Reviews can make or break a first novel.
False.
Brooks said that he thought a favorable review by a big-name author in the New York Times helped make his first novel a hit, but it's hard to detect the influence of reviews in other cases. Of the first novelists who never published a second, some got savaged (Reiter) while others were warmly praised (King).
Many more authors got favorable reviews than were able to sell enough books to keep their careers going. Either reviewers are easy to please, or the books were good, and more people would have liked them, if they'd only read them.
A more sensible word of wisdom is that a bad review is preferable to no review. During the period 1977-2007, it became more difficult to get reviewed, as the space devoted to book reviews in tradtional print media dwindled. The "reader review " areas of Amazon and other online booksellers are likely to become increasingly important.