The star system, as well as the number system is not really helpful. I’ll try to give it 5-stars if I really liked it, 4-stars if it was good, but not great, 3-stars if it was okay, but I’ll probably never read it again.

I don’t really go lower than that and I’ve only ever 1-starred one series. Usually, I’m pretty good at picking books I’ll like and I’m not super picky.

The reason I say the star/number system is bad is because of how it works. It’s only a valid measure if you’re aware of the other person’s reviews and how your feeling about books mesh with their previous reviews.Kinda like how a random stranger might tell you a pizza place sucked. You probably won’t care, because you don’t know what they didn’t like and don’t know their preferences. However, if your friend tells you it sucked because they put onions on the pizza, you’ll know you might like it, because their only complaint was about onions, which you like.

Same with reviews. I could tell you a book is 5-stars and you may hate it. We care about different things and the only way to judge it based purely off a rating is if you know what I like and what I don’t like, and you know we generally like the same things. Then the rating maters.

That’s almost never the case, though, so I generally use stars to just say “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”. What’s important is “this is why I feel that way”. That’s everything. The reasons I liked it or didn’t.

Even that’s it’s own thing as I feel a review should be spoiler free. I think someone should go somewhere else to discuss specifics. People just use reviews to see if they’re interested in starting it.