scijessreads

As I get deeper into reviewing books, and posting my thoughts on them, the idea of how we rate things has come to mind more often. Especially when you see reviews online, and then read the same book, one person’s 5 star review is another’s DNF (did not finish). So much is opinion and personal feeling. While many would think that pure objectivity would come into play, that is not usually how things work out.

And for each person, how they come to a rating is also highly individual. Is it based purely on writing style? Emotion? Does every book that meets a minimum threshold get a certain amount of stars, no matter the content? Can opinion over plot override opinion on the writing as a whole? How many “problems” can come up before a rating is lowered, even if the story is great (or has great bones)?

And those aren’t even all of the questions.

In my own Goodreads profile, I have this written: “For my ratings, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ is “OMG my life is forever changed”, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ is “I love this book and it made me think/feel all the things”, ⭐️⭐️⭐️ is “a solid piece of writing, enjoyable, and worth a reread”, ⭐️⭐️ is “fine, nothing great, but also was decent and not terrible”, and ⭐️ is “WTF did I just read?! This was just not my thing.” No stars means DNF.”

Generally, most books at least fall into the ⭐️⭐️⭐️ category for me. And based on my reading of other reviews, I think my ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating is the same as many other people’s 5 star ratings. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars for me is an intangible thing. It is a book that broke me open and made me think beyond what I imagined the story to be. These books hit me on a soul level, and are a more visceral reaction than a purely logical one.

When writing a book review, I try hard to highlight the good, the details, in my text. To show that sometimes even if the stars seem low, the book is well-worth a read.

How do you rate books? Is it a gut reaction, or is it something more specific?