I remember when I learned about the fake reviews that Amazon was inundated with 2 years ago. I also remember when Amazon assured everyone that they were doing their best to stop the flood of fake reviews so that customers can have confidence in their purchases.

But today I decided to start a free trial of kindle unlimited only to find all the top reviewed personal-finance books are terrible. Upon further inspection I found pages upon pages of mediocre to terrible books all with 90-100 percent 5 star review rates. Hundreds upon hundreds of obviously fake reviews. It's not just the personal-finance section either, its the whole damn website. Sort by average customer review and you're sure to find some of the worst books amazon has to offer.

Here's a direct quote from "Money Honey: A Simple 7-Step Guide for Getting Your Financial $hit Together" by Rachel Richards. (Which has 151 5 star reviews, by the way.)

I LOL'd at a meme I saw the other day

Here's another

TL;DR Adulting is hard, especially when it comes to money management.

Aside from the r/fellowkids worthy pandering to a culture the author clearly doesn't understand, the actual content isn't very helpful. I'll give you an example of the mind blowing wisdom Rachel has to offer. She spends a two pages suggesting you should write down your expenses, and subtract that total from your income to see how much money you're saving. When I read that, my reality shattered into a million pieces and in an instant I was filled with the eternal bliss of true enlightenment. I would have never have thought to calculate my savings had I not read this book. God bless you Rachel. God bless you.

Thank god I didn't spend any money on that book.

Anyway.. Point is: there are fake reviews. But not all of them are as obvious as in this case. Some fake reviews are lower ratings to make them seem more legit. So tread cautiously when buying a book from amazon. I have been burned in the past by buying a book I assumed to be legit because of the believable reviews. When I read it, it was immediately obvious I was duped.

/rant

TL;DR fake reviews are still everywhere on amazon, and not all of them are easy to spot.

EDIT: Removed the suggestion to use fakespot.com . A couple users have commented that it's not reliable. It's worked for me but I don't know enough about it to fully recommend it.