J.D. Vance’s memoir is back on the bestseller list—and getting review-bombed—after Trump tapped him for VP
Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s memoir of a poor childhood in Appalachia, propelled its author to national notoriety in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory. Back then, Vance was an avowed Never Trumper, and called the former president everything from an “idiot” to “America’s Hitler” to “a moral disaster.”
Vance’s account of the poverty, abuse and addiction that surrounded his life in Middletown, Ohio was seized upon by pundits as a guidebook to understanding the plight of the white, working class voters across the rust belt who won Trump his first term in office. The New York Times called it a “sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion,” and the book became a national bestseller.
Eight years later, Hillbilly Elegy is back at the top of the charts. The difference now is that Vance is running as Trump’s vice president, and the reviews may be punishing him for it.
On Wednesday, paperback and hardcover copies of the book were ranked first and second on Amazon’s bestseller list. The 2020 film adaptation—which, unlike the book, was torched by reviewers—shot into Netflix’s top 10 most watched movies in the U.S., with viewership on Monday alone surging from 1.5 million to 19.2 million minutes, according to data from Luminate first reported in Variety.
A lot has changed since the book’s 2016 release. Vance was elected to represent Ohio in the Senate in 2022 after receiving an endorsement from Trump and financial backing from tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance’s views on the 45th president have also undergone a complete reversal. In February, the freshman senator even said that if he had been vice president during the 2020 election he would have done what Mike Pence didn’t—support Trump’s effort to invalidate the outcome of voting in crucial swing states.
And now, in a development typical of 2020s internet culture, Vance’s fans and detractors are taking out their opinions on his memoir.
There have been over 400,000 ratings of Hillbilly Elegy on Goodreads, and nearly 70% of those have been four or five stars. This week, ratings and reviews of the book have been temporarily suspended, a sign the site may be trying to prevent review-bombing of the memoir following Vance’s VP nomination.
“Rating this book is temporarily unavailable,” Goodreads’ website says. “This book has temporary limitations on submitting ratings and reviews. This may be because we’ve detected unusual behavior that doesn’t follow our review guidelines.”
Goodreads declined to speak with Fortune on the record, but recently updated reviews show readers adjusting their opinions as Vance’s political career evolved. “Just in: Vance now Trump’s running mate *facepalm*” read a two-star review updated July 15, the day Trump announced Vance as his VP pick. “The author has become reprehensible…and is helping create a culture of crisis for our democracy,” read a one-star review posted November 2022, shortly after Vance’s election.
July 15 was also the last time a new review was left for Hillbilly Elegy. There were five reviews—three positive and two negative. One person who left a one-star review simply said “wish I could unread it.”
On Amazon, which owns Goodreads, reviews of the book seem to have increased since Monday as well. One person who left a positive review said she was writing on the ecommerce platform because Goodreads had suspended activity to the site, while two five-star reviews spoke approvingly of the author’s pick as Trump’s VP.
An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Review bombing has become a persistent headache on rating platforms as readers and fans have weaponized them to inundate specific books with negative feedback, in some cases before they have even been released.
A scandal in December brought attention to the issue when a debut fantasy author under contract with Penguin Random House admitted to creating fake accounts on Goodreads to promote her upcoming book as well as sabotage several other writers.
Last summer, Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, indefinitely delayed publication of her upcoming novel set in Siberia after more than 500 reviewers on Goodreads left one-star reviews months before it was published. Gilbert said she received backlash from Ukrainian readers that she would choose to release the book in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
