Privacy
Privacy Policy
The short version: this site loads no analytics unless you accept them, it has no accounts or logins, and the only personal information it ever asks for is an email address, which is optional and only if you want the newsletter.
Analytics, and why nothing runs by default
Most sites load their tracking before asking. This one does not. Until you choose Accept, no analytics script is requested at all, which is a stricter rule than anywhere in the United States requires and is applied to every visitor rather than only to the ones the law protects.
If you accept, two things load: Google Analytics, to count which reviews get read, and Microsoft Clarity, which records how pages are scrolled and clicked so layout problems are visible. Both are third parties with their own privacy policies, and both receive your IP address once loaded.
If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, that is treated as a decision and you are not asked at all. Nothing loads, whatever you may have chosen before.
One honest limit. Declining stops analytics loading from that point on and on every later visit. It cannot un-send something already sent on a page where you had previously accepted, and no site that tells you otherwise is being straight with you.
Your privacy choices
You can see what you chose and change it at any time, from any page, using the link in the footer.
The newsletter
The footer form asks for an email address, and optionally a first name so the email can open with something better than nothing. The name is genuinely optional: leave it blank and the form still works. Both are submitted to Netlify Forms, which hosts this site, and are then passed to Brevo, which is the service the newsletter is actually sent from. Those two are the only companies that receive it. It is not sold and it is not passed to anyone else. There is no third-party marketing script on the form itself, which is why signing up works whether or not you accepted analytics.
Signing up does not subscribe you. Brevo sends a confirmation email first, and nothing else is sent unless you click the link in it. If you never click, you never hear from the newsletter again, and the address sits unconfirmed. That extra step is deliberate: it means nobody can put your address on this list except you.
Every issue carries an unsubscribe link that works immediately. Unsubscribing stops the email; asking for deletion removes the address altogether. They are different things and you can have either.
The contact form
The contact page sends whatever you write to a mailbox, along with a name and an email address if you chose to give them. Only the message itself is required, because reporting a broken link or an accessibility problem should not cost you your identity.
It goes through Netlify Forms in the same way, it is used to answer you and to fix what you reported, and it is not added to the newsletter. Both forms carry a hidden field that only automated spam fills in; if you are a person you will never see it, and nothing you type goes anywhere near it.
Book covers come from somewhere else
Cover images are served by Open Library rather than copied onto this site, so loading a review page asks their servers for the image and they see your IP address as a result. This happens on every page that shows a cover, and it happens whatever you chose about analytics, because it is how the page is drawn rather than something watching you.
Affiliate links
Some links here are affiliate links, and buying through one earns this site a commission at no extra cost to you. They are marked wherever they appear, with the disclosure above the links rather than below them. The full affiliate disclosure explains what is and is not influenced by that.
Following one takes you to the retailer, who then applies their own cookies and their own privacy policy. That is their relationship with you, not this site’s, and it begins at the click.
What is not here
No accounts, no logins, no passwords. No comment system. No advertising network, no retargeting pixel, no social tracking script. Nothing is sold or shared for advertising, and there is no profiling.
What the site stores on your device
Two small values in your browser’s local storage, neither of which identifies you and neither of which is sent anywhere: your light or dark theme preference, and your analytics choice. Clearing your browser data removes both, and the site returns to asking.
If you are reading this in the UK or the European Union
This site is run from the United States, and a good deal of it is read from Britain and Ireland. UK GDPR and the EU GDPR give you specific rights over information about you, and they apply to this site because of where you are, not where it is. Nothing in this section is a separate policy for European readers. It is the same handling described above, said in the terms those laws use.
Who is responsible for it
The controller, which is the legal term for whoever decides what happens to your information, is Cal Hewitt, at 11807 Westheimer Road, Suite 550, PMB 835, Houston, Texas 77077, United States. The quickest way to reach a person is the contact page; the postal address is here because these laws expect a real one rather than a form.
What the legal basis is for each thing
- The newsletter: your consent. Given by clicking the link in the confirmation email, not by typing your address into the box. You can withdraw it at any time with the unsubscribe link, and withdrawing is as easy as giving it was.
- Analytics: your consent. Nothing loads until you accept, and the footer link changes your mind whenever you like.
- The contact form: to reply to you. You wrote to this site asking for an answer, and answering is what the message is used for.
- The hidden spam field: a legitimate interest in the forms not filling up with junk. A person never sees it and never fills it in.
Who else processes it
Netlify hosts the site and receives both forms. Brevo sends the newsletter. Google and Microsoft receive analytics data, but only from visitors who accepted. Open Library serves the cover images. Each is a separate company with its own policy, and each is named here because a list of categories of recipients tells you nothing useful.
Your information may be processed outside the country you are reading from, including in the United States.
How long it is kept
A newsletter address is kept until you unsubscribe or ask for it to be deleted. A contact message is kept for as long as it takes to answer you and to fix whatever you reported, and correction reports are sometimes kept longer, because knowing that a fact on a page was once wrong is part of keeping the page honest. There is no account, so there is nothing else accumulating.
Your rights, and how to use them
You can ask for a copy of what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, ask for its use to be restricted, ask for it in a portable form, object to it being used, and withdraw any consent you have given. Use the contact page and say which. You do not have to explain why, and asking will never cost you anything.
Realistically, for almost everybody the entire answer is one email address on a newsletter list, and deleting it takes a moment.
Nothing here makes automated decisions about you and nothing here builds a profile of you. There is no advertising network on this site, and your information is not sold, which is true in every jurisdiction and not only where it is required.
If you think this has been handled badly
Tell this site first, through the contact page, because most problems are a mistake somebody can fix quickly. You also have the right to complain to a regulator without asking here at all. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner’s Office. In the EU it is the data protection authority for the country you live in; in Ireland that is the Data Protection Commission.
Children
This is a book review site for adults. It is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes, and how to reach a person
If this changes, the change is made here, and anything that affects what loads on your device resets the consent choice rather than quietly inheriting the old one.
Questions, corrections, or a request to delete an email address: get in touch.