Recently I’ve been noticing myself giving a lot of four star reviews and started thinking about my rating system and what it means. So, for future reference here is a somewhat thought out breakdown of what each rating on my star scale means to me and why some ratings are infinitely more common than others. I tend to avoid books I’m not confident I will like. With so many great books out there I haven’t read yet… why waste time on ones that aren’t jumping up and down on my shelf shouting at me to read it. This is exactly why I always have a massive TBR pile because I always let new titles that seem fantastic jump up to the front of the line because I just can’t wait to read them… and that’s how it should be.

Five stars! Wowza! I really, really insanely loved this book. I was hooked right from the get go and probably read the whole thing in a day, or even in one sitting (if possible). Five star books are the ones I can’t stop thinking about and that will be bumped up to a place of honour/ showing it off on my bookshelf. These books will definitely be reread, multiple times and for years to come. You will also probably see other reviews from this series not long after as I’m officially hooked.

Four stars! Easily my most common rating as I tend to pick books (for the most part, not always) that I really enjoy! I probably finished this book in under a week, will consider rereading it in the future and will definitely be continuing with the series. Four star books are always highly recommended to those who have similar taste in books to me.

Three stars, pretty much means what you think it would mean. Average. Now to me, average actually means pretty good. Most of the books I read, I enjoy. To me, a three star book has a cool concept, a fun plot and characters I can relate to. Maybe for other reviewers, three stars means just okay but they probably aren’t reading enough of what actually looks good to them.

A book with a two star rating was hard to get through and didn’t have many, if any redeeming qualities. Odds are the writing was at least passable, and I finished the book but it wasn’t really for me and there is almost no chance I will be continuing with the series. Two star books are ones that may appeal to other people but really aren’t for me. I found the experience of reading the book just okay.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever even used this rating… Usually means I didn’t finish the book and that I found almost no redeeming qualities when reading the story. This doesn’t happen very often because I tend to choose books that at the very least, have intriguing concepts.