How I Rate Books
As I continue to post book reviews on Fully Well, I wanted to include a note about how I rate books once I have finished reading them.
My rating scale is that of most other readers. From 0 to 5 stars, 0 being total garbage (and I’ve never read a book that I gave 0 stars to because I usually would have put it down long before it got to that point) and 5 being the best.
Here’s what constitutes each rating for me personally:
A 5 star book for me is a book that isn’t necessarily the most beautifully written, although it certainly can be. For me, it’s more about the way I connected with the book, with the characters, and with the author’s writing. If the author made me feel more human, made me feel connected, made me feel my emotions, it’s going to be close to a 5 star book, although, I am rather stingy with my 5 stars.
A 4 star book is usually a book that was pretty good and one I would most likely recommend, and it missed the mark for 5 stars for probably a myriad of reasons or maybe even just one reason.
A 3 star book is my most common rating. It means I liked the book enough to keep going. These books aren’t one that I would necessarily always recommend, sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn’t. It was just meh and that’s that.
A 2 star book is teetering on a book that I almost put down but didn’t for some reason and usually this is the lowest rating I usually give. It mostly means I didn’t like a book, nor would I recommend it.
A 0 or 1 star book is incredibly rare for me. I usually DNF (did not finish or put down) a book before we ever get to this point. I live by the thought process of: there are too many incredible books in this life to continue the mediocre ones.
And that’s how I rate books. I post all of my ratings on my Goodreads account (let’s be friends if you’re a reader too!) and I will be posting some of my reviews here. So when you read that a book was a 5 star review, like my most recent, you’ll know exactly what that means!
What’s your book rating scale? What makes you give a book 5 stars? I would love to hear in the comments!
