “Books” page whenever there is new content for that book. So if you want a place where everything is easily accessible…. and hopefully well organized …. this will be the place for you!
And thanks again to all of these people for putting in their time (and eyeballs) for this! Most of us will have some books out of our comfort zone which is something really fun about doing this but also terrifying. So thank you for doing this with me! I have been very lucky to meet you all!
Our Reviewers Are:
Mel from Mel Lenore Reads (booktuber)
Rachel from Argent Rabe (bookstagram and FBOM podcast host)
Cailey from Caileys Books (booktuber)
Dom from Dominish Books (booktuber)
Deb from dg_reads (bookstagram)
Bri from Four Paws And A Book (booktuber)
Maria from Maria Might Read That (booktuber)
Sandra from Got A Thing For Things (booktuber)
Kristin from Kristin Kraves Books (booktuber)
& of course ME! Cassidy from Covers With Cassidy (booktuber) + does creating this website now make me a book blogger too????
If you haven’t already check all of these creators out!
And also a huge shout out to the authors for taking time to write these books and to submit them into the official comp in the first place! A bunch of the authors did send us review copies to help aid SPFBO (Cassidy’s Version), which was incredibly nice of them.
But I do need to put a lil warning, that I am a strong believer in REAL reviews. If you watch my channel you might know I’m not afraid to discuss why books did or didn’t work for me! And I asked all these reviewers to be apart of this because I trust them to do the same. So if you are an author in the competition and watching/reading along with us, just remember that reviews are indeed for the readers and less about you guys! But I do hope that any love or constructive criticism will encourage you to keep doing what you do best! Not every book works for everyone, and thats okay as long as we are all respectful!
Well thanks for reading to the bottom if you did! That is all I need to say on this page (I think).