It’s not that difficult. You just need to look at some books you loved and hated, and find reviewers who loved/hated those books for the same reasons you did. Then follow those people and see what they enjoy. There’s your curated list of books to at least look into.

You are certainly correct that just reading random popular reviews every time will probably get you nowhere.

To be fair I’ve read a number of books that I’ve seen on good reads that have been rated 4+ and they have been good but I never actually read the reviews. A lot of them are so cringey or exaggerated and I feel like it could’ve done a lot better if there were more spaces for people to actually talk about the book as all the comments I’ve seen under reviews are like ‘good review’ or ‘can’t wait for your next review’ like I wanna go to a website where I can discuss what actually happened in the book and see other peoples opinions, not a reviewer getting praise for reading the same book as 20k other people

Amazon reviews are completely unreliable because they're often reviewing the physical product and the service they received and not the content of the book. Plus each edition etc. of a book has its own page.

Goodreads is the gold standard imo for measuring whether a book lives up to reader expectations, and that can be very helpful. (The exception is for classics assigned in school because the readership is no longer self-selecting.)