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What does my personal rating means?

What does my personal rating means?

The idea came to me after reading Haley’s post “Crap Critiquing Skills“; However, it’s also the conversation “The bloggers in the attic’s” by Camilla are conversing this month aswell! Though their discussion is more toward the rating in general, while this will be only what my stars means and a bit more about my reviews — but feel free to head onto Camilla’s link if you’d be interrested onto reading more about that topic!

Sophie @ Beware of the reader also did quite the interresting post earlier this month, regarding IF we shall give books 5stars, and if so, what our 5stars standards are.

 

**Note that the very “shortened” version of what my personal rating is can be found on my Review Guide & Policy page on the blog at any given time** 

First, the stars?

As you could’ve had seen, i’m still using the rating on 5 stars. And yes, the different kind of books all follow the same process and thus, the same “format” — meaning my stars always means the same thing regardless of it it’s a contemporary romance VS a poetry book for exemple.

However! Because one book is “lower” in stars, it does not mean that I enjoyed it less; or going the opposite way, a five star do not mean that it was a steady enjoying ride or that some things in it wasn’t problematic. As my review posts gets updated with the more time i’ve been blogging, so do my stars; it relatively stays the same.. but some details may be added or moved depending on my way of thinking.

 

Okay.. but what do they means..?

The stars are not in any way related to how good or badly written the work was; because let’s face it.. I cannot identify what is considered “good” or “bad”, and specially if we are speaking anything in english.

 

What do I rate though?

– As i’m someone who absolutely adore re-reading my books, this enter into consideration. If the ride was really fun but I don’t feel like rereading it more than once.. the stars will lower.

– The feels!! Like everyone (or mostly), I love to be destroyed completely.. I need what I read to make me feel real emotions; crying, sparks of joy, laughing, like someone stabbed me in the heart, etc..

– Characters. Very important, I need to relate or get attached to a character so much that i’d consistently compare everything with that ONE from that point on. Think of Finch from «All our bright places» or Lucas from the sovereign series by Josie Jaffrey. There’s just something about thoses that have me SWOONING and never ever shut up about them.

I need them to be human and be deeply written. To have real emotions, real struggles and real problems. No character is “unlikeable” to me, I need them to be angry, have that sass going on.. SOMETHING that makes them stand out as «this could be a real person», not just something described on a page. Ideally, you want them to act their ages aswell; it’s absolutely normal for a 17years old to have cringey reactions and do stupid choices that us adult readers will think that makes no sense as we KNOW better. But the characters are not supposed to, that’s the thing. Let them be silly!! Let them take stupid decision and regret them!! Let them be teenagers!! Sure, I may not be able to “relate with a teen in my mid-twenies” but I guarantee you my inside teenager, the 17yo me I once was, can.

– Make my wheels spin. Something I just now discovered with fantasy books in particular.. Having me closing the book after an hour or two of reading and have my brain go on and on about what happened, what could happen, where the story could go, where id WANT it go, etc.. sometimes this can even lead it further and the spinning end up creating post ideas. Less good on my sleeping, however, as I do read right before heading to bed.

– Make the world dissapear around me. How swallowed am I in the book and it’s world, is it hard for me to stop reading? are the hours spent reading just dissapeared without a trace?

 

The stars that I give to the books I read depends on how much of thoses are followed and how good. Some items may be more important than the others, and thus the stars will be given accordingly upon if they are included or not.

 

Some other things..

I’m one to believe highly in trigger warnings. Though gore and violence and anything else, really is not something to bother me- there is that ONE thing that I cannot handle. There might be different reasons upon why someone would need one, so I try my best to include them when needed. If I miss any important ones, i’m truly sorry! This was not on purpose and as i’m not quite trained to see them yet, I may have missed them. If you know there’s some and I haven’t wrote it in my review, please feel free to let me know ! I’d highly appreciate.

I also want my review to be spoiler-free – being as vague as possible and not spoiling any big plot twist.

 

 

 

What does your rating means?
Do you have a constant one for all the different books/a list of things you’re looking for in a book?

 

 

22 thoughts on “What does my personal rating means?”

        1. 😂😂 well- to me it seems fairly easy, you can still talk of what worked/didnt worked for you in the book but just remove the star rating completely.. however a bit harder if you review on goodreads aswell..

          Reply

          1. I do post them to Goodreads… and NetGalley and Amazon… none of which really give you a choice on the matter. So I would have to there. Someone had this really fun idea about just coming up with terms instead of stars… like dip this book in bronze… but I’m afraid I would get to snarky someday and hit the roof with… screw it… this is a book to be used for kitty litter. 🙀

          2. Shahaha thatd be hilarious. Yeah, ithink I saw that too.
            Shame that thoses website kind of make us having to use it and not like an option of checkboxes « would recommend / was ok / not my taste / absolutely wouldn’t recommend » or something

  2. I so appreciate you explaining your ratings. We are all our own separate identities and see the world differently. Understanding a blogger’s POV helps us connect within the book community. Thanks Kristina! ❤️❤️

    Reply

  3. I love how varied all of our systems are haha, and thanks so much for adding me to your post. I really enjoyed reading how you rated books, and sometimes I wish there was just a better way to do it but I think no matter what we always have our own interpretation lol

    Reply

    1. Thank you ! xx
      Yeah, with things like that it’s kinda more hard to have a basic “standard” .. we are all blogging and thinking differently. So our rating will reflect that aswell

      Reply

  5. So I use hearts on my blog, instead of stars. Just a personal added touch 🙂 My review depends a lot on how the book made me feel. Was the world building thorough? Was there character growth? I also look at what the author promotes. I have read book where every thing was great, until the author promoted bullying and vengeance. That didn’t sit right with me, so I gave them all a low rating. For YA I feel that authors need to think extra carefully about what message they send through their books!!

    I love that rating is so individual, which your post shows, because 2 readers with exactly the same taste, can still have 2 different experiences with the same book 🙂

    Reply

    1. That’s a good point ! Though it is our duty as book bloggers.. sometime I feel as we are restricted into what we like, specially if it seems like problematic.

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      1. That is very true! A lot of the time I find myself wondering if I want to mention something, not wanting to spend days on negative comments etc. so it can be a lot like picking your battles 😉

        Reply

        1. Yeah :/ .. most of the community has this mindset that you cannot like something even a tad problematic which is kinda eh at times

          Reply

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