Same exact thing happened to me with a web design shop two years ago. Six reviews, five of them posted within a 48 hour window, and every single profile was brand new with no photo and no other activity. The kicker was two of the reviews used the same weird phrase about "going above and beyond," like word for word. I walked too and found a guy who had reviews going back to 2019 with real back and forth replies from him. Good call trusting your gut on that one.

The trick that saved me was checking what the place is next to on the map, not just the reviews. A 4.8 hostel can be great and still sit on a main road where motorbikes run all night. Now I zoom in and look for side streets or anything marked like bars before I book.

Isn't this the same choice we make with everything? Cooking dinner, you can throw everything in the pot and fix the seasoning at the end, or you taste after every single step. Working out, do you blast through the whole routine and check your form later, or watch every rep in the mirror. The push through method keeps the flow going but leaves you a mountain to climb later, while the clean as you go method is slower in the moment but you're basically done when you finish. There's a real cost to switching gears every two paragraphs though, because you lose the thread of where the scene was going while your brain is in fix it mode. Maybe the answer is to pick based on what you plan to do with the piece, sharing soon means clean as you go, and just exploring means let it rip. Both work, they just trade work now for work later.