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Good to see you've found your way through the various forums!
Speaking strictly as a reader, stars in a review are not nearly as important to me as what's said in the review. Reviews that just say "she's done it again! what an awesome book! everyone must read it!" are useless to me, as are ones that say "this book sucks. I wish I hadn't bought it." Useless. Reviews that just describe what the book is about and give me a play-by-play are useless as well (to me). I want a quick summary of the story-- those are especially interesting if they've hit upon something that the official blurb doesn't (but nothing spoilerish, please!). Then I want the good and the bad. One woman's junk is another's treasure! Just because someone didn't like aspects of the book doesn't mean I won't. Our tastes may not be the same.
The thing that will kill a book for me? More than one review stating how awful the editing was. If there are lots of errors (grammar or typographical), I'm not really interested. It's too much work for me to read past that.
If there are a ton of reviews on Amazon or whatnot, I probably won't read them all, but I will scan through to find a few with each star level. So if there is a book with reviews ranging from 2 to 5 stars, I'll read a review or two at each level. That gives me a good picture of whether it's a book I'd want to read.
Speaking as a "reviewer?" I try to write reviews that, as a reader choosing a book, I'd want to read.
One final thought on stars-- they mean a lot less to me if I click on the reviewer's page and see that that reviewer has only rated books as 5-star books. I will admit, I'm a little less likely to want a book that has only 1-2 star ratings (ok, a lot less likely), but if it has a dose of 3 stars and above, it may be a book for me.
(sorry for the ramble, can you tell I've thought a lot about this topic?)
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