Book Review Ratings

As a book blogger, I have a rating system for my reviews. Most book bloggers do. Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble and other websites do as well. The problem with these ratings systems is that they’re all a little different from one another. This makes it hard to really understand what each rating means.

I wanted to provide a little more insight into what my ratings mean here on my blog.

1/5 = I couldn’t even finish it.
This is a rating that you won’t see often, if at all. I tend to just not bother writing a review if I don’t finish a book. But I leave this in my ratings list to bring more context to the other ratings. If a book does get 1/5, it means I did not finish it. I couldn’t get through it and had to give up.
 
2/5 = I didn’t like it.
A rating of 2/5 means I did actually finish the book, but struggled through it. In the end, I really didn’t like it. It didn’t hold my interest, or there were issues with the writing style, or I didn’t like the characters at all. There could be a range of reasons why I didn’t end up liking the book. You won’t see this rating very often for books I’m given for review, because if I am struggling this much, I’ll put it aside. Usually it’s a book club book, which I am determined to finish even if I’m not enjoying it!

3/5 = It’s a good book.
When I give a book a 3/5, that means that there were some redeeming qualities to it, and I did enjoy several aspects, it just wasn’t great. A 3/5 does not mean that I didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend it. Actually, I would probably recommend it to certain people depending on their tastes. Sometimes a book gets a 3/5 because of things that others might enjoy more than I do, like too many love scenes or too much fantasy. This is a book that’s okay but it won’t stay with me for the long term.

4/5=It’s a great book!
This is one of the best ratings I could give a book. I reserve 4/5 for books that I really enjoyed reading from beginning to end. I liked the characters, the writing style, the flow of the story. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the genre in which it falls. It may have one or two aspects that I didn’t like, maybe it was confusing at points or there’s just a little too much gore.

5/5=It’s one of my favorites!
I only have a few 5/5 each year. This rating is held for my favorites. Not only do I think it’s a great book, but I absolutely loved reading it. I loved the characters and the storyline and the writing style and everything else about the book. I won’t say that I’d read it again, because I don’t reread books. But I would recommend this to most of my friends, as long as they like the genre.

Now that I’ve written these out, I realize that I’ve been rating books a bit higher than intended recently. I have rated a few books at 5/5 this year even though I wouldn’t say they truly are favorites. I think they would fit more within the 4/5 rating. That’s an interesting discovery that I will try to rectify as I continue into 2015.